Kazakhstan's economic soft balancing policy vis-à-vis Russia: From the Eurasian Union to the economic cooperation with Turkey

What has been the reaction of Kazakhstan toward the rising power and influence of Russia since 1994? This paper uses the concept of soft-balancing, specifically analyzing economic issues using Stephen Walt's balance of threats approach, in an analysis of Kazakhstan's relationship with Russia. It examines instances of Kazakhstan's internal and external economic soft balancing efforts vis-à-vis Russia to explain how it used economic tools to protect its energy security from Russia. After 1991, which marked the collapse of the Soviet Union, the newly independent countries of the former Soviet Union – the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), including Kazakhstan, needed to create an institution that could tackle economic and energy problems in the region. I argue that the Eurasian Union idea promoted by the president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, was a skillful attempt to simultaneously maintain a close cooperation with Russia and to soft balance against Russia's influence through collaboration with other CIS countries. However, that initiative failed and did not have the intended economic soft balancing effect. When Russia started asserting its economic and political power over the Central Asian and Caspian regions, Nazarbayev once again resorted to the economic soft balancing policy, but this time by relying on outside players. Part 2 of this article discusses two cases of such external economic soft balancing efforts: participation in the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline project, and the economic cooperation with Turkey as part of a free trade zone. The BTC pipeline project and the close economic cooperation with Turkey ended up being a more productive soft balancing effort than the earlier Eurasian Union initiative.