KAZAKHSTAN: WHY TO PAY SERIOUS ATTENTION

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 04 ASTANA 001429 NOFORN SIPDIS STATE FOR D, P, T, S/P, S/SRAP, SCA, P/M, EEB, DRL WHITE HOUSE FOR OVP NSC FOR MICHAEL MCFAUL E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/25/2029 TAGS: PGOV PREL ECON EPET MARR SOCI KNNP KDEM AF RS, KZ SUBJECT: KAZAKHSTAN: WHY TO PAY SERIOUS ATTENTION REF: A. ASTANA 1423 ¶B. ASTANA 1422 ¶C. ASTANA 1416 Classified By: Ambassador Richard E. Hoagland: 1.4 (A),(B),(D) ¶1. (S/NF) During USCENTCOM CDR General David Petraeus' August 13 meetings in Astana, senior Kazakhstani officials made more clear than ever that President Nursultan Nazarbayev wants an enhanced relationship with the United States and is offering us a logistics/transit facility for U.S. and Coalition troops in Afghanistan that would supplement and back up the Manas Transit Center in Kyrgyzstan. These officials told us that Washington's "reset" with Moscow has given Nazarbayev room to recalibrate Kazakhstan's relationship with the United States (reftels). Kazakhstan, a country at peace with its neighbors and internally stable, strategically shares some of the longest borders in the world with both Russia and China. It's Gross Domestic Product is larger than that of the other four countries of Central Asia combined, and a strong private sector and real middle class continue to grow. Despite occasional contentious issues, the U.S.-Kazakhstan relationship is generally smooth and without drama. Kazakhstan has established a strong record on issues of importance during the nearly two decades of its independence and continues on a long-term positive trajectory. ¶2. (C) Kazakhstan's fundamental achievements include: NON-PROLIFERATION: At independence, Nazarbayev irrevocably relinquished Kazakhstan's nuclear status (the fourth largest arsenal in the world at that time),mostly because he was intimately aware of the massive human cost incurred because the Soviet Union had tested its nuclear weapons on Kazakhstan's soil. Kazakhstan is now one our strongest non-proliferation partners in the world, despite occasional speed-bumps at the bureaucratic level. ECONOMICS: Soon after independence, Nazarbayev made the fundamental decision to transition Kazakhstan from a Soviet to a Western economic model. Before the global financial crisis, Kazakhstan's banking and financial sectors were judged to be equal to Central Europe's. Even now during the crisis, the consensus of the International Financial Institutions and private Western bankers is that Kazakhstan has reacted responsibly and flexibly. Unless there are further hidden land-mines to explode, Kazakhstan will emerge fundamentally intact from the current global financial crisis. In about 2014-2015, when the oil starts to gush from Kazakhstan's North Caspian "elephant" fields, in which American corporations are heavily invested, Kazakhstan will experience stunning financial growth. While natural resources continue to attract the lion's share of foreign investment, Kazakhstan seeks to diversify beyond the extractive sector, and is showing success in this policy. EDUCATION: Soon after independence, Nazarbayev understood the only way to transition his new country into the broader world was to change fundamentally the psychology of Kazakhstan's next generation of leaders. He chose strategically to do this by embracing Western education for his nation. He established the Bolashak (Future) Program that has now provided thousands of young Kazakhstanis with international, mostly Western, university educations. The results are strikingly apparent every day, both in government ASTANA 00001429 002 OF 004 offices and in the private sector, where bright, globalized, young Kazakhstanis are incrementally setting the agenda for the future. KAZAKHSTAN WANTS AN ENHANCED BILATERAL RELATIONSHIP ¶3. (C) President-elect Obama's telephone call to Nazarbayev in November 2008 was hugely welcomed in Kazakhstan from the top down, as was Vice President Biden's April telephone call to personally invite Nazarbayev to the 2010 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington. Whether or not we intended these calls as any kind of signal, Nazarbayev and the progressive element of his top leadership -- and even the general population -- interpreted the calls as a clear and meaningful signal of a new U.S.-Kazakhstan relationship, and warmly, enthusiastically welcomed them. That's the power of the image of the United States and of President Obama himself. We would do well for our long-term interests -- including stability in Afghanistan -- to build on the power of that perception. AFGHANISTAN ¶4. (S/NF) One of the highest U.S. priorities is getting Afghanistan right. As the August 12-15 visit to Astana by USCENTCOM Commander General David Petraeus made clear, Kazakhstan is eager to assist the United States and has across the board, from every senior official we have met, declared that U.S. policy on Afghanistan is "absolutely correct." From late March onward, President Nazarbayev has indicated he is willing to act independently of Moscow, and has offered us a new transit/logistics facility to complement the U.S. Transit Center at Manas in Kyrgyzstan. General Petraeus's visit was