Kazakhstan in the middle

Kazakhstan has caught on to the middle power label - where will it go?

Kazakhstan, a country too often unfairly treated as a punchline rather than a power, is treading a middle road – that of a “middle power”. The Central Asian nation will host a newly-inaugurated Astana International Forum on 8–9 June this year. Its aim is to promote dialogue, in the words of the President of Kazakhstan: a “platform for global middle powers to discuss their views and positions on the issues of today, amplify their voices and to put forward their own solutions to these global challenges”. What this new forum hopes to achieve remains murky, but the prospect is tantalising.

Middle power is a concept with a distinct Australian flavour, and associated with countries such as South Korea and Canada. Kazakhstan hasn’t typically fallen into the grouping. In 2021, Kazakhstan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ranked it 42nd in the world. In an international hierarchy, it sits on the outer edge of that broad band of GDP ranking from 10 to 50 that we today call middle powers. States on …