Foreign Policy Priorities of Kazakhstan and Kazakh-Pak Relationship
Barlybay Sadykov,
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Republic of Kazakhstan to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Kazakhstan, which geopolitically is located at the very crossroads of great powers interests, certainly more than anyone else is affected by harsh global political and economic realities, while the country remains persistent in promoting independent foreign policy line. The most visible characteristics and manifestations of this policy traditionally are pragmatism, dynamism, proactivity and determination to resolving contradictions worldwide through conducting a peace dialogue only.
Proceeding from the maxima that that terms any country’s foreign policy as a continuation of its domestic one, it is worthwhile to outline briefly internal political situation in Kazakhstan and its relationship to foreign policy matters. From the very beginning of its modern-day political history Kazakhstan, which is a multiethnic and religiously diverse society with more than a hundred ethnic groups living together in harmony, has opted to build up a Kazakhstani society, predominantly run by the sense of Kazakhstani patriotism. This is probably the reason of why that thesis is particularly stressed in the first article of the Constitution of Kazakhstan. Therefore, absolutely all the internal political processes in the country are motivated by that utmost aim of building the Kazakhstani nation. Particularly this is manifested in a legislative ban to discriminate citizens upon their ethnic, sexual, religious, linguistic identities, or to set up political parties in the country on any ethnic, religious or professional ground.
Apart of that, despite of a well-known status as the 9th largest territory of the world and heterogeneity of its population, Kazakhstan has been constantly positioning itself as a unitary state, where all major decisions with respect to the national development are adopted in Astana, which has been the capital since 1997. In this case a historical decision of the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev to transfer the capital from Almaty, located near the south-eastern borders of the country, to the very center of Kazakhstan also reasonably stemmed from the unitary form of a national government system. The rationality and wisdom of that decision may be well seen today as Astana turned to become one of the most intensively developing cities across Eurasia.
On December 1 Kazakhstan celebrated the Day of the First President of Kazakhstan Nurslultan Nazarabayev, who is in fact the main architect of the internal and foreign policy of Kazakhstan. Thanks to his political will and visionary leadership the country successfully avoided internal strife, established friendly relations with the outside world and created favorable conditions for rapid economic development. Some statistical data below overtly prove major achievements of Kazakhstan through 27 years of its sovereign existence:
– Poverty has been reduced from 46, 7 per cent in 1992 to 2,7 per cent in 2017;
– Literacy rate is 99.7 per cent, which is one of the highest scores in the world;
– Kazakhstan is among 10 biggest oil suppliers in the world and number one in the world in uranium production and export and also is one of the leading countries in the world to produce and export wheat flour;
– Kazakhstan attracted more than 300 billion USD of FDI that is more than 70 per cent of all investments made in the countries of Central Asia combined;
– GDP at the highest point was 236 bln. US dollars. Trade turnover last year was 77 bln. US dollars.
– Kazakhstan is on 28th place among 193 countries in the «Doing Business» rating of the World Bank this year. All these notable achievements are strongly associated with personality and political activity of the President Nazarbayev, who is leading country to reaching even more ambitious objective of joining by 2050 to the group of 30 most developed economies of the world.
As for policy matters Nursultan Nazarbayev has always acknowledged that it could not be implemented without a competent and highly qualified civil service. For this reason, the President permanently pays great attention to reforms and improving the quality of national civil service in accordance with Kazakhstan’s fundamental internal and external interests and the world economic and politics trends. As to the question of the foreign policy priorities of modern Kazakhstan everyone is to keep in mind that they originally were identified of that policy’s fundamental principles and philosophy. From the very beginning Kazakhstan has determined its foreign policy as a multivectoral one, what is about developing friendly, well-balanced and predictable relations with all countries over the world. Accordingly, there is no one to say that Kazakhstan is in confrontation with any state or international organization.
On the contrary, it is Kazakhstan’s peace-loving and most notably, constructive foreign policy behavior makes the country respected and well-known in the world as a peace-maker one. One of the most recent outstanding evidences of this sort of recognition is appearance of Astana as one of the leading negotiation hubs for settling the inter-Syrian conflict, as well as of global inter-religious dialogue centers with triennial Congresses of World and Traditional Religions Leaders hosting by Astana.
