The Foreign Policies of Russia and Kazakhstan: Post-Soviet Regionalism and Power Balance

The emergence of regional integration groups in the modern world is to a great extent an outcome of the permanent interaction of two processes: contagion and competition between integration projects. On the one hand, ‘integration breeds integration’ in the neighbouring regions. On the other hand, multiple integration projects often (if not always) have some overlap in actual or potential membership, leading to permanent competition between regional integration initiatives. For HTI, the impact of competition is, possibly, even stronger than for coming-together projects: HTI as ‘regionalism by default’ is likely to comprise extremely unwilling members who are, generally speaking, searching for their place in the world economy through interaction with other states or integration groups. In order to evaluate any integration project’s current and potential development, it is necessary to assess the geographical foci of the foreign policies of key countries in the project. This is what we intend to do in this chapter, looking at the two most likely promoters of post-Soviet integration – Russia and Kazakhstan.