For Central Asian countries, the central challenge in international politics is no longer choosing alliances, but coping with external shocks and global turbulence that originate far beyond the region.
The unfolding crisis in Venezuela is a case in point. At first glance, the situation concerns Latin America and the global oil market, but its implications extend well beyond, directly affecting Central Asia’s strategic interests.
The core issue is not oil per se, but the reemergence of force as a legitimate instrument for altering political and economic conditions. For a region positioned at the crossroads of major power interests and reliant on external stability, this shift is profoundly consequential.
The Venezuelan crisis should be understood as a precedent, one that signals how global power centers may act as established norms erode. For Central Asia, this heralds a more unpredictable international environment in which regional states must navigate competing interests without the benefit of stable rules.
While Venezuela is often reduced to an oil story, the broader economic stakes involve control over the architecture of strategic resource flows. This resonates with the situation in the C5, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, where resources such as oil, gas, uranium, and rare earth metals are also of significant external interest. The logistics and transit of these resources are increasingly entangled in geopolitical bargaining.
The Venezuelan example reinforces a growing trend: the nexus of economics and security is tightening, and access to resources is increasingly secured through political leverage.
In this context, Iran holds particular relevance. For Central Asia, Iran is not an abstraction; it represents transit routes, energy corridors, access to southern seas, and a component of regional balance. Heightened pressure on Tehran directly affects both the opportunities and risks facing the region.
When viewed through the lens of Iran, developments in Venezuela serve as a psychological and political precedent, broadening what appears acceptable within Washington’s strategic calculus. While a direct replication of the Venezuelan scenario in Iran is unlikely, given the vastly different military, political, and regional risks, the mere lowering of the threshold for force-based solutions is significant. The cost of direct confrontation with Iran would be far higher, with potential repercussions for the entire Middle East security architecture.
Operation Absolute Resolve has objectively increased the confidence of those who favor the use of force against Iran. This confidence is likely to grow if United States actions in Venezuela carry minimal international consequences, avoid triggering uncontrollable regional escalation, and are perceived as domestically successful.
In either case, Venezuela’s “success” has already lowered psychological barriers to coercion, strengthening arguments for hardline scenarios and re-legitimizing force as a policy tool, rather than a measure of last resort.
Broadly speaking, the Venezuelan crisis highlights a global shift from rules to precedents. For the five, and increasingly for the emerging six that includes Azerbaijan, the fragmentation of international norms raises costs and leaves each country more vulnerable to external pressure. In this environment, coordination and consistency on issues such as transit, security, and sanctions are not luxuries but necessities. They can help Central Asia mitigate the secondary effects of external crises, expand strategic autonomy, and preserve its agency in an international order increasingly shaped by uncertainty and coercion.
