This week, four stories that at first glance appear quite different…

The UK’s Telegraph has featured a number of articles on Central Asia recently, and  the report I’d like to bring to your attention now is about the opening of a new British Embassy in Kyrgyzstan. This is, as the newspaper notes, ‘despite budget cutbacks’. Why now, you might ask, especially as Britain’s had embassies in the other Central Asian nations for longer – even in Tajikistan since 2003. The UK’s Foreign Office claims that this is for ‘strategic’ reasons, principally the fact that it hosts a US airbase (though new President Atambayev says he might close that down, which would appease Russia) but also because of the countries it borders.

China is also very interested in its borderlands, as this article from China Daily about Kazakhstan demonstrates.

Despite the long queues and visa troubles, it’s essentially an upbeat story about the importance of Chinese goods to the Kazakh market.  It’s fascinating to see the way China is positioned as the ‘elder brother’ in the relationship, and Kazakhstan as the poorer younger sibling – especially when the relative wealth of Kazakhstan is set against other Central Asian nations.

Eurasia.net also ran a story recently about the importance of a neighbouring country for economic benefit. However, this was the reverse of the bullish Chinese view, as in this case it’s all about how the Russian economy is propping up Tajikistan, which is now officially (according to the World Bank) the most remittance-dependent country in the world. As we saw during the recent diplomatic incident between Russia and Tajikistan, many Russians are starting to get fed up of this.

Finally, a story from Reuters about the role of nostalgia for the Soviet Union in keeping the Commonwealth of Independent States together. It brings together some of the content of the others stories I’ve mentioned and features some interesting Central Asian case studies.

So why bring these four seemingly disparate articles together? For me, there is a connection and it’s in the title of the post, which is a quote from Sun-tzu, the Chinese general and military strategist from the 5th century BCE.  All of these articles show that even in a world of borders, visas and nationalism, no country can exist without political, cultural and economic relationships with other nations. Or to paraphrase 16th century English poet John Donne, “no country is an island entire of itself; every country is a piece of the continent…”