Amid the pre-Christmas lull, U.S. President Donald Trump held phone calls with his Kazakh and Uzbek counterparts, capping off a year of increased attention for Central Asia in Washington.

In a Truth Social post on December 23, Trump wrote that he’d had “two wonderful telephone calls” with Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev. He characterized the U.S. relationships with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as “spectacular,” and added that he would be extending invitations to both leaders to attend the next G-20 summit, scheduled to be held in Doral, Florida, a city near Miami, in December 2026. The summit will reportedly be held at a golf club the president owns. 

Neither Kazakhstan nor Uzbekistan are members of the G-20, the “Group of 20,” an intergovernmental forum gathering together the world’s top economies. The group currently comprises 19 countries and two regional bodies, the European Union and the African Union. 

At each year’s leaders’ summit, the hosting country invites additional nonmembers to attend.

Kazakhstan has been invited to two past G-20 summits, including the 2013 summit in Saint Petersburg, Russia and the 2016 summit in Hangzhou, China. That Russia and China both invited the Kazakh leader – at the time President Nursultan Nazarbayev – when their turns to host came up is not terribly surprising, given Kazakhstan’s deep relations with Russia, and the intensification of relations with China following the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013.

What to make of Trump’s invitation to Tokayev and Mirziyoyev?

While the invitation........

© The Diplomat