Rubio Visits Uzbekistan as Central Asia Looks for a Broader Set of Partners

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has arrived in Samarkand, the historic Silk Road city in Uzbekistan, for the C5+1 summit (Central Asia plus the United States), running from Saturday to Tuesday. The event marks a new approach from Washington toward a region that was once part of the Soviet Union: pragmatic, purely transactional, and shorn of lectures on democratization and human rights.

In the early years after Central Asia gained independence, Western diplomats and businesspeople tended to arrive in the mostly Muslim region wedged between Russia, China and Iran as bearers of gifts and dispensers of advice. After the Soviet collapse in 1991, with regional economies in freefall and unemployment and poverty widespread, they were seen as envoys of a new, prosperous capitalist world.

The West demanded reform, and not only economic reform. Western diplomats stressed that the region's leaders would receive investment, technology and international recognition only if they abandoned Soviet-style authoritarian methods of governing and managing the economy. They organized forums and conferences on human rights, democracy and decentralized governance, and sent thousands of students and officials to Western schools.

But when regional leaders began amending constitutions to extend presidential terms, installing relatives in key posts and building business empires that competed with Western investors, the West accused them of losing their moral compass and threatened sanctions. According to regional expert Galiya Ibragimova, an ethnic Uzbek now living in Moldova, once the West began lecturing on democracy and human rights, regional leaders promptly turned to China or Russia.

Uzbekistan, the region's most populous country with 37 million people, is a case in point. President Islam Karimov was the first leader to allow the US to set up a military base on his territory, in 2001. Four years later he expelled the base after Washington condemned his government's bloody crackdown on an uprising in the city of Andijan that left hundreds of civilians dead. In 2005, a leaked US diplomatic cable described Karimov's daughter as a "robber baron" for seizing profitable businesses and being seen as her father's successor.

A turn toward Russia

According to observers, since Russia launched its full-scale military campaign in Ukraine in 2022, the moral-lecturing shoe has been on the other foot. Moscow still wields considerable soft power in Central Asia, from films and pop music to theater festivals and propaganda television programs that regularly broadcast misleading reports about the war.

The Kremlin also uses economic leverage to promote the concept of the "Russian world," treating the region as Moscow's "near abroad" and playing down its pre-Russian heritage. In 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that Kazakhstan "never had a state," and his ideological allies repeatedly threaten to annex its Russian-speaking northern territory. This year, Kazakhstan began extraditing Kremlin critics and supplying gas to Russia as Ukrainian drone strikes target Russian refineries.

In January, propagandist Vladimir Solovyov said Moscow should launch a "special military operation" — the term reserved for the war in Ukraine — in Central Asia and Armenia. Critical comments from minor political figures followed, but there was no reaction from those who actually hold power. Meanwhile, Central Asian migrant workers are tricked or coerced into enlisting to fight in Ukraine, and Moscow uses Central Asian companies to import microchips, communications equipment and machine tools for producing drones and missiles.

According to Ibragimova, the US and Russia have swapped roles. Today it is Russia that opens relationships by lecturing on morality.

Washington returns?

Meanwhile, the administration of US President Donald Trump has abandoned its pro-democracy stance and now pursues a pragmatic, transactional foreign policy. According to Ibragimova, under Trump, US policy in Central Asia is "business and nothing more," with no interference on human rights or reform, and Washington is content with that.

Earlier this month, Trump received Saida Mirziyoyeva, daughter of Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev. A year ago, Mirziyoyev pledged to invest up to $100 billion in the US economy, buy Boeing aircraft and even buy US-grown cotton, even though Uzbekistan is one of the world's largest cotton growers. Washington made no comment on the Mirziyoyev administration's crackdown on critics or on his daughter's growing influence.

After largely ignoring Central Asia during Trump's first term, the White House wants to restore its presence in the region. According to Alisher Ilkhamov, head of the London-based research group Central Asia Due Diligence, the main interest is geopolitical and military-strategic, given the region's location within Russia's and China's spheres of interest. He argues that in the future Washington clearly wants a military base here as a deterrent to China.

Economic interests appear to focus on rare-earth minerals — critical to manufacturing many technologies — and other essential elements, especially as China uses them as political leverage in relations with Washington. Reserves are abundant but need development, technology and investment.

Meanwhile, the White House shows little interest in human rights violations in Central Asia, such as the detention of political opponents and independent journalists. Ilkhamov said: "Unfortunately, interest in these issues is not on Rubio's agenda, because they have disappeared from US foreign policy priorities since Trump returned to the White House."

A Norwegian human rights activist voiced similar concerns. Ivar Dale, senior policy adviser at the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, told Al Jazeera there are worrying parallels between Trump's worldview and the entrenched authoritarian regimes of Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. However, he said, Marco Rubio may understand Central Asia and its challenges better than Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Dale argued that the US State Department "should put human rights back at the center" if the C5+1 format is to be taken seriously in the future.