Column: Central Asia is learning to be itself

**Column: Central Asia is learning to be itself**

There are places where conversations about the future somehow sound special.

The small Italian town of Cadenabbia on the shores of Lake Como is one of those places.

For many years, Villa La Collina served as the summer residence of the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Konrad Adenauer. He came here to rest, walk, play bocce—and at the same time, he never stopped engaging in grand politics. The villa was even called his "replacement chancellery."

It was here that he prepared for his first meeting with the founder of the Fifth French Republic, Charles de Gaulle—a meeting that became the precursor to German-French reconciliation after World War II and future European cooperation.

Therefore, decades later, it was symbolic to discuss Central Asia here—a region that today is also looking for its own formula for the future.

At the meeting, organized by the Regional Programme of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Central Asia, the discussion focused on security, foreign policy, water and climate, transport, economy, and regional identity. The participants included experts, parliamentarians, and scholars from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

But after all the discussions, it was not any single formula that stuck with me. Rather, it was a general feeling. It seems that the view of Central Asia is gradually changing. Until recently, it was easier to perceive the region from the outside—through the routes, borders, and interests of major powers. Now, more and more, one wants to look from within: what connects us ourselves, what we can do together, and how we want to see our future.

Perhaps this is one of the most noticeable changes.

If previously the main goal for the region was at least to prevent confrontation, today another question arises more and more often: what can be done together?

And here we are talking not only about politics, but also about economics.

The combined GDP of the five Central Asian countries has reached approximately 520 billion dollars and has grown nearly 2.5 times over the past eight years. Mutual trade among Central Asian countries has approached $11 billion, while mutual investments have increased 5.6 times.

These figures show a trend: regional connectivity is beginning to yield economic value.

Therefore, it is no longer enough for Central Asia to be merely a transport hub. It is important not only to let goods pass through but also to produce them. Not only to transport raw materials but also to create added value. Not only to attract capital but also to accumulate its own technological and financial competencies.

Thus, during the meeting, there was talk of developing unified legal standards to protect our economic space—and especially joint projects—from sanctions pressure. And here, the five countries of the region can give each other what each individually sometimes lacks.

This thought returned repeatedly in conversations.

External cooperation is often perceived as a choice: one route instead of another, one partner instead of another, one center of gravity instead of another.

But perhaps a different logic is far more productive for Central Asia. Not an alternative, but an additional opportunity.

A new transport corridor does not necessarily have to replace an existing one, but it can become an alternative. A new investor does not mean abandoning the previous one. A new technological partnership should not close the path to cooperation with others.

And here, an important connection emerges—from the multi-vector policy of individual states to regional autonomy and the agency of the region. Not just choosing between opportunities, but creating new ones.

This does not mean a unified foreign policy or states relinquishing their independence. On the contrary, the more opportunities the region creates, the more room for maneuver each individual country receives.

In this sense, regional autonomy is primarily about self-sufficiency. It means the ability to speak to the outside world in a broader language of opportunities.

Central Asian states are increasingly taking responsibility for solving their own regional problems.

And during the discussions, the talk was not only about military or political security. Water is linked to energy, transport to the infrastructure of neighbors, and climate and environmental problems know no borders at all. Cyber threats even less so.

If a challenge becomes regional, then gradually the responsibility for solving it must also become regional. It seems to me that this is one of the most important processes taking place in Central Asia today.

Countries are increasingly striving to resolve complex issues directly among themselves, without external mediators. The trilateral agreement on borders and the Khujand Declaration are indicative in this regard.

Even Kyrgyzstan's membership in the UN Security Council was viewed by the meeting participants more broadly than national diplomacy—as a shared responsibility and as an indicator of the strengthening of the region's agency.

The region needs partners, but partnership and responsibility are different things. Partners can help solve regional tasks. But the tasks themselves are increasingly becoming the subject of conversation within Central Asia.

And here, perhaps, is the most interesting part of this whole story. Because Central Asia is not only five states and their institutions, it is also people.

During the meeting, they spoke about the role of parliaments and civil society, about women's and youth platforms, student exchanges, and cultural projects.

It seems to me that all of this is important for one simple reason: people sometimes draw closer faster than official institutions do.

Members of the same family often live on different sides of a border. Students see opportunities to study in neighboring countries. And during the World Cup, many residents of Central Asian countries rooted for the national team of Uzbekistan. It is from such moments that a sense of neighborliness is formed.

Therefore, regional rapprochement, as one of the participants noted, needs its own "beacons of good-neighborliness": shared cultural routes, convenient travel, and regional media platforms. Perhaps even simple things like unified cards for visiting museums or regional telephone tariffs.

Interestingly, the issue of forming a regional identity was also discussed at the meeting. At the same time, we are starting not only to talk about neighborliness. We have begun to ask ourselves: what, actually, makes us a region? At the same time, there is an understanding that it is impossible to strengthen regional identity by decree.

And perhaps it is no less important that such thoughts are increasingly coming to people of a generation that is no longer so burdened by old stereotypes and perceives neighborliness as a part of their own lives. It is these people who will gradually have to take responsibility for what the region will become in the coming years.

There is another delicate topic that seems important to me for the future of the region—history.

Central Asia has a shared, very complex, and intertwined history. But today, each country largely tells it through its own national lens.

Each state has its own heroes, dates, events, and its own painful pages. But regional identity is impossible without an attempt to look at the past more broadly than modern borders.

Perhaps, as was said at the meeting, scholars from the five countries should write the history of Central Asia together. Not to create another "correct" version of the past, but to see in it not only differences but also what connected us.

Central Asia has a shared memory—we just haven't had time to read it together yet. And here, too, it is important not to seek a single identity instead of national ones. One can simultaneously feel part of a broader space.

Another idea voiced during the discussions was the need to translate regional commonality from declarations into everyday practice.

After the discussions in Cadenabbia, it seems to me that Central Asia is gradually moving precisely in this direction. Not toward creating a rigid supranational structure, and not toward an attempt to oppose itself to the outside world. Rather, toward forming a network space of cooperation, in which different countries connect different interests and different projects with one another.

Trade connects one country with another. Transport adds a third. Energy, a fourth. Water, security, education, culture, and human contacts create new connections. They do not necessarily pass through all five countries at the same time. But the more such intersections there are, the denser the region becomes.

This, it seems to me, is the advantage of the network model. There is no need yet to create a single common structure to remain connected. In one issue, countries can be partners; in another, they can compete; in a third, they can involve another neighbor in cooperation. Some connections may strengthen, others may weaken, but the network itself, or a kind of multi-level community, continues to grow.

Gradually, such connections begin to influence national rules and standards as well: when countries work together more often, their systems have to be made more compatible. In this case, the region emerges not only from political decisions from above, but also from a multitude of practical connections between countries and people.

In Adenauer's time, Europe learned to turn a complex neighborhood into a system of cooperation. Central Asia is going its own way and, of course, should not copy other people's models. But the idea itself seems universal: resilience begins where countries stop perceiving neighborliness only as a source of potential risks and begin to see it as a source of benefit and development.

Perhaps this is precisely what is gradually happening in Central Asia today. Neighbors are learning not only not to conflict, but also to create something together. Not only to look for partners outside the region, but also to find them nearby. Not only to speak of their own interests, but also to take responsibility for what happens next door.

And perhaps the main question now is no longer which center of power Central Asia will be closer to. But rather, to what extent Central Asia itself will be able to expand the space of its own choice.

Perhaps this is the next step—from the multi-vector policy of states to regional autonomy and agency. To continue integrating with the external world, but to become a strong and connected enough region to be able to open up to it on favorable and equal terms.