서강대학교

초록/요약

Abstract Having appeared as independent states on the world map in 1991, Central Asian countries faced many challenges and foreign policy building has been one of the most difficult tasks for them, as each has been trying to gain its national interests and improve its international status. Particularly, the region’s two biggest countries - Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan - have been promoting the most active foreign policy in the region. In this vein, the paper will examine via comparative analysis the cases of these two countries. From the general point of view Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have much in common. They both were under the Russian empire and the Soviet Union for 150 years and Russian remains the lingua franca of Central Asia. They both gained independence in 1991 and since then these countries have been ruled by irremovable authoritarian leaders, who subscribe to the principles of non-interference into their regimes’ affaires. However, the puzzling thing is that despite all those commonalities Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have taken quite different foreign policy paths. When analyzing the foreign policy formation of these two states, the mainstream approach mostly focuses on the region’s international environment and structure and the majority of existing studies are concerned with the strategies of big powers (i.e., China, Russia, the United States, etc.) toward Central Asian states. And the minority of studies which have taken into account domestic factors in analyzing Central Asian international relations, have highlighted the role of natural resources, legal institutional aspects or the personal characteristics of countries’ leaders. However, this thesis will try to reaffirm the importance of ideas and identity in enhancing our understanding of foreign policy formation in newly independent states by focusing on the conceptualization of national identity, emphasizing its origins, discussing differences in identity formation of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and - most importantly - how national identity is perceived by decision-makers and what role it plays in foreign policy. Thus, the main argument here is that national identity is partially capable of explaining the divergent foreign policies of these two Post-Soviet Central Asian countries.