At the same time there should be no surprise that Kazakhstan attaches a particular interest to enhancing bilateral relations with neighboring countries and the world powers, including Russia, China, the USA, Central Asian countries, the European Union and key states of the Middle and Near East.
Russia is the first country, with which Kazakhstan signed in late May of 1992 a strategically important document, termed as the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance. The significance of this and other same level Kazakh-Russian treaties is easy to assess if to admit adequately the fact that the countries share the longest land border in the world (about 7.5 thousand km.), what destined their people to get interlinked with each other by numerous humanitarian, economic and political ties. Thus, Kazakhstan has always been in favor of maintaining close relations with Russia and making them attractive in terms of quality. Great manifestation of such a relationship was the sound proposal by the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, made by him in early years of the Kazakhstan independence in 1994 on creating a Eurasian Union. At present that call has been implemented in the form of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), which apart Kazakhstan and Russia also comprises Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. It is through cooperation within the Union business circles of the member states enjoy a free trade area, which stretches for thousands of kilometers across Eurasia. In addition to the EAEU Russo-Kazakh partnership develops dynamically within a multilateral format under the roof of the CIS, the CSTO and the SCO.
The level of the interstate partnership is revealed eloquently also by respective economic statistics. So, now Russia is the biggest trade and economic partner of Kazakhstan (20.6 per cent in common foreign trade turnover of Kazakhstan). In 2017 the bilateral trade volume totaled to $ 16 billion and increase up to 25.6 per cent vis-a-vis the year 2016.
Another priority partner of Kazakhstan is successfully developing China, relationship history with which of Kazakh people go back centuries. Accordingly, the tradition of that close relationship presently is manifested through exceptionally high frequency of personal meetings of the heads of Kazakhstan and China, as well as well-developed legal base and high level of trade and economic cooperation. The major outcome of this degree of cooperation is that Astana and Beijing successfully managed within in a quarter of the century to build up an exemplary mode of interstate relationship. Crucial thing for harmonization of bilateral relationship were, of course, China-given security guarantees to Kazakhstan in exchange of the latter’s refusal from possessing the Soviet nuclear arms. Mutual support by Kazakhstan and China of international initiatives of each other is another indicator of a high level of political trust existing between two countries. China has just recently completed its term of the Astana-inspired CICA’s chair state, while Kazakhstan firmly backed China’s initiative on creation the Silk Road Economic Belt, which the Chairman of China Xi Jinping articulated about first in Astana in 2013.
Development of close and brotherly in their essence relations of Kazakhstan with Central Asian countries, namely Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, have always been in focus of Astana’s regional foreign policy agenda. It means that even under the most unfavorable political environment Kazakhstan has always strongly advocated the need for enhancing integration processes among Central Asian nations, who are linked by centuries-old ties. This urged the President of Kazakhstan in 2005 to come up with the idea of creating the Central Asian Union, where its member states could withstand collectively global challenges.
Currently there are some good reasons for Kazakhstan to be optimistic about prospects of Central Asian cooperation. For instance, in March 2018 the long-awaited first consultative meeting of the Central Asian leaders was held in Astana, while their next meeting is expected to be held in 2019 in the capital of Uzbekistan, Tashkent.
Relations with the United States are traditionally are on the top agenda of Kazakhstan’s foreign policy. This reality was once again demonstrated by outcomes of the official visit, paid by the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev to the USA in January of 2018. Those outcomes not only enriched greatly bilateral trade and economic agenda, but also confirmed the countries commitment for development of a multi-layered political dialogue. Furthermore, that visit to the USA is likely to be viewed as a genuine triumph of Kazakhstan’s multivectoral foreign policy, which despite the ongoing political and economic confrontation between Russia and the West, remains loyal to its predetermined historical mission to be a bridge between them.
