ABSTRACT
This chapter will explore why the United States has failed to establish a lasting trade partnership with Uzbekistan, in spite of its attempts to foster cooperation with this post-Soviet state by offering aid and proposing various cooperation projects, especially in the energy sector in the 1990s. Based on the analytical framework mentioned in Chapter 1, this chapter will explore internal and external interaction and analyse the impact of globalisation on the US’s economic policy in Uzbekistan. It will examine the various other interconnected dimensions that shaped the US’s policy in Uzbekistan, namely an ideational or ‘norm and value’ based approach, the reconciliation of this policy with economic and security factors, the role of non-state actors like INGOs in its approach towards Uzbekistan, the effect of the Andijan events on bilateral relations and geopolitics on the Obama Administration’s New Silk Road initiative launched as a result of globalisation and China’s and Russia’s growing influence in Central Asia, analysed in Chapters 3–4. The chapter will conclude that the combination of all these dimensions of factors underpin why the US has not been able to establish a lasting cooperation with Uzbekistan. The chapter will also provide the analysis of the domestic changes in Uzbekistan since 2016 and reflect on the country’s options for the Western foreign policy alternative.
