With the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan now entering its final stages, the United States is now looking to Central Asia to support the ongoing operations it expects to carry out in Afghanistan from “over the horizon.” The Diplomat reported on July 2 that diplomacy between the U.S. and Central Asian states has increased in recent days, to include back-to-back meetings between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the Uzbek and Tajik Foreign Ministers on July 1. At the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin also met with the two foreign ministers as well as with the defense minister of Afghanistan. The readouts of all these meetings reported little beyond that they discussed Afghanistan.
The Diplomat observes that the U.S. had basing arrangements in both Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan during earlier phases of the U.S. war in Afghanistan but no such arrangements exist today. A range of possibilities exist for military engagement and cooperation between the United States and the countries of Central Asia that would serve Washington’s needs but fall short of opening full-fledged U.S. bases in the region, The Diplomat goes on.
