Abandoning strategic neutrality, Kazakhstan joins the Abraham Accords

The Kazakh president’s desperate bid for US favor has seen him exalt Trump as a messianic leader and sign onto Tel Aviv’s colonial pacts, risking hard-won regional balance and domestic legitimacy.

Hazal Yalin

NOV 14, 2025

https://thecradle.co/articles/abandoning-strategic-neutrality-kazakhstan-joins-the-abraham-accords

Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev recently returned from Washington after a fawning, if politically risky, diplomatic performance. Seated alongside US officials and Central Asian leaders, Tokayev delivered excessive praise of US President Donald Trump, going far beyond statesmanship: 

“You are the great leader, statesman, sent by Heaven to bring common sense and traditions that we all share and value back ... Millions of people in so many countries are so grateful to you. You are a great statesman, sent to restore common sense and tradition to American politics and diplomacy.”

These declarations, directed at US President Donald Trump, were conspicuously underreported in Kazakhstan’s official media. And for good reason. Tokayev's obsequiousness may have won smiles in Washington, but it left many at home and in allied capitals disconcerted.

What truly punctuated the visit, however, was Kazakhstan's decision to formally endorse the Abraham Accords – a largely symbolic gesture for a country that has never had any problems with Israel since diplomatic relations were established in 1992. Kazakhstan meets 15–20 percent of Israel's oil needs. There was a defense cooperation agreement signed between the two countries in 2001, and a joint chamber of industry and commerce was established in 2004. During the visit, Trump also facilitated a telephone call between Tokayev and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

The Kazakh Foreign Ministry, seemingly aware of the diplomatic oddity, claimed “This important decision was made solely in the interests of Kazakhstan and is fully consistent with the nature of the republic’s balanced, constructive, and peaceful foreign policy,” and reiterated support for the two-state solution under UN resolutions. 

Yet, the move has less to do with peace and more to do with optics: adding another Muslim-majority country to a US–Israeli public relations campaign as Trump intensifies his push to expand normalization under his second term.

Wagons and wag-the-dog politics

Tokayev’s US visit, which he framed as an economic outreach mission, has been framed as a “new era” in US–Kazakhstan relations. In fact, the process began during his visit in late September, and after a series of meetings, the US committed to selling Kazakhstan $4 billion worth of railway wagons. US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick hailed the “landmark deal” as a victory for American industry, adding that it “advances US manufacturing jobs and accelerates growth, opportunity, and connectivity in America and Central Asia.”

But what does it support in Kazakhstan? 

The country, rich in Soviet-era infrastructure and with deep rail integration with both Russia and China, has little rational economic incentive to import wagons from halfway across the world. Tokayev’s move appears less about transport and more about political transit – signaling willingness to carry US strategic ambitions across Eurasia. 

Indeed, Lutnick declared that these wagons would be deployed along a new Europe–Asia corridor, but with “American technology at its core” – a veiled attempt to carve out a US-aligned alternative to Russia’s east–west energy corridors and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). 

Selling sovereignty by the carriage

These overtures are not without precedent, as history offers its cautionary parallels. In October 1938, as the first president of the Republic of Turkiye, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, lay on his deathbed, the Soviet ambassador in Ankara warned Moscow that Turkish “government and business circles” were turning rapidly toward fascist Germany. In other words, the interests of the “business circles” determined the direction of the government's decisions. A similar situation is happening in Kazakhstan.

During the rule of President Tokayev’s predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan's oligarchic “business circles” deepened ties with British monopolies – most aggressively Shell – and opened the door for MI6 influence. The Astana International Financial Centre’s (AIFC) court was explicitly placed outside Kazakhstan’s own legal system, obligated instead to follow the standards of England and Wales. 

The extent of this entanglement became clearer on 1 June, when advanced drones targeted several Russian air bases in an attack whose origins remain murky. While no official link was drawn to Kazakhstan, reports indicated the drones had entered Russian territory via Kazakh routes. If verified, this would mark a dramatic escalation, suggesting that US–NATO operations may already be testing new Eurasian conduits.

Moscow's muted dismay

Despite the apparent provocations, Russia has responded with a notable lack of public ire. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed Tokayev's Trump praise with wry sarcasm: “What's so strange? It's just that so many of those who get into the White House start talking exactly like that.”

Yet, Moscow's restraint is strategic. Tokayev's visit to Russia on 12–13 November, days after his Washington tour, led to the signing of a joint declaration upgrading Kazakhstan–Russia ties to a “comprehensive strategic partnership and alliance.”

The inclusion of the term “alliance” is rare in Russian diplomatic language and reflects Moscow's desire to keep Astana within its orbit, even as Tokayev flirts with the US. Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated this during Tokayev’s visit, describing the two countries as “reliable allies.”

No message, no mediator

Some analysts speculated that Tokayev had carried a message from Trump to Putin, especially after the Kazakh president told the New York Times (NYT) that Putin had shown “maximum flexibility” by proposing to freeze the front line in Ukraine. But Russian officials dismissed the claim outright.

Putin's aide, Yury Ushakov, stated flatly that Tokayev delivered no such message. More importantly, Moscow has repeatedly rejected any suggestion of freezing the front line, rendering Tokayev’s remarks diplomatically irrelevant at best, or a clumsy attempt at self-aggrandizement at worst.

In this light, the Washington visit looks less like diplomacy and more like a poorly staged performance to recast Tokayev as a regional statesman – at the expense of Kazakhstan's balanced foreign policy.

Dancing with wolves

The broader regional trend is no less troubling. Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who also participated in the White House tour, pledged to invest $100 billion in the US over the next decade – a staggering promise from a country still reliant on Russian and Chinese capital.

Moscow’s reaction was swift. Putin held a phone call with Mirziyoyev on 11 November, followed by Tokayev’s in-person visit. The Kremlin statement following the latter meeting emphasized “strategic partnership and alliance relations in a number of directions.”

Russian expert on West and Central Asia Aleksandr Knyazev quipped on Telegram: "The US promise of $100 billion in investment in the Kazakh economy is about as much of a sham as Uzbekistan's $100 billion-investment promise for the US economy.”

Clearly, Russia is signaling that the western courtship of Central Asia will not go unanswered.

But the consequences may ripple far beyond diplomacy. Should Kazakhstan and its neighbors drift further westward, Russia may begin imposing punitive restrictions, particularly on labor migration. Migrant workers from Central Asia are already under growing scrutiny due to security fears over Islamist networks. Any additional deterioration in ties could result in mass expulsions or new legal hurdles, disrupting both remittance flows and domestic stability across the region.

Treading a dangerous line

Kazakhstan’s energy exports remain deeply reliant on Russian infrastructure and Caspian Sea transit routes governed by consensus among littoral states. Its broader economic web is tightly interwoven with both Russia and China. So what strategic logic, if any, underpins a pivot that risks undermining this stability? Why dismantle equilibrium to chase precarious overtures from a declining empire?

Not only do Kazakhstan’s energy exports transit through Russian-controlled routes, but its infrastructure was built by and remains connected to post-Soviet networks. Even its modest defense capabilities are reliant on coordination within the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

Therefore, Tokayev may score temporary applause in Washington, but he risks long-term alienation from the very powers that have guaranteed his country’s stability.

And if Kazakhstan becomes a corridor for foreign operations against Russia, the consequences could be catastrophic.

The era of strategic balancing may be over in Central Asia. And Tokayev, for all his skyward prayers, may find that divine favor is no substitute for geopolitical sense.