Book Launch: Analysing Kazakhstan’s Foreign Policy – Regime Neo-Eurasianism in the Nazarbaev Era

This book investigates the roles that ideas and constructs associated with Eurasia have played in the making of Kazakhstan’s foreign policy during the Nazarbaev era. It delves into the specific Eurasia-centric narratives through which the regime, headed by Nursultan Nazarbaev, imagined the role of post-Soviet Kazakhstan in the wider Eurasian geopolitical space. Based on substantive fieldwork and sustained engagement with primary sources, the book unveils the power implications of Kazakhstani neo-Eurasianism, arguing that the strengthening of the regime’s domestic power ranked highly in the list of objectives pursued by Kazakhstani foreign policy between the collapse of the Soviet Union and Nazarbaev’s apparent withdrawal from the Kazakhstani political scene (19 March 2019). This book, ultimately, is a study of inter-state integration, which makes use of a rigorous methodological approach to assess different incarnations of post-Soviet multilateralism, from the Commonwealth of Independent States to the more recent, and highly controversial, Eurasian Economic Union.

Speakers

Luca Anceschi, Author

Nargis Kassenova, Discussant

Nargis Kassenova is a Senior Fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies of Harvard University, and Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations and Regional Studies of KIMEP University. Her areas of research include Central Asian politics and security, Eurasian geopolitics, Kazakhstan’s foreign policy, religion and politics in Central Asia, and history of state-building in Central Asia.

Marlene Laruelle, Discussant