calculated to draw out exactly what Nazarbayev's offer might mean, and resulted in an oral agreement that a joint USCENTCOM-USTRANSCOM expert-level delegation would visit Kazakhstan soon to explore concrete "next steps." This is a high-wire strategic decision for Kazakhstan and suggests that President Nazarbayev is willing to act independently from Moscow in the window-of-opportunity space he now has because of the U.S. effort to improve its relationship with Russia. RUSSIA ¶5. (C) An enhanced bilateral relationship with Kazakhstan would complement our new Russia policy, and would reinforce the clear message Vice President Biden recently delivered in Kyiv and Tbilisi. Since shortly after the August 2008 Russia-Georgia conflict, President Nazarbayev has increasingly signaled his desire to "recalibrate" his great-power relationships. The Kazakhstani leadership has told us repeatedly it is pleased with President Obama's efforts to "reset" Washington's relations with Moscow, because that opens new space for Astana to cooperate with Washington. Because of geography, history, language, economics, and culture, Russia will always necessarily be Kazakhstan's number-one strategic partner; but Nazarbayev seeks a higher-profile relationship with the United States. The key for us would be transparency with both Astana and Moscow. At the same time, we should not underestimate Moscow's "Putinism," it's neo-imperial pressures -- and skullduggery -- in its self-proclaimed "sphere of privileged influence." ASTANA 00001429 003 OF 004 DEMOCRACY ¶6. (C) U.S. interests are not coldly geostrategic: we care deeply about democratic progress for our regional partners and for their citizens. President Nazarbayev understands this, because he listened to the international community earlier this year and found a way to scuttle the overly restrictive Religion Law, which hard-liners around him had drafted and pushed through Parliament, by sending it to the Constitutional Council that declared it unconstitutional. This gave him the cover to allow it to die. ¶7. (C) Nazarbayev consistently promotes inter-ethnic harmony and general religious tolerance. Civil society played a significant role in drafting the government's 100-plus-page human rights action plan. Kazakhstan's Parliament, although wholly dominated by Nazarbayev's ruling party, Nur Otan, is nevertheless a real parliament with a broad spectrum of opinion among its members; it has a professional committee structure and holds hearings at which civil society testifies freely and even vociferously. But Nazarbayev has a blind spot we have to acknowledge. The two most recent events of concern -- the new Internet Law and the conviction of journalist Ramazan Ysergepov -- are intimately related to the cosmic feud Nazarbayev has with his ex-son-in-law, Rakhat Aliyev, currently exiled in Europe. Nazarbayev is blinded to international opinion on issues that arise from his struggle with Aliyev -- thus the Internet Law and the Yesergepov case, both of which we believe are knee-jerk reactions to limit distribution of Aliyev's expose, "Godfather-in-Law." In fact, the print media in Kazakhstan are remarkably free and stand head and shoulders above the print media in the other four countries of the region, promoting investigative reporting and regularly exposing corruption and other scandals. NAZARBAYEV WANTS RECIPROCAL PRESIDENTIAL VISITS ¶8. (C) Head-of-state visits among Eurasian leaders are a dime a dozen and not always especially productive, because they all know how to play each other. Western visits, however, are of a different order of magnitude and can be used to drive forward goals and objectives -- i.e., produce deliverables, both for short-term interests and for long-term goals. ¶9. (C) On August 3, Nazarbayev's childhood friend and the current State Secretary of Kazakhstan (ostensibly the number-two position in lieu of a Vice President) and former Ambassador to the United States and the United Kingdom, Kanat Saudabayev, explicitly asked the Ambassador if Nazarbayev could have a separate bilateral day in Washington, with an Oval Office meeting, when he attends the Nuclear Security Summit early in 2010. We will point out to Saudabayev that a lot of leaders will be jostling for face time while we continue to explore this option with Washington. ¶10. (C) Ever since President Obama's election, Kazakhstan has made it clear it would eagerly and warmly welcome an Obama visit, even if simply an over-night in conjunction with a visit to a larger power in the greater region. No sitting U.S. President has ever visited Central Asia. An Obama visit to Kazakhstan would be an historic first and a powerful statement to all great-power and regional players. Such a visit, in conjunction with, for example, an India visit ASTANA 00001429 004 OF 004 (which would not directly poke either Moscow or Beijing in the eye),would further enhance our policy of knitting together South and Central Asia. ¶11. (C) Kazakhstan is rich, relatively progressive, and recalibrating its great-power relationships closer to the United States. It would be in our long-term national interest to consider, and act on, this opening. Such a rare window of opportunity does not stay open indefinitely. HOAGLAND