Здравствуйте!: Why It’s Not about -Stans

By Brandon Miliate

I recently came across and article in The Atlantic, which reported that Kazakhstani President  Nursultan Nazarbayev had suggested that perhaps the suffix –stan was responsible for Kazakhstan’s supposedly low global profile. He mentioned Mongolia, as a country that continues to attract international attention despite its small economy and population. Perhaps a name change would help Kazakhstan develop a stronger international profile, he mused.

There is really only one good Russian response to this: Здравствуйте! (‘hello’ or in this case more like a saracastic ‘good morning’). On the one hand this could just have been a interesting idea that the President was playing around with, which has no serious implications for the future of the country or his perception of its position in world affairs. On the other hand, it could point to some serious misconceptions on Nazarbayev’s part.

Let’s start with the statement that Mongolia has somehow benefited as a result of not being called something like Mongolistan. For every available economic indicator, Kazakhstan greatly outperforms Mongolia. This is, naturally, to be expected. Kazakhstan is a oil exporting state, has a much larger population, and was more developed at the dissolution of the Soviet Union, giving it a stronger starting point. Just looking at FDI, Kazakhstan hosts a huge figure at $111.5 billion, while Mongolia stands at just $4.5 billion! Anecdotally, it is more that clear enough that many more businessmen, students, policy makers, and analysts take a direct interest in Kazakhstan than in Mongolia when it comes to current affairs (naturally, I would suspect that Mongolia can command more than its fair share of historians). While it is beyond the scope of this casual blog post to offer a full comparison, I feel confident in saying that Kazakhstan’s international profile is significantly more pronounced than Mongolia’s.

That said, I would suspect that Nazarbayev was more concerned with a different kind of indicator, namely something more related to soft power. (I detailed Mongolia’s «small power» here). In this case, Mongolia is certainly outperforming Kazakhstan, and it has nothing to do with a little Perso-Turkic suffix. Mongolia is a proven democracy, and has consistently shown its committment to engaging with the international community and improving its own democratic credentials. While Mongolia has eshewed further deepening its relationship with the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan is part of the Eurasian Custom’s Union and CIS, tieing it to the Russian Federation. While Mongolia has sought to further its relationship with the European Union and North America, Kazakhstan remains a difficult partner because of its authoritarian political system and continued abuses of basic civil/human rights. Even with these limitations, Kazakhstan does enjoy good relations with the E.U. and the United States, but the relationship remains limited, largely as a result of Kazakhstan’s own domestic and foreign policy choices. While Mongolia has sought to rise above its own geographical position, Kazakhstan’s leadership continues to avoid a more balanced relationship with the Russian Federation, to the direct detriment of its other foreign policy goals. (In fact, Kazakhstan’s political system is also a key reason for the underdeveloped nature of Kazakhstan-Mongolian relations, outlined here).

At the end of the day, Kazakhstan’s economy is stronger and its economic ties to North America and Europe outperform Mongolia on most indicators. If Kazakhstan has any lessons to learn from Mongolia it is that democratization is not only beneficial as a domestic policy, but also as a lever for diplomatic relations. Democracy matters, names and suffixs don’t. 

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