CENTRAL ASIA BETWEEN WEST AND EAST

Martin C. SPECHLER

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Martin C. Spechler, Professor of Economics, IUPUI, and faculty affiliate of the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center, Indiana University (Bloomington, Indiana, U.S.)

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When I was first asked to speak about the prospects of EU expansion into Central Asia, I replied that this would be a very short paper! There is no such prospect. But no one with my love for speaking would let it go at that. So I decided to interpret the question in a different way: would it be preferable for some or all of the Central Asian countries to seek some kind of associate status with the West or with the East, or with neither, or with both—through the World Trade Organization? And would they be accepted by the EU, ASEAN, or the WTO? Would closer ties with Russia or China be a good idea? In this essay these possibilities are considered in turn.

Let’s start with a few definitions and basic facts. I define the Central Asian (CA) states as the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The first is to the west of the Caspian Sea, but its culture and political-economic regime are similar to the others. The Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China, Afghanistan, the Azeri parts of Iran, and several Turkic parts of the Russian Federation might likewise be included as Central Asian, but except for Afghanistan, none of these areas is a sovereign entity able to arrange its own trade affairs. Since the Treaty on European Union specifies that membership is open to “European” states, the implication is that these clearly Asian states are not even remotely candidates for membership in the EU.

All these six Turkestani states of Central Asia are landlocked, remote from the main world markets. Azerbaijan has…………….

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