N.Nazarbayev and Kazakhstan’s Multi-vector Foreign Policy

MandanaTishehyar

         Two years ago, one of my students, Ali Akbar Khandan, wrote his thesis on “Kazakhstan’s Foreign Economic Policies (1991-2017)” under my supervision. We both studied a lot of different sources to understand the reasons behind Kazakhstan’s successful foreign economic policies after independence.

         In fact, we tried to analyze the characteristics of Kazakhstan's foreign economic policy from the time of independence, using its multi-vector policy in the framework of the theory of rational choice. Thistheory says that, apart from ideological or emotional views, foreign policy officials design a country’s policy based on the existing domestic political and economic realities and at the same time consider the international politics.

         Thereason for choosing of the rational choice theory was that alongside of the geopolitical space in Central Asia and structural system of the world politics, we noticed that Kazakh leaders and foreign policy decision makers introduced the unique policy that simultaneously managed the country’s economic development and its relations with the outside world. As a result, for giving more comprehensive view on Kazakhstan foreign economic policy and also its multi-vector policy we decided to look on different factors that are also influential on its foreign policy decision making.

         Based on rational choice theory, Kazakhstan was considered as an independent entity whose foreign economic policies were influenced by international system, and simultaneously, the country’s process of decision-making is based on the national interests and rational choice, then on these bases, shaping its relations with neighboring countries as well as the global and regional powers.

         The emergence of multi-vector foreign policy in Kazakhstan was a rational move as it was the best thing to do in the situation that Kazakhstan found itself in, after independence. In that situation the economy required to be re-structured and the oil sector needed to be developed as quickly as possible.

         Even a brief look at primary sources and academic studies on Kazakhstan’s foreign policy reveals its two primary characteristics, namely the prioritization of economic goals and propensity to multi-vectorism (that is, collaboration with all regional and global powers), with the latter being consequential on the former. Both seem to emanate from the objective needs of Kazakhstan’s development as well as the personal ideas of the country’s elite and, in the first place, its leader, NursultanNazarbayev.

         Kazakhstan makes it rational to pursue a multi-vector foreign policy. In this way, especially when economic relations and foreign economic policy is concerned, Kazakhstan is able to cooperate with all of the big powers and to achieve its goals with regards to its oil and trade.

         Apart from the obvious security motivation to keep good neighborly relations with its two biggest neighbors, Russia and China, Kazakhstan’s approach toward them is largely driven by economic reasons. However, to optimize its gains from trade, Kazakhstan did not exclude any of the competing big powers and facilitated a good trade relationship with all of them. Its regional trade integration with Russia in the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union is an important economic opportunity to increase the level of trade in the region. Countries from the EU are its significant export partners, while Russia and China are its main import partners. The United States is also a vital investment partner.

         To pursue its national interests including economic interest implies that Kazakhstan has to prioritize one of the big powers over the other. But Kazakhstan makes sure it compensates in one of the other domains.

         The road map for economic relations or foreign economic policy was in the broader foreign policy, known as the multi-vector policy. Central feature of the multi-vector policy is pragmatism, which means that Kazakhstan has been following a cost-benefit analysis in foreign policy as a rational actor.Thus, a pragmatic foreign policy to develop its offshore oil and gas resources, with the active participation of differentoil companies and governments, was crucial to overcoming the dual challenges of state-building and economic recovery in the years after independence.

         Regarding the characteristics of Kazakh foreign policy decision makers it could be said that; NursultanNazarbayev, the leader of Kazakhstan, can be consider as a pragmatic leader who also gathered a number of elites with common idea especially in the foreign policy subject. By keeping the pragmatic character of Kazakh leader and its foreign policy decision making team then it would be easy to understand the country’s foreign economic policy. Some scholars believe that President Nazarbayev had no alternative to pragmatism in foreign policy making, by referencing to the geopolitical and geographical situation of Kazakhstan. The reason behind Nazarbayev’s decision in advocating multilateral format of relations could be analyzed in the framework of rational choice theory clearly.

         What qualitatively distinguishes Kazakhstan from the other Central Asian states is its leader’s strong personal dedication to the idea of economic modernization, which dominates most of his speeches and addresses.

         In the context of the geopolitical factors affecting Kazakhstan's foreign policy, we can point to what is called “the new great game” in Central Asia.Since the major world powers in the regioncompete with each other inthis game, the Kazakh government has always striven to defend its political and economic interests from the standpoint of independence so far.From the point of view of foreign economic relations, it can be pointed out to the mutual use of investment opportunities offered by Kazakhstan to the Western oil and gas companies in the way to achieve a balance between the power and influence of China and Russia.

         Oil production is the backbone of the economy of Kazakhstan and its most rapidly developing sector, generating a substantial portion of the gross national product and providing a large part of budget revenues and hard currency earnings for the country. A major portion of investments in Kazakhstan is provided to the oil and gas sector. Since independence, the bulk of Kazakhstan’s export revenue has come from oil and, to a lesser degree, gas and other natural resources. The energy sector has also been the primary target for FDI, which Kazakh’s leader had consciously sought to diversify as a means of giving a wide range of partners a stake in its success. The multi-vector foreign policy enabled Kazakhstan to build a direct pipeline to China and join the BTC pipeline without abolishing its important relationship with Russia.

         In sum; geopolitical situation, geographical obstacles along with pragmatic character of Kazakh leader resulted to the foreign economic policy in which attracting large volume of foreign direct investment to extraction industry especially in oil and gas sector, became its top priority.

         Consequently, the Kazakh government, based on Nazarbayev’s multi-vector foreign economic policy, could able to properly exploit its oil resources then maintain country’s economic development,and illustrate the country asanindependent entity.

MandanaTishehyar is Faculty member of ECO College and Director of international Academic Cooperation in AllamehTabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran.