By Nargiza Umarova

In early June, Istanbul hosted a number of significant events reflecting Central Asia’s growing role in the east-west land transit system. Representatives of the railway administrations of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Türkiye, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan signed an agreement to further develop the CASCA+ corridor (Central Asia–South Caucasus–Anatolia+). The aim is to increase the flow of goods, including transit traffic to the EU. This development aligns with the Middle Corridor extension strategy, the prospects of which was discussed at the 8th meeting of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe – Economic Cooperation Organization (UNECE-ECO) Coordination Committee. Participants at the Istanbul meeting also reviewed the formation dynamics of the Southern Railway Corridor through Central Asia, Iran and Türkiye. Although the five Central Asian republics are actively involved in international transport initiatives, they have not yet succeeded in consolidating projects of regional interest and mutual benefit, creating the potential for unhealthy competition.

BACKGROUND:

The war in Ukraine, which has become the main geopolitical upheaval in Eurasia, and subsequent regional crises have impacted the security of global maritime shipping, are making land logistics increasingly important in intercontinental transport. This presents an opportunity for Central Asian states to establish a new trade route architecture, turning their geographical position into a strategic asset. However, to achieve this, it is first necessary to address issues of intra-regional connectivity, as this could strengthen Central Asia’s position in its relations with major powers.

Following the launch of a mechanism for regular consultative meetings in 2018, Central Asian countries prioritized the convergence of their national transport systems. This would strengthen the region’s connectivity, facilitate its integration into global supply chains, and accelerate economic growth.

This approach is based on data from authoritative international organizations, including the World Bank, which publishes the Logistics Performance Index (LPI) every two years, reflecting the current state of transport and communications at national and regional levels. 

The geographical remoteness of Central Asia from the open seas puts the region at a disadvantage in terms of achieving logistical efficiency. Landlocked countries must transit through coastal nations and cross multiple borders, which significantly increases the time required to transport goods. An additional day of transit leads to a seven percent reduction in exports. This illustrates the substantial effect that delivery times have on the volume and value of foreign trade. Due to high transport costs combined with the lack of direct access to the sea, the Central Asian region loses up to 2 percent of its GDP annually.

In the context of Central Asian connectivity, geography undoubtedly constrains foreign trade growth. However, this factor is generally manageable. Global experience shows that direct access to maritime trade does not guarantee a country a competitive advantage in logistics connectivity. Even within the same region, coastal economies have access to different numbers of markets with which they can trade without relying on intermediary countries. Morocco, for example, has the highest connectivity of all the North African countries, whereas Malaysia and Sri Lanka have achieved similar positions in Southeast and South Asia. All three of these developing economies are recognized regional transport and logistics hubs in their respective regions, and this has helped them raise their logistics efficiency to the required level. Since 2017, the Central Asian republics have been striving for a similar outcome, working to consolidate extended transport links between countries, with a particular focus on increasing the region’s transit potential. Proximity to open seas is in this case less important than an intraregional strategy enabling Central Asian countries to manage their geographic location and improve transport logistics.

IMPLICATIONS:

From the outset, the five Central Asian states agreed to integrate into the global transport network as a single entity, rather than individually. This would pave the way for the region’s strategic autonomy, which, through implementing a coordinated policy to develop and promote promising transit corridors crossing Central Asia, could align relations with major powers, prioritizing pan-regional interests and thereby enhancing the region’s geopolitical significance. The primary task of this approach is to strengthen intra-regional connectivity, which requires collective action to remove administrative, legal and technical barriers. To this end, the establishment of a Regional Center for Transport and Communications Connectivity under the auspices of the UN has been proposed.

Although this initiative has yet to be implemented, certain positive developments in Central Asia’s transport connectivity have already been achieved. These include the restoration and modernization of key transport routes between countries in the region, the opening of new trade routes and an increase in transit freight traffic. However, urgent solutions are needed to address issues such as unifying tariff policies, harmonizing transport legislation, introducing standardized permit forms and electronic document management practices, reducing customs duties, increasing the throughput capacity of border crossings and simplifying customs procedures. Attracting investment in transport infrastructure and digitalizing the transportation process is also crucial. While there is a general understanding of the urgency of these issues, there is no consolidated effort to address them. 

There is a growing trend towards developing new interregional transit corridors rather than local transport routes. A focus on self-interest and a lack of proper coordination in the implementation of such projects risks fueling rivalry between regional states. This could potentially deprive them of the opportunity to influence the geopolitics of transport corridors in Central Asia.

