ASTANA — President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s participation in the G20 summit in Miami this December is set to put Kazakhstan’s carefully balanced foreign policy to a new test, as growing United States (US) interest in the country creates opportunities for deeper economic and strategic cooperation while intensifying competition among the major powers with which Astana has sought to maintain close ties.
Kazakhstan is not a G20 member and has participated in the summit only twice before, in St. Petersburg in 2013 and Hangzhou in 2016, each time at the invitation of the host country. This time, however, the invitation comes from the US, amid a rapidly expanding Kazakhstan-U.S.
relationship and a sharp rise in Washington’s interest in the wider Trans-Caspian region. The invitation can therefore be read in two ways. It may signal that Kazakhstan has become a more important strategic and economic partner for Washington. But it may also reflect the Trump administration’s broader effort to strengthen ties across a region increasingly important for energy, critical minerals, trade routes and technology.
The difference matters because Kazakhstan’s traditional strength — its ability to work with competing powers without aligning exclusively with any of them — may also become harder to sustain as geopolitical competition deepens. Iskander Akylbayev, CEO of Xander Group and chairman of CFive, sees the summit as a practical opportunity for Kazakhstan.
Iskander Akylbayev, CEO of Xander Group and chairman of CFive. “My expectation is that the Miami G20 will be highly pragmatic and transaction-driven,” he said, pointing to economic growth, secure energy supply chains and technological innovation as central priorities of the U.S.
G20 presidency. He added that Tokayev’s participation “should therefore be seen as more than a diplomatic gesture,” noting that the invitation reflects a wider change in Washington’s view of Central Asia, which he believes is moving “from the geopolitical periphery to the global economic agenda.” For Akylbayev, Kazakhstan’s economic weight helps explain the shift.
He noted that Kazakhstan generates more than 60% of Central Asia’s GDP and accounts for approximately 75% of the region’s trade with the US, while bilateral goods trade reached $5 billion in 2025. The broader relationship has indeed acquired a markedly commercial dimension over the past year.
During President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s November 2025 visit to Washington, Kazakhstan and the United States signed 29 agreements worth $17 billion across industry, digitalization, education, healthcare, transport and other sectors. The Astana Times reported at the time that the visit represented a new phase in the strategic partnership, with experts describing a shift from symbolic diplomacy toward a more results-oriented model of cooperation.
Akylbayev said Miami should therefore be seen not as the culmination of this process but as an opportunity to move it into a more advanced stage. “For Kazakhstan, however, the invitation itself is not the result. The real task is to convert political access into investment, technology and market access,” he said.
He pointed to critical minerals, AI, advanced manufacturing and the Middle Corridor, as well as Kazakhstan’s accession in June to the U.S.-led Pax Silica initiative, which focuses on trusted supply chains linking semiconductors, critical minerals, data centers, energy infrastructure and high-tech manufacturing.