[Middle Powers] – In the Shadow of Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan

Author

Special Advisor and Resident Senior Fellow – Geopolitics and Diplomacy

Looks at Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan and asks: To what extent could Riyadh and Astana join a diplomatic initiative bringing together the middle powers to contribute to a more stable and secure international order? Faced with countries that appear self-centered or caught between over-vigilant neighbors, could certain levers nevertheless be activated on the basis of common strategic interests? More broadly, how do Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan enable us to draw up the profile of a middle power?

With Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan, we take a look at two other contrasting cases: One in the Middle East that has long been in the American orbit and another in Central Asia that emerged from the break-up of the USSR.

Happy New Arabia? 

For the Romans, Yemen was the “happy Arabia,” thanks to its relatively moderate climate and exports of perfumes and aromatics. Oil has enabled Saudi Arabia to move closer to a privileged position; today, according to IMF figures, it is the world’s seventeenth largest power in terms of GDP. It benefits from its enormous hydrocarbon reserves and has built up an elite trained in the West, particularly in the United States, over the decades. With its sovereign Public Investment Fund (PIF), it has a “strike force” estimated at almost $776 billion in 2023. It has weathered the COVID-19 crisis much better than many other economies.

We asked Professor Stéphane Lacroix, a great expert on the country and author of (Saudi Islamists: A Failed Insurrection) in 2010 and most recently Le Crépuscule des Saints, histoire et politique du salafisme en Égypte (The Twilight of the Saints: History and Politics of Salafism in Egypt, 2024) to tell us about the Kingdom’s trajectory. For our interlocutor, the rise of Saudi diplomacy dates back to the late 1960s. After having been on bad terms with Egypt due to Nasser’s support for secular and pan-Arab Yemeni officers, Saudi Arabia reconciled with Cairo at the Khartoum summit (June 5-10, 1967) on a line of solidarity with Palestine and hostility to Israel. A few years later, Saudi Arabia took the initiative with Algeria in the oil embargo decided on by OAPEC in October 1973, following the Yom Kippur War.

Hitherto peaceful, relations with Iran became strained from 1979 onwards. Before the Iranian revolution, Riyadh and Tehran shared a common aversion to left-wing and pan-Arab movements. The Iranian revolution changed all that, says our author. The Saudis developed a vehement Sunni (Wahhabi) proselytizing policy to alienate the Shiites from the Sunnis and make the latter impervious to Iranian Shiite propaganda. It was against this backdrop that the “Saudi responsibility” for the September 11 attacks was first mentioned. Since the 1960s, Saudi Arabia had played host to radical religious organizations hostile to Nasser, and its leaders gradually allowed extremist ideas to penetrate the Saudi ecosystem.

However, despite these various ups and downs, Saudi Arabia has traditionally maintained a cautious diplomatic line. One example is the “peace initiative” proposed by King Fahd in 1981 and adopted by the Arab League the following year, which implicitly amounted to recognition of Israel. According to Lacroix, the search for an American umbrella led Riyadh to refrain from making too strong a geopolitical statement and to stick to a posture of quasi-neutrality. A defensive military doctrine and the quest for Western support through arms contracts completed its approach. This included a “follow-Washington option,” as demonstrated in 2003 by Saudi support for the American adventure in Iraq, despite King Salman’s disapproval of the war-he saw in it the risk that Iraq would end up in Iran’s hands.

The MBS Turning Points

The negotiation and subsequent signing (on July 14, 2015) of the US nuclear agreement with Iran at the instigation of President Obama was perceived as a betrayal by the Saudis. It was in a climate of distrust of America that the new King Salman and his son Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS-first defense minister, then crown prince and prime minister) launched the operation against Yemen. Was this a reaction to the American withdrawal from the region or a desire for power on the part of the Saudis? Lacroix leans toward the second explanation, which he links to an “siege mentality”-understandable for a country encircled by Iran, a Lebanon in the hands of Hezbollah, and a hostile Syria and Yemen. In the process, the Saudis brought together an impressive coalition of regional players and sealed a strong partnership with their Emirati neighbors-with whom, however, differences of interest and a certain rivalry were soon to arise. In any case, there is undoubtedly a nationalist assertion, embodied by the crown prince, MBS, and reflected in the rejection of their traditional ally in Lebanon, Saad Hariri, in 2017.