European countries traditionally are significant for Kazakhstan in terms of being investment and advance technologies sources. Accordingly, much attention in this regard is paid in Kazakhstan to developing trade and economic partnership with major European economies, such as Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and others. In their own part Europeans also got certain that Kazakhstan is a reliable and responsible partner of the European Union (EU) in energy supplies field. Currently Kazakhstan is the third largest energy supplier to Europe among non-OPEC countries, after Russia and Norway. This fact in particular may be seen through a high proportion of the Kazakh oil supplies to a number of European countries. So, in Austria this share is 25 per cent, while in Romania this indicator reaches up to 30 per cent. At the same time Kazakhstan is the fourth largest supplier of energy resources to Germany.
The cultural and historical heritage of contemporary Kazakhstan was largely affected by profound historical ties, which connected the country and its people with countries of the Middle and Near East. Those ties traditions are well manifested today through Kazakhstan’s relationship with Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt both in bilateral and multilateral formats. It can be exemplified by an interaction with them within the above-mentioned CICA and dynamic membership of Kazakhstan in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO).
The real triumph of the mentioned principles of Kazakhstan’s foreign policy was the election of the country as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council for 2017-2018, as well as the transformation of Astana into a widely recognized and legitimate platform for inter-Syrian peace dialogue. Through its membership in the Security Council Kazakhstan has gained not only a vast and invaluable experience of being in a daily contact with the most pressing political and economic, humanitarian problems of the world, but also a unique opportunity to promote globally its vision of international security. The core of this vision is the belief that international community should exert collective efforts to ensure stable and onward development of the mankind. In this regard the struggle of Kazakhstan for a nuclear arms free world is a brightest feature of the country’s foreign policy.
Being the owner of nuclear arms (1216 warheads for intercontinental ballistic missiles and warheads for heavy bombers, as well as their means of delivery), inherited incidentally from the USSR, Kazakhstan, however, made a choice in favor of voluntarily renouncing them. One of the key factors that affected the decision was the closure in August 1991 by the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test polygon, where 456 nuclear explosions were tested through 40 years and caused irreparable damage to the environment and health condition of local population. Thus, the Decree of the President of Kazakhstan on the closure of the Semipalatinsk test site became the first large-scale and sovereign foreign policy act of then Soviet Kazakhstan, but in the world practice that was the first precedent of a country’s voluntary refusal of possessing nuclear weapons.
From the first days of independence Kazakhstan was firmly promoting the policy of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, nuclear security. Kazakhstan abandoned the fourth most powerful nuclear arsenal in the world and closed one of the largest nuclear test sites. We, together with countries of the region have established nuclear weapon free zone in Central Asia. Kazakhstan facilitated negotiations on Iran nuclear programme in 2013 and in 2015 opened on its territory an IAEA low-enriched uranium bank which provides multilateral approaches to the nuclear fuel cycle. Upon Kazakhstan’s initiative UN GA adopted in 2009 Resolution proclaiming 29th of August as an International Day of actions against nuclear testing and in 2015 Resolution on the achievement of a world free of nuclear weapons.
On 18th of January 2018 thematic briefing of the UN Security Council “Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD): confidence-building measures” was held in New York under the chairmanship of the President Nursultan Nazarbayev. The President of Kazakhstan once again stressed that the atmosphere of mutual trust can contribute to the formation of a new model of international cooperation. The President called for the return to the political trust and systematic dialogue, to strengthen control over the creation and dissemination of new military and information technologies. His appeal is very actual now in the current developments in the field of nuclear disarmament and preserving agreements in that field.
With strong believe that there is no military solution to any conflict or issue our President from the very first days of Independence was actively promoting the concept of ensuring security and solving problems through trust and confidence building measures. He proposed in 1992 at the UN GA the initiative to convene the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia. Now this forum comprises 27 states, including Pakistan, which significantly contribute to peace and security in Asia through confidence building measures.
Kazakhstan firmly believes that tolerance and partnership are the only way to have success in the fight against global challenges such as terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, environmental destructions and other acute issues on the agenda of the modern world. President put forward initiative of holding Congresses of World and Traditional Religions on triennial basis back in 2003. On 10-11 October 2018 Astana hosted the VI Congress of the Leaders of World and Traditional Religions on the theme of “Religious leaders for the Safe World”. Following its principle to achieve peace through dialogue Kazakhstan is actively involved in mediation in conflicts. Nursultan Nazarbayev held very intensive consultations with the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, United States, Germany, Britain and France to facilitate solution of the crisis in Ukraine in 2014. Through his mediation the Minsk agreement had come to light. The escalation of the confrontation between Turkey-Russia in 2016 were stopped through personal mediation of N. Nazarbayev and relations between two countries were normalized.
