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Trump’s C5+1 outreach targets critical minerals, energy security, and a strategic foothold in the Eurasian heartland. Yet Russia’s deep ties and China’s decades-long investments raise doubts about how far US influence can really go there.
Written by Uriel Araujo, Anthropology PhD, is a social scientist specializing in ethnic and religious conflicts, with extensive research on geopolitical dynamics and cultural interactions
The C5+1 summit brought together the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan with President Donald Trump. The format, created in 2015, aims to boost cooperation between the US and Central Asia on security, trade, and connectivity. It has evolved into a platform through which Washington seeks influence in a region traditionally shaped by Russian and Chinese presence.
Trump’s renewed push is largely about rare-earth minerals and energy security: the American president has repeatedly framed access to strategic resources as a national priority. Central Asia’s reserves of rare-earth metals, particularly in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, are central to this renewed interest. These minerals underpin everything from smartphones to advanced weapons systems. Today Beijing dominates the sector, processing 90% of the world’s rare earths, and recently restricted exports of several critical elements.
The goal, at least on paper, is to diversify US supply chains, particularly as Washington remains dependent on Russian uranium imports. According to CSIS analysts Gracelin Baskaran and Kamal Aubakirov, Kazakhstan alone accounts for roughly 45% of global uranium production, while Uzbekistan provides about 7%. Combined, they produce more than half of the planet’s uranium. From an American perspective, securing these supplies would reduce US energy vulnerability and support Trump’s revived nuclear agenda. It all sounds straightforward enough on PowerPoint slides, but the geopolitical terrain is far more complex.
Back in 2023 I wrote about how Washington’s foreign policy resembles the swing of a pendulum, often oscillating between countering Russia or China, and more recently (under Biden) trying to confront both simultaneously. Be as it may, today’s context is even more complicated. The US remains overstretched in Europe and the Middle East—despite efforts to offload the Ukraine burden — while courting confrontation in the Indo-Pacific, and now aims to sink deeper roots in the Eurasian heartland. This is an ambitious shopping list to say the list — for a power that has been showing signs of strategic fatigue.
In any case, Trump’s “deal-making” style is now being tested abroad. But geopolitics is not real estate. As researcher Stephen M. Bland notes, Central Asian nations are cautious. They have witnessed cycles of US engagement that surge during crises and fade once Washington’s attention shifts.
Journalist Yevgeniya Mikhailidi notes that China has committed over $120 billion in contracted projects across Central Asia, with $75 billion already invested in energy, roads, logistics, and manufacturing — $66 billion in Kazakhstan alone — locking in 25 to 40-year influence. Russia, for its part, remains the region’s “operational ecosystem” with labor migration, security ties, and institutional habits deeply tied to Moscow. The US counters such entrenched influence offering exploratory deals in aircraft, locomotives, and mineral extraction. So much for parity.
The blunt truth is that the US is late to the game. Washington may struggle to compete; but the best outcome for Trump may simply be staying in the room. Central Asia is not choosing sides. To put it simply, the region’s geography, trade, and history tie it to both Russia and China. This is not a matter of political loyalty but a hard-wired geopolitical reality.
In addition, connectivity remains a challenge for any Western strategy in the region. As Baskaran and Kamal Aubakirov stress, Soviet-era routes still funnel exports north through Russia. The Middle Corridor alternative requires $21.4 billion to become viable, with most upgrades funded by Chinese or Russian capital. European pledges lag, making Western diversification an uphill climb.
Moreover, Central Asia is not a geopolitical vacuum waiting to be filled. The region intersects with South Asia, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and beyond. It is a zone where water conflicts, border issues, ethnic tensions, and great-power rivalries overlap.
The US, however, approaches the region with a binary mindset: either align with Washington or risk being classified as part of the “other” camp. I have often argued that pushing countries to “choose” between one pole or another is counterproductive in a multi-aligned world. Today, this is even more true. Multipolarity has matured, and Central Asia is seeking balanced relations, not patronage.
Trump’s challenge, again, is that Washington is already overburdened elsewhere. The country remains stuck in the Middle East, unable to decide whether to “stay or leave,” as I highlighted earlier this year.
The US wants to reduce its footprint there but also cannot abandon the region’s oil, finance networks, and geopolitical relevance. Maintaining bases without a clear mission only invites more tensions. The same dilemma exists in Europe, where the US is deeply tied to a conflict that continues consuming attention and resources. One does not need to be a strategist at the Pentagon to see that adding Central Asia as yet another strategic theater is no easy task.
To sum it up, Washington risks overpromising with C5+1, chasing rare minerals, supply-chain control, and Eurasian influence while juggling crises across the Middle East, East Asia, and Europe. Central Asian states welcome US interest for diversification but demand predictability — something Washington rarely delivers. Without anchoring full value chains from extraction to refining, the region will stick with patient, proximate partners like China and Russia.
America wants to dominate sea, land, and global order, but its 2025’s to-do list is brutally long. Atlantic exceptionalism may ignore limits; reality does not. Unless Washington commits to serious, sustained, long-term economic integration — not merely transactional extraction — then this summit will be remembered as yet another attempt to enter Central Asia with big promises that failed to shift the geopolitical balance.
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of course, trump can invade afghanistan and kick china out of it, but thats another story.a story that was written so wrongly that women no longer have the right to education and the right to vote in afghanistan.
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even by attacking afghanistan, trump will not be able to change his fate, and that is the path to prison