Since the end of the Cold War, Central Asia has followed a fluctuating trajectory in U.S. foreign policy priorities. Access to energy resources in the 1990s and state-building efforts following the events of 2001, especially the logistical requirements of military operations in Afghanistan, became the primary factors shaping Washington’s interest in the region. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 seemed to remove a central pillar of Washington’s decades-long strategic rationale for the region. However, in the last few years, Central Asia has unexpectedly re-emerged on the U.S foreign policy agenda. This time the driving force is not security, but the restructuring of the global supply chains and competition for access to critical minerals.
At the core of the diplomatic architecture of the U.S. towards Central Asia is the C5+1 format. Established in 2015 at the initiative of then U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, it is a platform that brings together Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan with the U.S. During its first decade, it was a modest and largely symbolic diplomatic initiative. The initial objective of the platform was to encourage the five republics to act collectively in the face of the growing influence of Russia and China while also laying the groundwork for them to develop a common regional identity.
The platform’s real contribution lay primarily in its diplomatic function rather than in producing tangible agreements. The diplomats that worked at C5+1 and the academicians that closely followed its work, highlighted that the real success of the platform was the platform’s ability to put sensitive bilateral issues in the region in terms of shared water resources and border issues on the agenda without attributing blame to anyone. In other words, the platform mostly served as a confidence-building mechanism rather than a forum for substantive dialogue.
The evolution of the platform took place in two stages. The first breaking point happened during the first leaders’ summit of the Biden administration. The New York declaration that was published during that summit put forward a comprehensive vision encompassing diverse policy areas, including resilience, security cooperation, energy corridors, climate change, and “people-to-people partnerships”. The C5+1 Critical Minerals dialogue, launched on the same period, served as an early indication of the transformation of the platform from a political dialogue to industrial cooperation.
The second, and more radical, change took place at the White House summit on the 6 November 2025. Donald Trump hosted the leaders of the five Central Asian republics in Washington for the first time as part of the C5+1 summit, where the parties discussed trade and investment plans worth more than 100 billion dollars. The tone and implications of the summit represented a clear departure from the comprehensive approach of the previous summit.
This divergence can also be observed in the language of the documents. While the 2023 New York declaration devoted separate sections for security, climate, water, and Afghanistan, the 2025 Declaration of Intent on Economic Cooperation had a much narrower economic framework, including only business environment, investment, critical minerals, and Trans-Caspian trade route. The omission of sections on security cooperation and climate change demonstrates the shift in Washington’s priorities.
The current U.S. approach can be understood along three main axes. The first concerns access to critical minerals and the diversification of trade routes. Central Asia is globally known for its vast reserves. Kazakhstan is the world-leading uranium supplier and Uzbekistan has announced new discoveries of tungsten, lithium, and rare earth elements. The restrictions mposed by China on rare earth exports, and its heavy presence in critical mineral processing, have positioned Central Asia as both a source of raw materials and a reliable alternative for supply chain resilience. The tungsten agreement worth 1,1 billion dollars between Cove Capital and a Kazakh company Tauken Samruk, and the agreements signed on rare earth projects in Uzbekistan during the 2025 summit, serve as tangible outcomes of this approach.
Secondly, it reflects a transactional and bilateral approach to diplomacy. The 2025 summit took the form of a series of bilateral meetings rather than a unified regional front. Each leader met with Trump separately to discuss national agreements and country-specific partnerships. This approach is consistent with the “America First” agenda, reflecting a logic of prioritizing tangible agreements over a doctrine.
Thirdly, it concerns connectivity and transportation infrastructure. The Middle Corridor, which crosses the Caspian Sea to reach Europe while bypassing both Russia and Iran, lies at the core of Washington’s proposal to diversify the region’s trade routes. Complementary agreements ranging from civil aviation to nucleer energy support this pillar.
Even though the claims of the opening may be true, there are still structural limitations. The core limitation is geography. All five countries of the region are landlocked and dependent on the infrastructure networks inherited from the Soviet era, which direct their exports either northward through Russia or eastward to China. In 2025, Kazakhstan’s entire export volume of around 3.700 tons of tungsten was shipped to a single market— China. This shows that the signing of agreements does not, in itself, redirect supply chains. As long as China’s dominance in processing and refining remains unresolved, ore extracted in Kazakhstan will continue to pass through China before reaching the Western markets, paradoxically deepening existing dependencies.
The second limitation is the analytical misconception of putting all five countries into a single category. Even though the C5 label invokes a sense of unity, the countries differ significantly in terms of their mining capacity, institutional maturity, and openness. In practice, Western engagement is focused primarily on Kazakhstan. Uzbekistan may play a more prominent role over the medium term. The remaining three countries, however, do not yet possess the necessary capacity. Turkmenistan, despite being the fourth biggest host of gas reserves in the world, with its isolationist approach to governance, remains entirely absent from the hard-rock mining equation.
The third limitation is the scale of financing. The mechanism proposed by the U.S. cannot compete with the scale of financing provided by China through the Belt and Road Initiative. While the resources pledged under the European Union’s Global Gateway Initiative, together with the agreements signed by France, Germany, and South Korea demonstrate that Western engagement has expanded, however, at the same time it also shows that the competition extends beyond Washington.
Central Asian states, since gaining their independence, have adopted multi-vector foreign policies to balance relations with Moscow, Pekin, and the West. The current U.S. re-engagement with Central Asia can be understood within this broader strategic context. The region serves as a strategic lever for Washington as part of its broader competition with China and Russia. As for the regional leaders, meanwhile, it provides opportunities for pragmatic bargaining with an administration that favors concrete agreements over a doctrine.
However, this transactional approach comes at a price. The predominance of bilateral bargaining over regional identity-building risks causing the U.S. investment to reinforce regional fragmentation while also further deepening existing dependencies. Whether Central Asia will reap lasting benefits from this new wave of interest will largely depend on the capacity of the regional states to build partnerships on their own terms while investing in capacity-building measures. The U.S. re-engagement with Central Asia deserves close attention in the diplomatic literature, as it is a case that demonstrates both the opportunities and the limitations of strategic pragmatism.
