The Agony and Ecstasy of Central Asian Investment

In some regions and under certain circumstances, geopolitics can inform the logic of investment more than the policies of national or local governments. Central Asia is one such place.

For Central Asian nations, economic development was undergirded by an imperative to preserve the sovereignty won after the fall of the Soviet Union. This is despite the fact that when the Cold War ended, they faced the collapse of sales markets, the disruption of supply chains, and the need to rebuild basic infrastructure. Early isolationist policies quickly ran their course, and because their populations are generally prone to ethnic- and clan-based civil unrest, a more robust economic development plan became increasingly urgent.