Foreign Policy Diversification and Intercontinental Transport Corridors: The Case of Kazakhstan’s Railways Diplomacy

Mongolia–Central Asia relations and the implications of the rise of China on its future evolution

“…Arguing that small powers represent a unique type of state different from the calculations of a great power and with unique alignment decisions (Contessi 2015 ), scholars of post-Soviet politics in the recent decades have identified and used the concept of “multi-vectorism” to describe a common feature of foreign policies in post-Soviet states. In the context of the smaller powers of Eurasia, they identify a distinct foreign policy strand where, diverging from the standard forms of both bandwagoning and balancing, and sharing similarities with the strategies of the “third world” countries during the cold war, these smaller Eurasian states seeks to pursue close relations with different foreign powers without committing wholly to any specific partner, in order to achieve a foreign policy diversification of not becoming dependent on any single foreign power and to balance the competing interests of various foreign powers (Contessi 2015 , 2018 ; Gnedina 2015 ; Clarke 2015 ). In such scenarios, small states engage in a “multi-vector” diplomacy, calling for the simultaneous co-alignment with different great powers, whom can represent both opportunities (sources of assistance, patronage, or prestige) and threats (dependence, dominance) in order to guarantee its national sovereignty and/or regime survival (Contessi 2015 ).…”

“…In such scenarios, small states engage in a “multi-vector” diplomacy, calling for the simultaneous co-alignment with different great powers, whom can represent both opportunities (sources of assistance, patronage, or prestige) and threats (dependence, dominance) in order to guarantee its national sovereignty and/or regime survival (Contessi 2015 ). Such a stratagem is thus conceptually distinct from the traditional alignment notions of either bandwagoning or balancing, as it seeks to allow the weaker state to generate relational power in order to preserve autonomy while engaging in asymmetric relationships (Contessi 2018 , p.763), and represents not a series of one-time transactions but a permanent, strategic approach to statecraft to ensure economic development and state security, an “organizing principle” for foreign policy as well as a domestic political tool of identity building, sovereignty consolidation, and regime legitimacy (Clarke 2015 ; Contessi 2018 ). However, one key implication of multi-vectorism is that it is a foreign policy concept rationalized in the context of an a priori conceptualization of global and regional power distribution and hence in the context of a relatively stable global balance of power.…”