US President Eyes China’s Silk RoadTrump seeks minerals in the ‘Stans, wants to regain Bagram air base
By: Toh Han Shih
In a series of exchanges with leaders of Central Asian nations, US President Donald Trump is making clear a challenge to China in Turkey, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan, for more than 1,500 years part of the historic Silk Road over which Chinese silks and other trade traveled to Europe. Although the US has maintained military bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan for its postwar operations in Afghanistan, it is a region much more in the sphere of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who announced the Silk Road Economic Belt during his visit to Kazakhstan in September 2013. During Xi’s visit to Indonesia in October 2013, Xi proposed the Maritime Silk Road. From these two concepts arose the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi’s megaproject to forge economic ties between China and other nations through trade and infrastructure projects like railways and ports. “Trump, as does Xi Jinping, sees Central Asia as a key piece of the global mosaic in creating a regional economic powerhouse that includes Europe,” Andre Wheeler, CEO of Asia Pacific Connex, an Australian consultancy, told Asia Sentinel. “Trump would see it more as buffer to slow down or even stop China’s growing regional hegemonic power, with Xi Jinping seeing it as an avenue to grow its economic dominance into Europe in order to create an alternative market to the US.” The US president “is very much a transactional personality caught up in his self-conceived web of ‘the Art of the Deal,’ where anything is possible if you are prepared to trade off items at short notice,” Wheeler said. “This is essentially the opposite of Xi Jinping Thought… that is grounded more in long-term strategic thinking…. This has made Central Asia an interesting battleground.” On September 22, Trump tweeted, “I just concluded a wonderful call with the Highly Respected President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Kemeluly Tokayev. They have signed the largest (US) Railroad Equipment Purchase in History, $4 Billion Dollars Worth of United States Locomotives and Rail Equipment.” On the same day, the US President tweeted, “Earlier this month, I spoke with the Highly Respected President of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev. Today I want to congratulate President Mirziyoyev on signing a GREAT Deal with Boeing! Worth over $8 Billion Dollars, Uzbekistan Airways is purchasing (22 787 Dreamliners). This will create over 35,000 jobs in the United States. President Mirziyoyev is a man of his word, and we will continue to work together on many more items!” “From these tweets, it is apparent that Trump is eyeing these central Asian countries primarily from a commercial perspective, selling American products in tremendous amounts,” said Oh Ei Sun, principal adviser at Pacific Research Centre of Malaysia. “But of course, even from this non-geopolitical dimension, it is likely to run into some form of competition with China, as China too is very eager to sell its products (to Central Asia), often at a fraction of the cost of their American counterparts.” An ex-banker told Asia Sentinel, “It demonstrates how Trump tries to focus and magnify US influence using trade and economic ties rather than military.” “A reshaped cooperation aimed at granting to the US the access on rare earths and critical mineral potential reserves in the region has progressively become a promising platform of discussion involving US and Central Asian authorities: according to the Washington’s perspective, the strategic goal to achieve will be to weaken Chinese footprint in the area as well as rebalancing the Beijing’s control of the global supply chain based on key minerals for the green energy transition and for the defence industry,” said a report of the NATO Defense College Foundation on May 27. “Central Asia holds huge reserves of critical minerals and rare earths such as manganese (38 percent of global reserves), chrome (30.7 percent), copper, cobalt, and titanium. The largest reserves are located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan,” the report added. In March, Uzbekistan launched a US$2.6 billion initiative to develop its deposits of critical minerals, such as tungsten, lithium, titanium, and vanadium, promoting a national supply chain able to attract American investments and political interest, said the NATO Defense College Foundation report. In Washington, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Kazakhstan Deputy Prime Minister cum Foreign Minister Murat Nurtleu on June 12 and Uzbek Foreign Minister Bakhtiyor Saidov on April 9. The US intends to cooperate with these two Central Asian countries on critical minerals, said US State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce. Kazakhstan sees great opportunity for expanding cooperation with the US despite Trump’s recent imposition of 25 percent tariffs on several goods from Kazakhstan, said Wheeler. “It could be argued that the tariffs imposed by Trump strategically cover only a small proportion of their economies whilst offering greater opportunities to expand trade with the US, particularly rare earths.” Afghanistan In his address at the UN headquarters in New York on September 23, Mirziyoyev said, “We intend to implement large-scale economic and infrastructure projects in that country. We propose to adopt a dedicated UN resolution on the development of transport and energy corridors of international significance through the territory of Afghanistan.” The Uzbek president’s statement raises the possibility that the US might return to Afghanistan after fleeing the country, including Bagram military airbase, in August 2021 when the Taliban took over. At a press conference in the UK on September 19, Trump said of the Bagram airbase, “We’re trying to get it back, because they need things. We want that base back. One of the reasons we want the base is it’s an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons.” “If Afghanistan doesn’t give Bagram Airbase back to those that built it, the United States of America, BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN,” Trump tweeted on September 21. Uzbekistan has spearheaded diplomatic efforts to come to terms with the Taliban government, said a report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a US think tank, on September 5, 2024. Uzbekistan has been working to bring the US, Taliban, Russia, and other players to the table to discuss Afghanistan’s future, said the report by Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, and Temur Umarov, a fellow of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. Turkey In late September, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Trump in Washington. The two leaders spoke at a press conference in the White House on September 25. Erdogan said he hoped US-Turkish relations would improve to “a much different level”. Trump said he was asking Erdogan to have Turkey stop buying Russian oil, and the US would sell Turkey fighter jets. “After four years of lull in US-Turkey ties—shaped by the Biden administration’s reluctance to engage him because of democratic backsliding and geopolitical hedging—expect a full display of the Trump-Erdoğan bromance, with bold gestures and surprising announcements,” said a Brookings Institution report by Asli Aydintasbas, a fellow of Brookings Institution, on September 23. “Erdoğan’s return to Washington is meant to signal that the chill of the Biden years is over.” Ankara hopes to revive the dormant US$100 billion trade goal from Trump’s first term and has recently lifted tariffs on US imports, while Trump sees Syria’s reconstruction and “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) as avenues for joint investment, the report added. TRIPP is a planned corridor connecting Azerbaijan and Armenia. Once completed, TRIPP would become a US route in connecting East Asia and Europe, providing an alternative and competition to the Chinese-built transport corridors including railway connecting China with Central Asia and Europe, under Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative. “Central Asia has faced seismic geopolitical shifts over the past few years. Major global crises—the deterioration of US relations with China and ensuing trade restrictions, the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine—have shaken the region,” said the Carnegie Endowment report. “Overall, Central Asian states have successfully deepened ties with international partners who are often at odds with one another. The region has avoided making binary choices and instead fostered an environment where even conflicting states can coexist.” Toh Han Shih is a Singaporean writer in Hong Kong and a regular contributor to Asia Sentinel This is among the stories/excerpts we choose to make widely available.If you wish to get the full Asia Sentinel experience and access more exclusive content, please do subscribe to us for US$10/month or US$100/year.
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US President Eyes China’s Silk Road
October 02, 2025
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