Kazakhstan is a landlocked country and one of its strategic tasks for gaining access to world markets and increasing export opportunities is to overcome its geographical isolation, which is possible only through the development of close ties with all the closest neighbors and building good-neighborly relations with them.
Secondly, Central Asia is a region where the interests of three great powers, Russia, China, and the United States, converge. Regional powers are also showing a keen interest: Turkey, India, Pakistan, Japan, European Union countries, each has their interests there.
The multi-vector approach is also important because, as the history of the independent development of the post-Soviet states demonstrates, an exclusive foreign policy orientation towards only one country ultimately does not meet Kazakhstan’s national interests, critically limiting the freedom for strategic maneuvering.
Kazakhstan and its First President Nursultan Nazarbayev had to determine their positions in relation to international processes that had a direct or indirect impact on the interests of the country, not in a quiet and stable time, but in the turbulent and unpredictable conditions surrounding the formation of a completely new geopolitical order.
Kazakhstan became the first country in the Central Asian region where the OSCE summit was held after an 11-year break. The summit strengthened the authority of the country and the First President in the world. Since 2003, unique Congresses of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions have been held in the capital of Kazakhstan, uniting at one table the leaders of all leading world religious confessions.
