Central Asian regionalism in the 1990s: order, familiarisation, and spotlighting

In the 1990s, the newly independent Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan set up different regional organisations such as the Central Asian Union (1994–1998) and the Central Asian Economic Community (1998–2001) to foster integration in the area. As these organizations did not lead to integration and were eventually disbanded, existing analyses often dismiss them as a failure. Against this backdrop, this paper argues that the notion of failure derives from a specific Eurocentric interpretation of regionalism, which prioritizes integrationist liberal policies over other complex political dynamics of coexistence and order-making. By adopting an English School framework of analysis and by relying on archival materials as well as elite interviews from across the region, the paper demonstrates that those regionalist experiences in Central Asia played three fundamental functions: the re-creation of a regional order after the collapse of the Soviet Union; the familiarization with the diplomatic and legal tools of international politics; and the positioning of Central Asia on the global map through summitry. Early Central Asian regionalism should thus be interpreted as a difficult process of re-creation of order, where pluralist logics of coexistence and independence interacted in tension with solidarist aspirations for unity.