Our People > Dr. Robert M. Cutler

Dr. Robert M. Cutler

Senior Editor and Contributor

Robert M. Cutler has written and consulted on Central Asian affairs for over 30 years at all levels. He was a founding member of the Central Eurasian Studies Society’s executive board and founding editor of its Perspectives publication. He has written for Asia Times, Foreign Policy Magazine, The National Interest, Euractiv, Radio Free Europe, National Post (Toronto), FSU Oil & Gas Monitor, and many other outlets.

He directs the NATO Association of Canada’s Energy Security Program, where he is also senior fellow, and is a practitioner member at the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Complexity and Innovation. Educated at MIT, the Graduate Institute of International Studies (Geneva), and the University of Michigan, he was for many years a senior researcher at Carleton University’s Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, and is past chairman of the Montreal Press Club’s Board of Directors.

Articles

Advanced Technologies

Kazakhstan Turns from Pipelines to Processors

Kazakhstan’s strategic plan for advanced computing represents a diversification of its traditional oil, gas, and transit profile and of the wider national economy. A $2 billion Nvidia-linked initiative now turns on three main elements. First is a national supercomputer using Nvidia H200 chips, with headline AI performance around 2 exaflops. Second is a planned 100 MW data-center campus, designed to expand capacity for commercial users over several years. Third is a “sovereign AI hub” concept that promises long-term chip access for sensitive public-sector workloads. Prior to this package, Kazakhstan had already moved unusually quickly to build high-end AI and computing infrastructure, treating digital capacity as central to its development policy. The national supercomputer is now the most powerful system in Central Asia and is housed in a Tier III state data center intended for use by universities, startups, and corporate tenants. The hardware push accompanies a wider digital policy agenda, including new training programs with Nvidia to expand the country’s AI talent base. Parallel initiatives with the United States seek to anchor Kazakhstan more firmly within Western regulatory and connectivity frameworks, as part of a broader attempt to move beyond hydrocarbons and build domestic capability in computation-heavy activities. Kazakhstan’s New AI Statecraft Astana is presenting the Nvidia package as an economic instrument, not just a hardware upgrade. Senior officials now describe advanced computing as a new pillar of national development, on a par with hydrocarbons and transit. Recent policy statements frame AI and digital infrastructure as central, not a side theme of “innovation” policy. In parallel, the long-running “Digital Kazakhstan” agenda has moved from e-government and broadband roll-out into a second phase where data centers, national platforms, and specialized training come to the foreground. Within that shift, “sovereign AI” is becoming a core organizing idea. Officials and local specialists talk about national language models that can handle Kazakh, Russian, and other regional languages, and about keeping sensitive public-sector data on infrastructure under national jurisdiction. The new supercomputer and the sovereign AI hub are presented as the place where that work will happen at scale: training and serving models for government services, regulatory tasks, and domestic firms, rather than relying entirely on foreign platforms. The Nvidia partnership is therefore framed as a way to secure long-term access to leading chips for these “sovereign” workloads, even as global export rules tighten. The same initiative also underwrites a shift in Kazakhstan’s self-presentation from a “pipeline corridor” to Kazakhstan as a corridor for data and high-end digital services. The government has begun to link the sovereign AI hub and supercomputer to a set of fiber-optic projects across the Caspian that aim to tie Central Asia more tightly into Eurasian data routes. The same geography that once made Kazakhstan a crucial link for oil, gas, and rail freight can now make it a regional conduit for digital traffic and AI-enabled services. Kazakhstan is also using the package to deepen a specific diplomatic track with the United States. Joint announcements and working groups on digital transformation,...