Globally rising geopolitical tensions are creating growing uncertainty in the maritime shipping industry, which is making Central Asian trade routes increasingly important. This, in turn, is stimulating investment interest in the regional transport services market. The main investors are China and the EU, who are implementing their own global initiatives: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Global Gateway. Japan, South Korea and the Gulf states are also contributing to the development of Central Asia’s transport sector to varying degrees.

CONCLUSIONS:

With limited mutual coordination, the involvement of Central Asian states in infrastructure projects funded by external actors creates an incentive for unhealthy competition. Paradoxically, despite having overlapping interests in transport logistics and the potential to establish mutually beneficial cooperation based on shared priorities, the countries in the region act in isolation, often resorting to foreign aid or support. This is evident in the development of westward transport, for example.

Kazakhstan participates in the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), connecting China and Europe and institutionalized by Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Georgia in 2014. In 2019, meanwhile, Uzbekistan launched the alternative CASCA+ corridor to Europe via the Caspian Sea in partnership with Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Türkiye. 

A similar situation is unfolding along the southern transit route. Uzbekistan is speeding up construction of the Trans-Afghan Railway (the Kabul Corridor), which runs from Termez to Naibabad, Maidanshahr, Logar and Kharlachi. The railway will provide access to Pakistani ports on the Indian Ocean. Meanwhile, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan are working to create another railway corridor through Afghanistan's western provinces. These initiatives have attracted the attention of influential countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Türkiye, who view them in the context of their own geopolitical interests. This could influence the implementation of each route and fuel regional competition.

In order to avoid the duplication of infrastructure projects, the Central Asian republics should adopt a regional strategy for developing transport corridors and establish a single coordinating body with legal entity status. This would be an important step towards strengthening regional connectivity.

AUTHOR’S BIO: 

Nargiza Umarova is a Head of the Center for Strategic Connectivity at the Institute for Advanced International Studies (IAIS), University of World Economy and Diplomacy (UWED), and an analyst at the Non-governmental Research Institution ‘Knowledge Caravan’, Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Her research activities focus on developments in Central Asia, trends in regional integration, and the influence of great powers on this process. She also explores Uzbekistan’s current policy on the creation and development of international transport corridors. She can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

By Eldaniz Gusseinov and Daniel Longerich

On June 14, 2026, the U.S. and Iran announced a framework deal meant to end the war that began on February 28 and to lift the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports. The ceasefire reopens the Strait of Hormuz, yet the acute phase has already redrawn the logistical map around Iran. The war exposed Tehran’s dependence on a single maritime chokepoint and pushed it to seek overland routes to the east. This reorientation bears directly on Central Asia and the South Caucasus, through which both Iran's plans and those of its rivals now pass.

BACKGROUND:

The war has accelerated a reshaping of overland corridors around Iran. Tehran is strengthening its rear in Afghanistan, where it has already become the top trading partner and is extending a railway northward from Herat. Iran's rivals are moving in the opposite direction. The U.S. is establishing itself in the South Caucasus through the TRIPP project, while Turkey and the Arab monarchies are building routes that skirt Hormuz. For Central Asia and the South Caucasus, this raises the region’s transit weight and at the same time turns it into an arena of rivalry. The Afghan route gives Iran only partial insurance, since a through connection to China is not yet built and depends on Beijing's willingness to open the border.

For decades, Afghanistan was seen as Pakistan’s strategic depth against India. After the Taliban came to power in 2021, that logic broke down. Pakistan accuses Kabul of sheltering the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and cross-border attacks have grown more frequent. Clashes in October 2025 and again in February and March 2026 closed the Torkham and Chaman crossings as reliable commercial routes. For Afghans, the cost has been high. The chamber of commerce estimated losses at about 2.5 million dollars for each day the border stayed shut, and in 2025 some 2.9 million people returned to the country from Iran and Pakistan, adding pressure on markets and food supplies.

Against this backdrop, Kabul turned toward Iran. Tehran overtook Pakistan as Afghanistan’s largest trading partner, with a turnover of around 3.5 billion dollars, almost entirely Iranian exports of fuel and food. Afghan cargo shifted to Iran’s port of Chabahar as a substitute for Pakistan’s Karachi, and the Taliban cabinet invested about US$ 35 million in the port.

