For Central Asia, the 2025–2026 Middle East crisis has not only become a source of external challenges, but has also turned into a test of the region’s capacity to articulate its own framework for action—from diplomacy to infrastructural adaptation. For a landlocked region surrounded by major centres of power, such an approach acquires tangible, practical significance. What is at stake is the formation of its own model of resilience amid global turbulence, writes Ulugbek Khasanov, Former Aide to the President of Uzbekistan, Head of Regional Security & Conflicts Study Lab., University of World Economics & Diplomacy.
Diplomatic Restraint as Strategy
Tashkent’s response to the crisis was consistent and timely. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Uzbekistan issued a statement on 28 February 2026, the very day the first strikes were carried out. It expressed serious concern and called upon the parties to the conflict to exercise “…restraint and refrain from further steps that could lead to dangerous escalation,” emphasising the need to resolve the conflict “…in full compliance with the norms of international law, through political and diplomatic means”.
Sanjar Valiev, Director of the Center for Foreign Policy Research and International Initiatives under the Ministry, underscored: “All parties are important partners for us. That is precisely why, following the priority of protecting our citizens, comes the objective of achieving peace and ending violence.” Earlier, Tashkent had supported diplomatic efforts, welcoming the ceasefire agreement in Gaza and expressing approval of both the Gaza ceasefire and the two-month truce in Yemen.
All five Central Asian states adopted a similar stance: none took sides, none supported military operations, and all called for restraint. This reflects the overarching strategic logic of the past decade. Central Asia borders Russia, China, Iran, and Afghanistan; it has no access to the sea, no nuclear weapons, and no security guarantees. Under such conditions, the only rational strategy is to maintain a balance of interests with all major actors simultaneously. This is the essence of multi-vector diplomacy—not an ideology, but rather a pragmatic approach to survival.
From Diplomacy to Economic Resilience
Diplomatic restraint alone does not guarantee security. For a continental region, any external turbulence is quickly felt in logistics, trade, and internal stability. Consequently, the foreign policy of Central Asian states inevitably encounters a structural dilemma: to what extent can the region offset external shocks through route diversification and the development of its own connectivity infrastructure?
The Middle East crisis has made clear that, in contemporary Eurasia, security and transport architecture are increasingly inseparable. When established corridors are disrupted, not only supply chains but the entire model of external economic adaptation comes under threat. Logistics has long ceased to be a purely technical matter—it has become an element of grand strategy. The regional response to crisis therefore shifts into the domain of strengthening material and productive infrastructure.
The Middle Corridor as an Alternative
The Trans-Caspian International Transport Route—the Middle Corridor—has long existed on maps as a promising yet underutilised route. Its appeal is evident: cargo from China passes through Kazakhstan, crosses the Caspian by ferry, and via Azerbaijan and Georgia reaches Turkey and Europe. Since 2022, volumes along the Middle Corridor have quadrupled. The Middle East crisis has provided an additional impulse: as the “North–South” route weakened, logistical attention shifted westward—across the Caspian.
A candid assessment of the Middle Corridor must also acknowledge its bottlenecks. The Caspian Sea is becoming shallower—vessels are loaded to only 65% of their design capacity and often face prolonged waiting times in port, while certain segments suffer from a shortage of ferries and rolling stock. According to EBRD estimates, an additional €18.5 billion will be required to complete the modernisation of the Trans-Caspian route.
Nevertheless, the arguments in its favour are multiplying. Over the past decade, trade and investment between the EU and Central Asia have more than doubled—from €25 billion in 2015 to €56 billion in 2025. In this context, Uzbekistan’s decision to invest $12 billion in modernising its transport and communications infrastructure takes on significance far beyond a domestic development agenda. It is a wager not only on economic, but also on geopolitical stability: a country that controls key nodes of Eurasian connectivity acquires political weight disproportionate to the size of its economy. Uzbekistan—the only state in the region bordering all four of its Central Asian neighbours—possesses a unique structural advantage to become an indispensable link in any corridor.
The Middle Corridor should be viewed not as a temporary substitute for problematic routes, but as part of a transforming Eurasian architecture. Where transport routes were once understood as economic arteries, they are now becoming instruments of strategic autonomy. For Central Asia, the development of such a corridor offers the possibility of reducing dependence on a limited number of directions, diversifying external ties, and strengthening its negotiating position vis-à-vis larger centres of power.
The World Fragments—The Region Builds
The current Middle East crisis is unfolding against a backdrop of global disintegration. The Munich Security Conference of 2026 noted that the global security architecture is gradually eroding. Global military expenditure reached a record $2.63 trillion in 2025. Recent US–Iran negotiations—held for the first time in decades at a relatively high and representative level—ended without results, demonstrating that structural divergences can persist even in the face of determined mediation efforts.
Against this backdrop, Central Asia demonstrates something rare: regional consensus grounded not in coercion, but in shared interests. The combined GDP of the five countries has increased 2.5-fold over eight years, reaching $520 billion. In 2025 alone, multiple C5+1 summits took place: with the EU in Samarkand; with China in Astana—including the signing of a Treaty on Eternal Good-Neighbourliness; with Russia in Dushanbe; with the United States in Washington; and, finally, with Japan in Tokyo. The leaders of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan were invited to the G20 summit in 2026, while Uzbekistan’s trade turnover with Russia is projected to reach $30 billion in the near term. All of this indicates that both Uzbekistan and Central Asia as a whole are not a peripheral region, but a strategic and resilient partner.
Importantly, this consensus is not built upon rigid institutional hierarchy.
P.S. Uzbekistan and its regional partners have, on the whole, met this crisis with a consolidated response. The mission of Uzbekistan, as articulated by the noted scholar, diplomat, and senator Sodyq Safoev, is “…to be an island of predictability in an unpredictable world, and to turn geography into an advantage—into routes, markets, technologies, and human capital.” This constitutes a functional alternative to the “trap”: instead of maintaining a precarious balance on the brink of war, the preferred course is that of expanding interconnections that raise the cost of conflict for all participants.
Borrowing Allison’s terminology, one might say that Tashkent is actively working with those very “25% of human agency” capable of mitigating the impact of rigid structural factors. Yet something more important is at play: Central Asia is gradually transitioning from being an object of external dynamics to becoming a producer of its own practices of a new order. In a world increasingly incapable of generating stable universal rules, the region is compelled to construct its own mechanisms of predictability. This, ultimately, is the essence of its consolidation.
