I welcoming remarks

Central Asia: Search for New Regional Actorship
in International Relations
Irina Chernykh, chief research fellow at the Kazakhstan Institute
for Strategic Studies under the President of the Republic of
Kazakhstan
Under the actorship in world politics, as a rule, it is
understood that it exists as an independent and sovereign
participant of international interaction, that is, an actor who freely
and independently forms and implements a system of its own
interests. For the state, actorship also presupposes an independent
and guaranteed provision for national sovereignty. In this regard,
it can be argued that over more than 25 years of independence,
the countries of Central Asia have asserted themselves as states
and demonstrated their actorship. They have been recognized by
the international community as sovereign and independent states;
they established territorial boundaries and ensure their control as
well as security within their borders; they defined their national
interests, implemented the institutionalization of statehood;
carried out structural reforms in the sphere of politics, economy,
social relations, and so on and so forth.
But has the region of Central Asia been an actor of
international relations? One of the most common perceptions in
the expert community is the view that Central Asia is a political
construct not filled with real processes. As a cultural and
geopolitical entity that in independent and consolidated form
(with the participation of all states) solves its own problems,
Central Asia does not exist. In other words, ‘Central Asia’,
despite the active interaction of countries on a bilateral basis, as a
project of institutionalized regional format of cooperation
comprising the five countries has yet to be realized.

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After the collapse of the Soviet Union, several attempts
were made to implement regional projects (regionalization
projects) with the participation of Central Asian nations,
including the creation of the Central Asian Economic Community
(CAEC), the Central Asian Cooperation Organization (CACO),
and the Central Asian Union. However, by the present time none
of these institutions exist, the level of regionalization of Central
Asia remains extremely low, the region-wide (Central Asian)
identity is very weak, if at all.
Major reasons for the failure of regionalization projects
are the following:
- integration initiatives were more political than economic,
and, as a rule, did not have a ‘real’ substance;
- uneven socio-economic development of the Central
Asian countries, different models of economic development,
discrepancies in economic policy;
- the underdevelopment of private business and, as a
consequence, the lack of initiative and the need for economic
cooperation ‘from below’. Therefore, integration initiatives
emanated from the ruling political elites and bore a bureaucratic
nature, being directed mainly at demonstrating political
dynamics.
It is significant that projects filled with concrete substance
continue to exist and work even if their effectiveness is regarded
critically; for example, the project to address the Aral Sea
problem.
In general, we can say that the main reason for the lack of
real integration in Central Asia and the emergence of regional
actorship was the fact that in Central Asian countries there were
processes of state building and the formation of national identity,
in other words, the emergence of actorship of states, which
directly contradicted the possibility of integration, this or that
form of limitation of national actorship and independence.

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Why is the issue of Central Asian regionalization,
nevertheless, relevant? I would like to dwell on three interrelated
points.
First. The countries of Central Asia, guided by the
principles of multi-vector policy or equidistance, have learned to
effectively balance the interests of various players (global and
interregional level) in the region on their own. However, today
one can observe a change in the rules of the game and interest on
the part of extra-regional actors towards Central Asia and the
reformatting of the system of international relations: the erosion
of the norms of international law codified after the Second World
War; the consolidation of the role of various transnational actors
(international terrorism) that operate outside international norms
and morals; the transformation of democracy, the application of
double standards, the emergence of new forms of influence on
small countries (hybrid wars), etc. These changes have an impact
on the processes taking place in Central Asia. We can also note a
certain decrease in interest in the region from the global centers
of power - the US and the EU - and the growing influence on the
region from, for example, China, and in part Russia.
Second. Although in the late 1990s and the early 2000s,
there were often overestimated assessments of the significance
and role of Central Asia in the global system of international
relations, Central Asia is the periphery of international relations.
Central Asia’s periphery status can be considered in at least three
aspects:
- from the point of view of development of international
cooperation;
- as an object of domination;
- as a zone of delimitation and, at the same time, influence
on neighboring regions or countries.
Peripheral grade creates both opportunities and risks for
the countries of the region. At present, the negative component
begins to increase. For example, the Chinese initiative “One belt,

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one road” offers a project in which the Central Asian nations are
viewed mainly as a transit zone, which does not contribute to the
formation of the region as an independent player of regional
politics and, crucially, forms the risks of the actorship of
individual states.
Third. Currently, Central Asian countries face challenges
and risks that they cannot effectively respond to separately. In
fact, we can say that in the 2010s preconditions arose in Central
Asia for the formation of a regional security complex and,
accordingly, the grounds for its institutionalization.
New factors of global politics, the transformations taking
place in the countries of Central Asia, actualize the issue of the
search for a new regional actorship. It is time to form the solid
formats and mechanisms for regional cooperation through
multilateral mechanisms. In international practice, there are
positive examples when small countries, located on the periphery
of international politics, successfully capitalized their status. For
example, the Visegrad Four, which unites the central European
states of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.
Within the framework of this format, a joint declaration was
signed and a format for correlating the interests of the