After the closure of Hormuz and the U.S. blockade, the ports of Chabahar and Bandar Abbas were cut off, and World Food Programme supplies ran out by mid-April. Squeezed from both sides, Afghanistan shifted toward Central Asia, increasing trade with its northern neighbors from Turkmenistan to Tajikistan. The fate of Afghan trade thus became tied directly to the transit role of the region’s neighbors.

IMPLICATIONS:

Iran’s answer to its maritime vulnerability lies in overland infrastructure. The Khaf-Herat railway, opened in 2020, connected the Iranian network to Herat. The Afghan leg of this line is itself run by a Mashhad-registered consortium controlled by Iranian entities, including the state-owned Islamic Republic of Iran Railways. In October 2025 the parties agreed to build the Herat-Mazar-i-Sharif line, with a technical and economic feasibility study due by March 2026.

The project itself has not moved beyond surveying and financing, and construction has not yet begun. In June 2026 Afghanistan’s central bank announced that commercial banks would finance the line, which would run about 657 kilometers and cost some 55 billion afghani, or roughly US$ 780 million, while survey and design work proceeds with Uzbek involvement. In May 2026 Kabul reopened, after a US$ 6.3 million reconstruction, the fifth section of the Hairatan-Mazar-i-Sharif line, the existing outlet to the Uzbek network, and on June 15 Afghan and Iranian officials discussed speeding up work on the Herat-Mazar-i-Sharif line. Completion is tentatively set for around 2028. The line is meant to extend Iran’s outlet into northern Afghanistan and onward toward Central Asia and China, bypassing the maritime chokepoints.

The route’s ultimate aim, an outlet to China, depends above all on Beijing’s stance. The Afghan side has advanced toward completing a road through the Wakhan Corridor to the Chinese border. China, however, remains cautious about opening the single crossing at the junction with Xinjiang. According to analysts, Beijing’s reluctance stems from concerns over the infiltration of East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) Uyghur militants from Afghan territory, and it has pressed for closer counterterrorism cooperation. In March 2026 China established Cenling County along the border with the Wakhan, signaling interest, though there is still no customs post there. For the Taliban, the prospect of Iran-China transit through Afghanistan serves as leverage in talks with Beijing, yet the corridor will stay closed until China itself opens the border.

At the same time, Iran’s neighbors are building corridors that go around its territory, and the center of gravity is shifting to the South Caucasus and the Gulf. To the north, the U.S. is promoting the TRIPP project through Armenia’s Syunik, linking Azerbaijan with Nakhichevan and onward to Turkey and Europe, and under a January 2026 agreement the U.S. side holds 74 percent of the management company for an initial 49 years. Tehran is firmly opposed and sees in it the severing of its link to the Black Sea and Europe and a U.S. presence on its border. In Syunik, the Meghri station has stood silent for more than thirty years, and local residents live in uncertainty after a series of conflicts. To the south, Baghdad is accelerating Iraq’s Development Road from the port of Faw toward Turkey, while the India-Middle East-Europe corridor is being laid across Arabia around Iran. The Gulf is meanwhile expanding pipelines toward the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman to move oil past the strait.

For Central Asia and the South Caucasus, the combined effect cuts both ways. The region’s transit weight is rising, since both Iran and its rivals need overland routes through it. At the same time, the region risks becoming a field of rivalry between U.S.-backed routes and alignments involving Iran and Russia. Central Asian capitals are responding with diversification, developing the Middle Corridor and the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan project. The weak link remains Afghanistan’s stability, without which any Iranian outlet to the east is vulnerable.

CONCLUSIONS:

Iran’s turn to the east began before the war, and the events of 2026 sharply accelerated it. Afghanistan is becoming Tehran’s overland insurance against maritime pressure, and the railway to Herat, together with the plan for Mazar-i-Sharif, anchors that link. A through bypass of the maritime chokepoints, however, has yet to be built. Its fate depends on Afghanistan’s stability and on China’s decision about its own border, and the durability of the June ceasefire adds further uncertainty. For Central Asia and the South Caucasus, the main outcome is that the region’s connectivity has become an object of strategic bargaining. U.S.-backed routes to the north and in the Gulf pull the region one way, while Iran’s outlet to the east pulls it another. The region’s states gain from rising transit weight, but their resilience will depend on their ability to keep several directions open at once and avoid attaching themselves to a single center of power.