4 days ago

Critical Minerals

Kazakhstan Deepens Its Critical Minerals Push

Kazakhstan is pushing a new phase of geological exploration, and the early results suggest that the country’s critical minerals profile is deepening. The Ministry of Industry and Construction says the area of mapped and studied subsoil will rise from about 2.1 to 2.2 million square kilometers by 2026. Exploration work completed in 2024 across eleven sites has produced new resource forecasts in Abai, East Kazakhstan, Karaganda, and Kostanay. The distribution matters as much as the tonnages: rare earths and other strategic metals appear across multiple regions, while gold prospects stand out in Kostanay. Five deposits have been added to the national register, alongside newly booked reserves of gold, copper, manganese, and phosphorites. Kazakhstan’s mineral importance was already widely recognized; this round of findings measurably strengthens that judgment. Four Regions Drive a Wider Metal Mix The most recent round of results from the national survey program is notable for the geographic spread and metals mix. The 2024 work across eleven sites also produced new forecasts of precious, rare, and strategic metals in Abai, East Kazakhstan, Karaganda, and Kostanay, according to the Ministry of Industry and Construction. In the Abai Region, geologists have outlined forecast resources of about 3,200 tonnes of beryllium, 1,100 tonnes of yttrium, and 200 tonnes of niobium. The mix points to advanced-manufacturing relevance, not a single-commodity profile. East Kazakhstan adds a second, larger beryllium signal, with newly identified deposits estimated at roughly 20,600 tonnes of beryllium and 600 tonnes of tungsten. That pairing reinforces an emerging pattern in which the northeast and east of the country are presenting not just rare-earth potential but a broader suite of strategic inputs. The largest rare-earth figures in this announcement sit in the Karaganda Region. Early estimates there indicate roughly 935,400 tonnes of lanthanoids, alongside prospective resources of copper, yttrium, gallium, and molybdenum. This is consistent with the earlier 2025 reporting that has repeatedly placed central Kazakhstan at the center of the country’s renewed rare-earth narrative. Kostanay Region stands out on the precious metals side. Forecast gold resources there are reported at about 17,500 tonnes, with prospective copper resources also identified. The December update also marks formal follow-through: five new deposits have been added to the national register, with newly booked reserves that include 98 tonnes of gold, 36,000 tonnes of copper, 11 million tons of manganese, and more than 1.3 million tonnes of phosphorites. Taken together, these regionally distributed findings give added empirical weight to a view already present in earlier coverage: Kazakhstan’s mineral importance was established; the survey now suggests a widening and deepening strategic profile rather than a single episodic discovery. Kazakhstan Treats Geological Knowledge as Policy The December 8 update also fits a pattern visible through 2025: the state is treating geological knowledge as a policy tool. Earlier this year, the Geology Committee described plans to expand subsurface study coverage by early 2026, while late-2025 government reporting reiterated the 2.2 million square kilometer objective as a presidential instruction tied to industrial priorities. What separates the current cycle from...

1 week ago

Abraham Accords

Opinion: Abraham Accords Can Help Kazakhstan Reshape Its Energy Future

On 6 November 2025, after speaking with Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that Kazakhstan would join the Abraham Accords. Astana and Jerusalem have maintained full diplomatic relations since 1992, but Kazakhstan’s entry pushes the Accords beyond the Middle East and North Africa and into the Eurasian heartland. This matters at a time when Washington wants to re-energize the initiative and deepen its C5+1 engagement with the region. Kazakhstan’s decision fits its multi-vector policy. The decision also builds on the country’s role as a key component of the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR, “Middle Corridor”), which links Chinese production to European markets. Cargo volumes reached about 4.5 million tons in 2024 and are expected to rise to around 5.2 million tons in 2025. A recent report by Boston Consulting Group expects rail freight through the Middle Corridor to quadruple by the decade’s end. The Accords do not change Kazakhstan’s formal status with Israel. The question is, rather, whether they unlock deeper economic cooperation. The Times of Central Asia has already reported on clear opportunities for cooperation in sectors such as water and agricultural efficiency, grid and industrial productivity, and cybersecurity and administrative modernization. In the energy sector, like the others, the Accords give Israeli companies a clearer political and legal framework for working with Kazakhstan’s energy and infrastructure sectors. Gulf Cooperation Council states, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in particular, could provide project finance as well. Hard Energy, Nuclear Fuel, and Israeli Technology Astana’s principal concern in the energy sector is how to raise net revenue: the goal here is to make the sector more resilient to external pressure without incurring prohibitive capital costs. Israeli firms can address that problem at an operational level. The PrismaFlow sensing system developed by Prisma Photonics is a proven technology that uses existing optical fiber as a sensing system. Thousands of kilometers of pipeline can be monitored in real time for leaks, third-party interference, and attempted theft, without having to install physical sensors along the route. KazTransOil and Prisma Photonics could develop a program through an Abraham Accords framework to overlay this technology on selected trunk network segments and on the systems that deliver crude to export pipelines. Energy-sector cybersecurity is another area where Israeli companies can help Kazakhstan’s hard-energy system. The Israeli firm Radiflow specializes in operational-technology (OT) cybersecurity for oil and gas installations, tailored to pipeline and production environments. Its systems provide continuous network visibility and better anomaly detection. Its risk-based threat management reduces both the likelihood and the cost of cyber incidents that might interrupt flows or force precautionary shutdowns. KazMunayGas, KazTransOil, and their joint ventures could implement a structured audit and remediation program with Radiflow as a strategic partner. The uranium sector presents another opportunity for Kazakhstan–Israel cooperation, potentially a more strategic one. OT security systems can provide monitoring and control layers for uranium mining, in-situ leaching fields, and logistics chains. Kazakhstan accounts for over 40% of the world's uranium...

