United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio is travelling to Samarkand, the historic Silk Road city in central Uzbekistan, where he will hold talks with key regional ministers on Saturday. The visit coincides with a C5+1 summit, which brings together Central Asian states and the United States and runs from Saturday until Tuesday.
The gathering is expected to show a new Washington approach to the former Soviet region. It is described as pragmatic and purely transactional, without the speeches on democratisation and human rights that have often accompanied past American engagement.
How Western engagement with Central Asia began after 1991
After the Soviet collapse in 1991, Central Asian states faced economic decline, joblessness and widespread poverty. American and European diplomats and businesspeople arrived in the mostly Muslim region, which sits between Russia, China and Iran, and were seen as envoys of a new capitalist prosperity. They came with offers, but they also came with expectations.
Western diplomats reportedly told former Communist officials who had become regional leaders that investment, technology and international recognition would depend on giving up Soviet-era authoritarian methods of government and economic management. The West organised forums and workshops on human rights, democracy and decentralised governance, and sent thousands of students and officials to study in Western schools.
When regional leaders moved to amend constitutions to extend their presidential terms, placed relatives and friends in key government posts, and built business empires that competed with Western investors, the West accused them of losing their moral compass. Sanctions were also threatened.
Galiya Ibragimova, a Uzbekistan-born regional expert based in Moldova, said: “When the West began moralising, teaching them about democracy, human rights, they immediately turned towards China or Russia.”
Uzbekistan’s uneasy record with Washington
Uzbekistan, the most populous country in the region with 37 million people, is cited as a clear example of these tensions. Its authoritarian president, Islam Karimov, became the first ex-Soviet leader to permit a US military base on his soil, in 2001.
Four years later, Karimov ended that arrangement after Washington criticised his brutal suppression of a popular uprising in the eastern city of Andijan. According to the article, the crackdown killed hundreds of unarmed civilians.
A leaked US diplomatic cable from 2005 described Karimov’s daughter, Gulnara, as a “robber baron” who forcibly took over lucrative businesses and was seen as her father’s likely successor.
A year before Trump received Saida Mirziyoyeva, the daughter of Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, earlier this month, her father had pledged to invest up to $100bn in the US economy. He also pledged to buy Boeing aircraft and US-grown cotton, even though Uzbekistan is one of the world’s largest cotton growers. Washington has said nothing about his crackdown on critics or about his daughter’s growing domestic influence.
Russia’s influence and the shifting moral debate
Observers say the roles have reversed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Moscow still holds considerable soft power in Central Asia through films, pop music, theatre festivals and TV shows that the article describes as propaganda, which it says repeatedly distort the war.
The Kremlin also uses its economic weight to promote the “Russian World” concept, which treats the region as Moscow’s “near abroad” and dismisses its pre-Russian heritage as backward and insignificant. In 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed Kazakhstan had “never had statehood”, and his ideological allies repeatedly threatened to annex its Russian-speaking north.
This year, Kazakhstan began extraditing Kremlin critics and supplying gas to Russia, at a time when Ukrainian drones were attacking Russian oil refineries. In January, Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov called for a “special military operation” in Central Asia and Armenia. Critical remarks from minor political figures followed, but the article notes there were no rebukes from people with real power.
Labour migrants from Central Asia have been duped or forced into fighting in Ukraine in large numbers. Meanwhile, Moscow uses Central Asian companies to import microchips, communications equipment and machine tools that are used to build drones and missiles.
Ibragimova argued that Washington and Moscow have swapped positions, with Russia now the one building ties through moralising.
US interests in minerals, security and human rights
The Trump administration has moved away from a pro-democracy position and now favours a transactional approach to foreign policy. Ibragimova said: “Under Trump, the American policy in Central Asia is all about ‘just business and nothing more’, without being nosy about human rights, reforms. They are content with everything.”
Alisher Ilkhamov, head of the London-based Central Asia Due Diligence think tank, said Washington’s interest is mostly geopolitical and military-strategic, given the region’s position within the zones of Russian and Chinese interests. He said Washington apparently wants a military base there as a deterrent against China.
The economic focus appears to be on rare-earth minerals, which are essential for manufacturing many technologies, and other critical elements. This interest has grown partly because China uses such materials as a political tool in its relations with Washington. The article notes the deposits are abundant but need development, technology and investment.
The White House shows little interest in rights abuses in the region, including the jailing of political opponents and independent journalists. Ilkhamov said that concern is missing from Rubio’s agenda, because such problems have dropped off US foreign policy priorities since Trump returned to the White House.
Ivar Dale, a senior policy adviser with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, a rights watchdog, said there are “uncomfortable similarities” between Trump’s worldview and authoritarian regimes such as Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. He said Rubio probably understands Central Asia and its challenges better than Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Dale urged the State Department to restore its focus on human rights if the C5+1 format is to be taken seriously.