AUTHOR’S BIO: 

Eldaniz Gusseinov is Co-Founder and Head of Research at Nightingale Int., a geopolitical risk and foresight advisory focused on Central Asia and Greater Eurasia. Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Daniel Longerich is a Partner at Nightingale Int., where he supports the organization in expanding the use of applied data and AI analysis methods. Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

By Joseph Epstein

On June 7, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party won the country’s parliamentary elections with just under 50 percent of the vote, enough under Armenia’s electoral system to govern alone with a comfortable majority. The nearest challenger, the Strong Armenia bloc fronted by Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, trailed near 23 percent, and every opposition force that cleared the threshold campaigned on some version of repairing ties with Moscow. Civil Contract cast the vote as a choice between a return to Russia’s orbit and a more independent Armenia drawn toward the West, and the electorate sided with the latter. Yet the win alone will not seal Armenia’s fate. The country must still pass the constitutional change widely seen as the final barrier to normalization with Azerbaijan and Turkey, and Pashinyan’s victory does not mean Russia will quietly concede a country it has dominated for two centuries.

BACKGROUND:

Armenia under Pashinyan has moved steadily away from Russia, above all since the 2020 defeat to Azerbaijan in the Second Karabakh War, a forty-four-day conflict that cost Yerevan roughly three-quarters of the territory Armenian forces had held since the early 1990s. The remainder of Karabakh fell in September 2023, when Azerbaijan retook the enclave and more than one hundred thousand ethnic Armenians fled. Out of that collapse Pashinyan built the vision he calls “Real Armenia” versus “Historic Armenia”: the argument that unless the country relinquishes irredentist claims on its neighbors, it will never enjoy genuine independence.

Pashinyan is often cast as the ideological successor to Armenia’s first president, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, who late in his tenure pushed for a settlement with Azerbaijan to end Armenia’s isolation and strip Russia of its ability to leverage the conflict. He warned, almost prophetically, that Armenia would one day be forced to ask for what it was then rejecting and would not receive it, “as it has happened more than once in our history.” That push cost him his office and triggered the rise of the Karabakh-born politicians who ruled until the Velvet Revolution brought Pashinyan to power in 2018. Ter-Petrosyan was right too early, and Armenia paid for it in 2020.

Pashinyan, who early in his premiership pushed for unification with Karabakh, reversed course entirely after the war, concluding that the only way forward was a deal with the stronger party. That trajectory produced the breakthrough of August 8, 2025, when Trump hosted Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at the White House, where the two leaders initialed a peace agreement and committed to a U.S.-brokered connectivity project across southern Armenia.

One obstacle remains, and it is constitutional. Armenia’s constitution, through a preamble invoking the 1990 Declaration of Independence and, with it, the 1989 act of “reunification” with Karabakh, still carries an implicit claim to territory that the entire international community—Armenia included—recognizes as Azerbaijani, and over which Baku reestablished full control in 2023. Removing that language is less an Azerbaijani demand than a load-bearing element of the peace process itself: so long as a founding document lays claim to a neighbor’s recognized land, the conflict cannot be considered definitively closed.

IMPLICATIONS:

The step is not the aberration its critics suggest. Other democracies have rewritten founding texts to settle territorial disputes: Ireland surrendered its constitutional claim to Northern Ireland by referendum in 1998 under the Good Friday Agreement, and a reunifying Germany renounced its claims east of the Oder-Neisse line to normalize relations with Poland. What makes Armenia’s case hard is procedure and politics, not principle. Its Constitutional Court has ruled the preamble immutable, so the only path is an entirely new constitution, ratified by national referendum. Civil Contract has the votes, and a draft shorn of the preamble was finalized in March 2026. The referendum, expected around 2027, is the real test, and Pashinyan’s task is to sell it at home as the completion of the peace rather than a capitulation to it. Clear that hurdle, and Armenia gains overland access to Europe and Central Asia.

Moscow, however, will not concede, and recent reporting shows how much it was willing to spend even as its war in Ukraine strained its resources. OCCRP traced an influence operation, through leaked documents, to Russia’s Social Design Agency—already sanctioned in Washington, London, and Brussels—working under the direction of the Presidential Administration. The agency ran a dedicated outlet aimed at Armenian dual citizens living in Russia, a bloc its own planning documents called potentially decisive, blending fabricated scandals with AI-generated content. The Insider identified the officials managing the Armenia portfolio and the officers dispatched to Yerevan, alongside a plan to bus Russian Armenians in to swing the result.