Regarding Kazakhstan-Pakistan relationship the absence of any political or economic disputes or contradictions between two countries is to be underlined. And it provides prospects for further work to enhance and elevate to qualitatively new level bilateral relations and make concrete plans for the future cooperation.
It should be noted that the leadership of Pakistan has always paid great attention to Kazakhstan and its foreign policy initiatives. All presidents and prime ministers of Pakistan starting from Prime Minister B. Bhutto visited Kazakhstan either as bilateral visit or within the framework of multilateral forums. Last year in June the former Prime-Minister N.Sharif visited Kazakhstan to attend SCO Summit and in September President Mamnun Hussain paid visit to Astana to participate at OIC Summit on science and technology.
And we hope that the current Government will as well be interested in maintaining and further developing good relations with Kazakhstan and other countries of Central Asia.
Another prove of high level of cooperation between our countries is mutual support to initiatives at international forums. For example, in 2011 Kazakhstan supported candidacy of Pakistan to UNSC for the period of 2012-2013 and Pakistan supported in 2016 candidacy of Kazakhstan to UNSC for the period of 2017-2018. We highly appreciate Pakistan’s support of candidacy of Astana city to hold international exhibition EXPO 2017 which became big political achievement of Kazakhstan. Pakistan also supported our candidacy to become member of the “Asia-Europe Forum” and WTO.
In fact, Kazakhstan and Pakistan have close or similar positions on many issues of world politics what is the basis for effective interstate cooperation within international and regional organizations – UN, OIC, SCO, ECO, CICA etc.
One of the important hallmarks in Kazakhstan-Pakistan relations is decision taken in Astana last year at SCO Summit to give Pakistan membership.
We are confident that joining Pakistan to SCO will substantially strengthen international reputation and effectiveness of organization in countering global challenges that fully responds to the interests of Kazakhstan.
As regard to bilateral cooperation I would like to underline excellent cooperation in military-defense sphere.
The legal basis for cooperation is Kazakh-Pakistan Memorandum of understanding in military sphere. The main areas which are of great interest are military education, training of Special Forces, military-technical cooperation. Our delegations visit exhibitions of defense production KADEX and IDEAS.
All activities are regulated by the Joint military commission and the next 5th meeting of the commission will take place in January 2019.
We are interested in training military personnel in Pakistan. 38 military servicemen from Kazakhstan got training in Pakistan since 2005.
We are also interested in learning and getting experience of Pakistan in countering terrorism and we are deeply appreciated by the willingness of Pakistan to cooperate in this field. As a proof of that we jointly conducted in November 2017 first counterterrorist exercises in Pakistan. The second one will be held in 2019 in Kazakhstan.
At the same time we have to acknowledge very low level of trade and economic cooperation. 28 mln. US dollars trade turnover in 2017 is not corresponding to the level and character of our political cooperation.
Kazakhstan can export in the future energy resources, electricity, products of metallurgical complex, agricultural products and import textile, leather products, medical equipment, pharmaceuticals etc. Kazakhstan is initiator and founding member of Eurasian Economic Union comprising Kazakhstan, Russian Federation, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan with a market of 180 mln. population and with road access to Kazakhstan through China via Karokorum highway Pakistan can export its products to that big market. Pakistani products will be very competitive, especially agricultural products, particularly vegetables and citrus products, since in our country there is a 6-8 month of winter season and there is big deficit and dire need in such products which are imported even from Latin America and Africa.
Joint intergovernmental commission on trade and economic, scientific-technical and cultural cooperation will hold its 9th meeting next year and we have sent last year the package of proposals in political, economic, scientific, cultural and military spheres, so called ‘Road Map’, and we really hope that adoption of that Road Map will increase Kazakhstan’s cooperation with Pakistan.