Mohammed bin Salman is positioning himself as a nationalist actor, a foreign policy activist capable of supporting Donald Trump’s policy but on a renewed basis-no longer seeking the American umbrella but a transactional relationship based on a community of enemies as part of a sovereignist vision.

From the 2020s onward, Saudi Arabia moved closer to Israel, notes Lacroix, without, however, signing the Abraham Accords, aiming to secure more through eventual normalization than the United Arab Emirates-the inspiration turned major rival of MBS. From 2023 onwards, a kind of “cold peace” was established with Iran. Relations with Biden’s America improved.

Saudi Arabia’s new strategic project “consists in deriving bilateral relations from economic power relations.”

In this context, the Gaza conflict opened by the Hamas terrorist operation on October 7, 2023 was initially perceived by the Saudis as an awkward disruption. “Support for a ceasefire,” says Stéphane Lacroix, “is understood less as support for the Palestinians than as a desire to return to business as usual.”

Regarding Ukraine, the Saudis are doing the bare minimum, as this is a conflict they do not see as fundamental to their interests. They have resisted pressure from the Biden administration, which sought to reduce Russia’s revenues by pushing Saudi Arabia to contribute to help lower oil prices. Moreover, the idea of once again obtaining a security guarantee from the United States-and a boost in access to civil nuclear power-has not been abandoned: It is one of the driving forces behind a possible comprehensive deal with Washington, which would also include recognition of the State of Israel, a contribution to the reconstruction of Gaza, and, naturally, given Saudi Arabia’s leading role in the Muslim world (as the seat of the “Holy Places”), concessions to be made to the Palestinians.

Can Saudi Arabia be a partner in ecological transition or development? Stéphane Lacroix doubts it.

The Saudis remain, above all, self-centered. They can rally behind a major diplomatic initiative, provided it serves their interests.

Kazakhstan, the Partner of the Central Asian Steppes

Kazakhstan is not one of the world’s richest powers. It is not a member of the G20. However, its economy places it at the forefront of the Central Asian powers, with a GDP that accounts for 50 percent of the region’s total. It has substantial reserves of raw materials (oil, coal, uranium, chromium, manganese, and copper) and plays a key role in the energy supply of its partners, including Europe.

Why consider Kazakhstan a middle power? First, its vastness (the ninth largest territory in the world) and its geographical position, which makes it a crossroads between China and Europe, predispose it to a role that goes beyond mere regional ambitions. At least, that’s what its leaders think. Marie Dumoulin, a former diplomat and expert on the region and currently program director at ECFR, puts it this way: “What classifies Kazakhstan as a middle power is its willingness to implement a foreign policy agenda that is not just regional but global, particularly on climate and environmental issues.”

In this vein, Kazakhstan and France have launched the “One Water Summit” project, that held in New York in September 2024 on the occasion of the United Nations General Assembly. Kazakh diplomacy is also active on nonproliferation issues and civil nuclear management. Kazakhstan is the world’s leading producer of uranium-accounting for 40 percent of global production-although it has no nuclear power plant on its soil (a project to change this is currently underway). The country is also active as a mediator-whether in the “Astana format on Syria” (Russia, Turkey, Iran) or in hosting Armenia-Azerbaijan talks in spring 2024. We can also mention its activism in the dialogue between religions and civilizations, with the biennial meeting of the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions and the “Astana Forum” initiative, which held its first iteration in 2023.

