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Abstract

The paper examines the evolution of relations between the European Union and the states of Central Asia after 2022, identifying Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a critical juncture that reshaped the post-Soviet order. The year 2022 constitutes not only a geopolitical watershed but also a turning point in the region’s perception of security, as Central Asian states refrained from recognizing the annexation of Ukrainian territories and intensified policies of economic diversification and multi-vector foreign engagement.

In this context, the European Union has shifted from a peripheral actor to a strategic partner, as reflected in the 2023 “Roadmap,” a joint document outlining the framework for enhanced cooperation. This framework encompasses the deepening of trade and investment ties, the institutionalization of regular economic dialogues, efforts to prevent sanctions circumvention, and expanded cooperation in the fields of energy and climate policy, including energy diversification and support for the transition toward renewable energy sources.

A crucial dimension of this new phase of partnership is the EU’s role as an “architect of corridors.” Particular importance is attributed to the Trans-Caspian Transport Corridor (Middle Corridor), which offers an alternative to the northern route passing through Russia. Investments under the Global Gateway initiative—targeting the modernization of ports, railways, and border infrastructure—aim to increase transit capacity and reduce transportation time between Asia and Europe.

Critical raw materials and nuclear fuel have also become central pillars of cooperation. Central Asia, particularly Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, is increasingly perceived as a strategic reservoir of rare earth elements, manganese, chromium, copper, cobalt, and uranium—resources indispensable for the EU’s green and digital transitions. Strategic memoranda provide for cooperation across the entire value chain, from geological exploration and extraction to local processing and the integration of supply chains into European industry.

The paper argues that after 2022, EU–Central Asia relations have undergone a structural transformation: from a partnership of limited political relevance to one with pronounced geopolitical, infrastructural, and resource-based significance, embedded within the broader processes of fragmentation and reconfiguration of the contemporary international order.

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Abstract

This paper examines the evolving security dilemma in Central Asia through an integrated analytical framework combining Structural Realism, the Spiral Model, and Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT). While the region is frequently portrayed as relatively stable under Russian security dominance and Chinese economic expansion, this study argues that Central Asia is experiencing a layered and intensifying security dilemma shaped by structural anarchy, great-power asymmetry, and domestic fragilities.

At the systemic level, Russia-Ukraine war has significantly reduced Moscow’s coercive bandwidth and credibility as a regional security guarantor. The CSTO demonstrates its limited ability to resolve into-regional conflicts through its failure to manage the Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border clashes, illustrates the erosion of Russian authority. Simultaneously, Russia’s growing asymmetrical dependence on China has reshaped the regional balance of power. Beijing has extended its geo-economic influence through infrastructure development, trade routes and strategic investments but it still refuses to take complete control of military operations. This selective engagement generates ambiguity and activates classical dilemma-of-interpretation and dilemma-of-response dynamics among Central Asian states.

At the regional level, Central Asia functions as a tightly interconnected security complex in which domestic and interstate insecurities are mutually reinforcing. Border disputes, military modernization, drone acquisitions, and competition over transboundary water resources-particularly in the Fergana Valley- interact with porous borders and transnational threats. Afghanistan's instability does not mechanically “export” insecurity because it increases all current structural weaknesses which include smuggling networks, labor migration pressures and weak peripheral governance in border regions. Crucially, domestic governance deficits-including corruption, environmental degradation, economic overdependence, and centralized decision-making-serve as internal amplifiers of the security dilemma. These fragilities transform manageable policy disputes into existential security narratives and incentivize external balancing behavior.

In response, the paper proposes a governance-based regional stabilization model built on four pillars: institutionalized intra-regional mediation mechanisms; gradual formalization of autonomous regional defense coordination; strategic omni-enmeshment of major and middle powers; and economic diversification through transport connectivity and strategic resource governance.

By reframing Central Asia not as a passive buffer but as an active arena where domestic structures and great-power asymmetries co-produce insecurity, this study contributes to broader debates on regional order, power transition, and the transformation of security dilemmas in structurally fragile regions.

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Abstract

Drawing inspiration from scholarship on resource affects and resource frontier making, this paper examines the ideological fantasies that surround the European Union's engagements with Central Asia’s critical raw materials. Based on an analysis of EU documents, speeches, and related policy materials, we analyze the dynamics of resource frontier (re-)making in the context of EU-Central Asia relations and critical raw materials.

We show how a set of fantasies emerges to suture what we call the critical raw materials paradox: the tension between advancing a green transition and the fact that its realization demands ever‑greater amounts of critical raw materials leading to a deepening of extractive relations and reproduction of what we refer to as the extractive symbolic order. We focus on three intertwined fantasies: "diversification", "Central Asia as a solution space", and the "chosen partnership". We show that these fantasies are riddled with paradoxes and inconsistencies, yet the EU’s affective investment sustains them, eclipsing counter‑logics and foreclosing alternative futures.

We also detail how contradictions seep in and destabilize fantasies and how such disruptions are quickly folded back into the extractivist symbolic order. This is a symbolic order consisting of a set of justificatory narratives that – while proposed as a solution to the climate crisis – continue to organize life around the extraction of natural resources: nature is imagined as a resource, the "periphery" as a supplier, and the "center" as a value adder.