3 weeks ago

Tashkent Summit

Azerbaijan Joins Central Asia to Build a C6 Corridor Core

Central Asian leaders met in Tashkent on November 15–16 for the seventh Consultative Meeting of Heads of State. Azerbaijan attended as a guest with full rights, as it had done at the meetings last year and the year before. This time, the leaders agreed that Azerbaijan would sit as a full participant in future meetings, transforming the C5 into the C6. In his opening remarks, Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev proposed turning the loose consultative mechanism into a formal regional body under the working title, the “Community of Central Asia.” Mirziyoyev went further and suggested extending the mandate from economic integration to include security and environmental cooperation for the region as a whole. The Uzbek President called the decision to admit Azerbaijan “historic,” as the leaders framed the welcoming of Azerbaijan not as a courtesy to a neighbor but as part of a wider integration project that already runs across the Caspian and that is now seeking to bring a South Caucasus transit and energy hub directly into the frame. The consultative format is thus being asked to carry a heavier load than when it was created in 2018 as a careful space for political dialogue and security confidence-building. For governments and external partners, the practical question is whether this emerging “Central Asia plus Azerbaijan” geometry can evolve into a corridor community with its own regional rules, or whether it will remain largely declaratory while decisions continue to track external finance and great-power projects. Azerbaijan and Central Asia Begin to Co-Author the Agenda From the start, the consultative meetings of the Central Asian heads of state were conceived as a modest, leader-level forum to ease regional tensions and reopen direct dialogue after a decade of drift. The first gathering in Astana in March 2018 focused on borders, water management, and security issues that had festered since the 1990s, and that format’s agenda had mainly remained focused on political reconciliation and crisis management. The seventh meeting in Tashkent was different in kind. By bringing Azerbaijan formally into the room on a continuing rather than one-off basis, and by placing corridor and digital questions at the center of proceedings rather than on the margins, it reframed the forum from an inward-looking confidence-building device into a platform that aspires to shape external connectivity. Azerbaijan’s presence at earlier summits in 2023 and 2024 created a transitional phase in which Baku could test how far its own transit and energy agenda resonated with Central Asian priorities. In Tashkent, that ambiguity effectively ended. President Ilham Aliyev’s speech, delivered after the leaders had agreed that Azerbaijan would participate in future meetings as a full member, described Central Asia and Azerbaijan as forming “a single geopolitical and geo-economic region whose importance in the world is steadily growing.” He tied that claim to concrete developments along the Middle Corridor segment through Azerbaijan, the Alat port complex, upgraded customs procedures, and cross-Caspian energy and data links. For Kazakhstan, the Tashkent meeting offered a complementary opportunity. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev used his speech...

1 month ago

Abraham Accords

Abraham Accords Frame Kazakhstan–Israel Cooperation to Deliver Tokayev’s Reforms

Kazakhstan’s decision to enter the Abraham Accords is a diplomacy-first move by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Its aims include: 1) converting symbolic capital into policy traction in Washington, 2) arriving at workable co-financing with Gulf partners, and 3) preserving equilibrium with Moscow and Beijing. The step does not alter recognition; the two countries have had diplomatic relations for a third of a century, institutionalized through embassies. Cooperation has been steady, if modest. Entering the Abraham Accords now gives these relations a framework that U.S. agencies, funds, and implementers already use. The timing intersects the C5+1 turn from set-piece dialogues to transactions, with new deals announced alongside the Accords move. What the framework unlocks is execution. It compresses attention cycles inside U.S. bureaucracies, normalizes trilateral packaging with Gulf financiers, and clears diligence pathways for banks and development finance institutions. Those effects matter where Israeli capabilities dovetail with Tokayev’s priorities. The premise of Tokayev’s move is straightforward: diplomacy should shorten the distance between declared policy and the implementation of projects that work. Tokayev’s Diplomatic Architecture and the Bilateral Relationship Kazakhstan recognized Israel in 1992 and opened embassies soon after, setting a cautious but uninterrupted channel for official contact. The institutional scaffolding is visible in public sources. Trade volumes have been modest but steady, with 2024 bilateral turnover reported by Kazakhstan’s statistics at roughly $236 million, a figure that is broadly consistent with third-party trackers such as Trading Economics and OEC profiles. Practical frictions have eased as Air Astana initiated direct air links between Almaty and Tel Aviv in 2023. The Accords move aligns that long, incremental relationship with a framework that is transparent to Washington and to Gulf financiers. Reporting on the Washington week underscores the shift from set-piece dialogues to transactions, as the Accords announcement was paired with commerce headlines. Joining the Abraham Accords reorganizes and reframes practical bilateral activities. By placing existing ties under a known diplomatic wrapper, Astana becomes easier to route inside U.S. agencies and funds, and easier to match with Gulf co-financing for projects that fall in line with Tokayev’s domestic reforms and economic development program. The practical test becomes whether the new wrapper accelerates cooperation, where Israel’s comparative advantages can help Kazakhstan meet the goals of that program. Examples of this are precision irrigation and basin telemetry to optimize steppe agriculture, audit-plus-retrofit toolkits that cut grid and industrial losses without new generation, reinforcing the 2060 neutrality track, and civil-service-embedded cyber training with secure data exchange that lifts administrative credibility. The Accords thus function as additive diplomacy, widening Kazakhstan’s access to recognizable cooperation pathways without demanding a shift in alignments. In Washington, the move plugs into an existing rubric that officials already use for interagency routing and external partnerships. Regionally, it complements the C5+1’s turn toward transaction-focused engagement. Domestically, it moves Tokayev’s reform agenda forward. Internationally, it demonstrates continued leadership. The diplomatic wrapper works because Kazakhstan can route cooperation through recognized counterparties and rules. Samruk-Kazyna and core state-owned enterprises (SOEs) represent accountable anchors consistent with OECD-provided guidance on...

1 month ago