Kazakhstan's Careful Tip-Toe Geopolitical Ballet

ASTANA — There is an old adage in Kazakhstan: "Happiness is multiple pipelines."

For the oil-and-gas rich Caspian country, keeping up good relations with a handful of customers -- namely, Russia, China, and the West -- at all times, without engaging too deeply with a single player, has been a guiding foreign policy principle since it gained independence in 1991. And until recently, this careful diplomatic balancing act seemed to be paying off: in the decades since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's population of 17 million people has grown into the most prosperous in Central Asia. Kazakhstan has built a glittering new capital, Astana, in the middle of the steppe, which will soon be home to the tallest skyscraper in the region. Earlier this year, Kazakhstan's autocratic ruler, Nursultan Nazarbayev, even considered removing the "stan" from the country's name to set it apart from its less fortunate neighbors: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

Now, though, being a "stan" looks like the least of Nazarbayev's geopolitical worries. The president just signed an agreement with Russia and Belarus on May 29 to create the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), Vladimir Putin's brainchild and Russia's answer to the European Union. Putin's hope is that the EEU, a tariff-free trade union, will eventually draw in many of the states in Russia's near-abroad, tying the region's political and economic fortunes to the Kremlin. But behind the curtain of this shiny new free-trade zone, all is not well between Astana and Moscow.

Putin's recent Ukrainian adventures have set off alarm bells in this country, which is home to the largest proportion of ethnic Russians among the Central Asian former Soviet republics (they make up nearly a quarter of the population). Now, some worry that Putin may be playing a long game with Kazakhstan: drawing the country closer into Russia's orbit and deepening integration, then waiting for an episode of turmoil -- say, the sort that might unfold if the ailing Nazarbayev, 73, dies -- to assert greater control. Could Kazakhstan's multi-pronged foreign policy -- so lucrative for so long -- finally be faltering?

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