| This empirical study, based on extensive field research, interviews with key actors, and use of Kyrgyz and Russian sources, examines the formation of a distinct foreign policy in a small Central Asian state, Kyrgyzstan, following her independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Lacking foreign policy traditions as a separate entity from the USSR, Kyrgyzstan synthesized a foreign policy from anew. In Chapter 1, I examine the literature on nationalism, ideology and nation-building in a post-imperial context and evaluate Kyrgyzstan as a case study from the perspective of small state literature. In Chapters 2 and 3, I analyze the arrival of the modern state and nation-building efforts in Kyrgyzstan after 1991. I argue that Kyrgyz nationalism is restrained by the need to reconcile her large non-Kyrgyz minority population, dictating a typical small state foreign policy eschewing construction of a capsule state, or irredentism.; In Chapter 4, I describe the Kyrgyz foreign policy establishment, her foreign ministry, and various roles of president, parliament, and opposition, in foreign affairs. I present the sources of Kyrgyz foreign policy and recount its emerging shape, arguing Kyrgyz elites synthesized a foreign policy by grafting small state needs onto a Soviet template. In Chapter 5, I outline her relations with former Soviet neighbors since independence. In Chapter 6, I describe relations with key non-Soviet neighbors in her foreign policy, demonstrating how Kyrgyz have prioritized relations with certain states like Iran and Turkey as part of a broader foreign policy strategy, although ideological attractions of Turkish or Iranian models are negligible. In Chapter 7, I trace Kyrgyzstan's unfolding relations with China via a case study of the disputed Kyrgyz-Chinese frontier settlement. I conclude that Kyrgyz elites successfully created a strategic outlook surmounting numerous challenges since 1991, contradicting the widespread image prevalent in the literature on Central Asia of Kyrgyzstan as semi-failed state lacking any strategic foreign policy. Overall I argue that Kyrgyzstan's foreign policy is directed toward recreating a stable state system in her neighborhood to replace the vanished Soviet precursor. Kyrgyz elites have built upon the Soviet template operationalizing a new strategic outlook oriented around small state behavior but rooted in the past, arguably better at coping with conventional challenges than newer transnational threats. |