The influence campaign ran in parallel with economic coercion. At an April Kremlin meeting, Putin told Pashinyan that Armenia could not belong to both the EU and the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union, citing discounted gas as leverage. Moscow then restricted imports of Armenian produce, flowers, mineral water, and alcohol on pretextual grounds and threatened to scrap the 2013 agreement guaranteeing duty-free gas, oil, and diamonds. At the Union’s summit in Astana in late May, Putin invoked the “Ukrainian scenario” and demanded that Yerevan choose. Armenia’s own history supplies a darker warning: in October 1999, gunmen stormed the National Assembly and killed Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan and Speaker Karen Demirchyan, whose reformist coalition had just sidelined then-President Kocharyan, who consolidated power in the aftermath—a reminder that an inconvenient reform government can be removed by means other than the ballot box. Russia retains real leverage over Armenia’s economy and a meaningful share of its population, and it has now demonstrated its capacity to run sophisticated active measures inside the country.

Against that pressure, U.S. engagement has been unprecedented. In February, JD Vance became the first sitting U.S. vice president to visit Armenia, advancing a civil nuclear deal and offering Yerevan a place in a U.S.-led critical minerals bloc. In late May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed a strategic partnership charter and the corridor framework in Yerevan, and days later Trump issued his “complete and total endorsement” of Pashinyan—the first time a U.S. president has openly backed a leader squarely within Russia’s traditional sphere. The centerpiece is the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), a roughly twenty-seven-mile corridor through Armenia’s Syunik province that would link the main body of Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave and onward to Turkey, built and operated by a development company in which the U.S. holds 74 percent for an initial forty-nine-year term. Passage of the constitutional change would give Washington its strongest position in the South Caucasus since independence and, through TRIPP, a chokepoint of the Middle Corridor just as securing non-Chinese supply lines for critical minerals has become a first-order priority.

CONCLUSIONS:

Armenia’s voters made the choice Civil Contract asked of them and handed the U.S. a strategic opening that did not exist a year ago. But an election is not a settlement. The referendum still lies ahead, carrying a real chance of failure, and Russia has shown it will spend, subvert, and coerce to keep Armenia within its grip; it will not stop because one vote went against it. For Washington, the work is beginning rather than ending. The endorsements and signing ceremonies were the easy part. Converting them into a durable foothold means seeing the constitutional process through, hardening Armenia against the next wave of Russian active measures, and breaking ground on TRIPP before the window closes. Pashinyan has staked his country’s future on the West, and the U.S. has every reason, and a narrowing amount of time, to ensure that bet pays off.

AUTHOR’S BIO: 

Joseph Epstein is the Director of the Turan Research Center, a Senior Fellow at the Yorktown Institute, an Expert at the N7 Foundation, and a Research Fellow at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

By Stephen Blank

The Pakistan-Afghanistan war, on top of the war against Iran, is forcing Moscow to attempt to balance its security and economic interests in and beyond Central Asia with both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan is critical to Russia because it provides an alternative to Iran, allowing Moscow’s transcontinental trade project INSTC to move forward and offering a gateway to Asia. Concurrently, Moscow has upgraded its ties with the Taliban in Afghanistan both to deter ISIS-K terrorists and to secure broader geostrategic aims. Yet it also increasingly appears that Moscow is willing to offer Afghanistan arms, ostensibly to deter terrorists. However, in the broader regional context, this move underscores Moscow’s propensity for playing a double game with and against its partners.

BACKGROUND:

The Iran war and Pakistan’s war with Afghanistan threaten the further erosion of Russian influence in Central Asia. Consequently, Russia has embarked on what can only be called a double game vis-à-vis Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan has attacked Afghanistan because it claims Afghanistan harbors the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) terrorist group, which performs attacks against Pakistan. This complaint is more than a little ironic given Pakistan’s own long-standing and well-known record of sponsoring terrorism against India.  More significant, however, is the fact that this charge, if true, signifies that Kabul has escaped Islamabad’s tutelage. However, the war also disrupts Russia’s ambition to sell Russian gas to South and Southeast Asia through pipelines traversing Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

At the same time, Russia has steadily built a “full-fledged” and “pragmatic” partnership with Afghanistan to prevent it from sponsoring terrorist groups like ISIS-K and their targeting of Russia and Central Asia, where Russia still claims to be the ultimate security manager.  According to Sergei Shoigu, Secretary of Russia’s Security Council, full-fledged partnership includes bilateral defense and security cooperation. Indeed, Shoigu openly proclaimed Russia’s opposition to any third-party military presence in Afghanistan or neighboring countries, a shot across both Pakistan’s and the U.S.’s bow and a sign of its ambition to establish a protectorate over Afghanistan.