To fulfill its ambitions, this former province of the Soviet empire faces twomainchallenges, which are closely linked and at the same time explain its desire to play a role on the international stage. The first is consolidating internal cohesion, which was by no means self-evident from the outset. Kazakhstan is home to 140 different ethnic groups, ranging from Tatars and Uzbeks to Russians (around 20 percent), Ukrainians, Jews, Uighurs, Poles, and, of course, Kazakhs. At the time of independence, Kazakhs represented only 35 percent of the population. Ethnic diversity has been reduced since 1991 due to emigration, and Kazakhs now make up around 70 percent of the population. One of the proudest achievements of the country’s leaders,” says Dumoulin, “is to have succeeded in building a Kazakh national state integrating ethnic diversity and multiconfessionalism.”

Politically, the country was dominated for three decades by President Nursultan Nazarbayev and his clan, who retained a strong influence on state affairs after Kassym-Jomart Tokayev took over the presidency in 2019. The bloody crisis of early 2022 (riots in the country’s urban centers), although resolved with temporary military support from Russia, enabled President Tokayev, a former high-ranking diplomat with a particularly sure touch, to assert his authority. He was re-elected in November 2022 and has ambitious reform plans. Nevertheless, Kazakhstan is far from reaching democratic maturity

The second challenge is ensuring the country’s emancipation from Russia. This is a multifaceted task that requires economic diversification. As Dumoulin points out, 11.5 percent of Kazakhstan’s exports and 42 percent of its imports currently depend on Russia. The Russians are well aware of this, and on four occasions since the start of the war in Ukraine, they have interrupted the operation of the pipeline on which 80 percent of the country’s oil exports depend. The Russian and Kazakh economies are closely linked. Kazakhstan is part of the Eurasian Economic Union, which includes the free movement of capital, workers, and services with Russia. To find its own way, Kazakhstan launched the Astana International Financial Forum in 2018 to open up the country to international finance along the lines of Dubai. Since the war in Ukraine, Astana’s ambition has been to provide an alternative to the Moscow stock exchange and transform the country into a start-up nation. Kazakhstan is also playing a leading role in cryptocurrency (it is second only to the United States in Bitcoin mining). It is also banking on agriculture, agri-food, and, above all, information technology.

However, notes Dumoulin, Kazakhstan suffers from the usual “resource curse.” It is tempting for local entrepreneurs to exploit rather than invest.

The umbilical cord between Kazakhstan’s elite and Russia has not been cut.

Of course, Chinese influence is on the rise, as are trade links with China. It was in Astana that President Xi announced the launch of the “Silk Road Economic Belt” (now known as the Belt and Road Initiative). However, as Dumoulin observes, President Tokayev clearly understood that “his Russian and Chinese partners would not provide his country with a sufficiently broad base to ensure its sovereignty. Hence his determination, without breaking with Moscow or Beijing (arms purchases from China), to pursue a “multi-sector” policy toward India, Turkey, and the Gulf, as well as toward Europe, in search of investments from these partners.”

The shock of the Ukraine invasion 

In this respect, the invasion of Ukraine was a real “reality check” for Kazakhstan’s leaders. To a large extent, for obvious historical reasons, they identify with the fate of Ukraine. However, in the event of Russian aggression against their country, “they can’t count on the population reacting as unanimously as in Ukraine,” says Dumoulin. They also know that, in their case, there is no close alternative to Russia-like Europe for Ukraine, and the United States on another level-apart from China, which is an undesirable option.” So, it’s easy to understand why President Tokayev is trying to navigate cautiously, applying Western sanctions while avoiding provoking Russia. Overall, Kazakhstan is a middle power that does not recognize itself in the Global South, sees itself as European or at least Eurasian, and strives to make its own voice heard without antagonizing its large neighbors. Joining the OSCE, which it is working toward, would be a way for it to achieve some of its objectives.

The author of this series warmly thanks Hortense Miginiac and Anthéa Ennequin for their essential contributions to the realization of this project.

Copyright Alan-Ducarre

Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and Kassym-Jomart Kemelouly Tokaïev, President of Kazakhstan.