However, Russia’s interests transcend defense. The war against Iran has ruptured the feasibility of Russia’s, Iran’s and India’s major transit, trade and connectivity route through Central Asia and then through Russia to Europe, the INSTC (multi-modal International North-South Transportation Corridor). The other existing corridor, the increasingly lucrative Middle Corridor or TITR (Trans-Caspian International Transport Route) from China to Central Asia and then to the Caucasus and Europe bypasses Russia. Thus, since failure to find an alternative to Iran for INSTC will have dire geoeconomic and geopolitical consequences for Russia, it has turned to Pakistan for help. Pakistan cannot afford exclusion from transcontinental trade routes and has agreed to explore connecting its port at Gwadar either by land or by sea to INSTC.

IMPLICATIONS:

Moscow typically has sought to have a foot in both camps in every conflict scenario throughout the Global South and the Pakistan-Afghan war is no exception. But this case is far more central to Moscow’s interests than its power projection in for example Africa or the Middle East. In order to maintain its self-appointed “leading position” in Central Asia, it is crucial for Russia to exercise leverage over Afghanistan to deter an outbreak of Islamic terrorism targeting either Central Asia or Russia.

Likewise, it is critical to Russia’s economic health and continuing ability to finance its war against Ukraine and its heavily strained state budget that it continues to find Asian markets for its oil and gas. Doing so also entails developing trade routes like INSTC to Pakistan, India and Southeast Asia, especially given its desire to be acknowledged as an independent Asian power. Therefore, balancing between Pakistan and Afghanistan while developing alternatives to Iran’s connectivity have become requirements of Russian policies to realize vital Russian interests, especially as its economy is reeling and its position in Central Asia erodes.

Further erosion is inevitable if Islamic terrorism “migrates” to Central Asia without Moscow being able to deter or stop it. By the same token, exclusion from transcontinental trade routes will undermine Moscow’s ideological and rhetorical pretense of hegemony, and demonstrate that Russia lacks the means in terms of tangible material capability to back up its arguments or sustain a position that answers to Central Asia’s most pressing questions, i.e. economic development.

Concurrently, if Russia cannot develop let alone sustain viable, economically justifiable outreach to South and Southeast Asia, its hard-won influence and standing in those countries will diminish by an order of magnitude, negating its claims of being an Asian power and making it still more dependent on China.

Despite its vital need to keep the balance between Pakistan and Afghanistan, many recent reports suggest that Moscow is secretly negotiating an arms deal with the Taliban. Ostensibly, the aim would be to use the weapons to suppress ISIS-K and prevent further terrorist strikes in Central Asia and or Russia. While this makes sense if leveraging Russia’s Central Asian position and ambitions vis-à-vis Afghanistan are the priority; in reality, it highlights the priority of security over economic development in Russian policy.  It also illustrates the abiding temptation to make secret deals involving the security services or force structures as primary instruments of foreign policy.

Given the Taliban’s track record, it is unlikely that it can or will hold up its end of the bargain. Moreover, should these reports be true this news will enrage Pakistan and likely torpedo efforts to have it join INSTC. That trade project, unlike the Middle Corridor, never got off the ground and is therefore already being eclipsed. This has gravely serious and negative implications for Russia and is likely to aggravate all the trends making for the decline of Russian power in the Caucasus and Central Asia as well as South and Southeast Asia. 

An arms deal with the Taliban will further entrench the belief among governments who monitor Russian behavior that Moscow is cannot be relied on as a partner. It will also confirm the notion held by many Western governments that Russia, like the Soviet Union, remains a sponsor of state terrorism and must, at best, be kept at arm’s length.

CONCLUSIONS:

Thus Russia continues to play a double game towards its partners, attempting to have both an empire and prosperous foreign trade relations, even though their logics are quite incompatible. Moscow also has yet to grasp that it cannot denounce and support terrorism at the same time without paying an incommensurate price for its quest after short-term gains. In Central Asia, Russia still seeks to pursue wildly contradictory aims without paying the price for doing so. If Moscow does, in fact, arm the Afghan government, it will once again be playing with dynamite.

AUTHOR’S BIO: 

Stephen Blank is a Senior Fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, www.fpri.org.