Kazakhstan's Need to Construct National Identity and Foreign Policy after Getting Independence - Term Paper Example

With the newly gained independence of Kazakhstan, there came the urgent need of defining their national identity and also to formulate a foreign policy of independent nature to protect their identity in the international arena. Kazakhstan is a nation having a population of various ethnicities because, during Russian rule, many people of different ethnicities were exiled to this region. This makes the task of defining a distinct national identity a difficult one (Laciner, et al 531).

      The leaders of Kazakhstan instantly emphasized two possible policies that would help them shape up the national identity of their nation. The policies were language policy and migration policy. The consequences of these policies had a major impact on the relationship of Kazakhstan with Russian and also on formulating a distinct national identity. The authorities emphasized an ethnic-based approach to build their nation and this approach was used in making the language policy (Abiyeva & Korneev, 1-2). Implementing a monolingual policy of establishing “Kazakh as the state language” was a difficult approach because Kazakhstan has long been a multinational state and the majority of people of the nation spoke Russian as their native language. This forced the government to implement a “multilingual policy” to preserve Russian and various other languages. There was another reason behind this policy. English was rapidly becoming a common language in Kazakhstan and also the government strived to maintain a strong competitive hold in the economy of the world. The current language policy was adopted after taking interviews of people in different professions. Their general opinion about the language Kazakh was taken into account. Kazakh was made the only state language to emphasize the newly acquired independence of the nation. The most important purpose of the language policy was to upgrade their native language and give it a national identity. The Kazakh language was incorporated in important government and education sectors and also in the mass media (Pavlenko 174-175).

      Kazakhstan is a nation that has an abundance of natural resources. It has large reserves of oil and natural gas along with other minerals like gold, copper, and chrome. In the post-independence era, these resources were not utilized properly. This was because there was a vast ethnic difference between the Russians and Kazakhs and a poor economic structure. In the first half of the 1990s, there was mass immigration which resulted in the decline of the nation’s economy and the lack of foreign capital slowed down the development of oil and mineral sectors. During this period, the government was mostly occupied with the task of nation-building, and economic policies were made to maintain strong economic ties with Russia. In the mid-1990s, the government began to focus on the development of the oil sector. Outside the boundaries of Kazakhstan, the nation was viewed as a corrupt state which resulted in a fall in oil prices. This was a major blow to the economy of the nation. Kazakhstan faced growth in the economy in the early twenty-first century. During this time oil prices began to rise significantly (Pomfret 40-41). In 2006, Kazakhstan formed a fund for development to make proper use of all revenues earned from oil and other natural resources. The objective was to sustain stability in the economic sector and the all-around development of the country (Laciner et al, 532). In 2011, President Nursultan Nazarbaev declared an emergency in Zhanozen, which is a town in western Kazakhstan and has major reservoirs of oil. The emergency was declared after there were clashes between the workers in oil factories and the police. The workers were in the middle of a strike. The clash was followed by the death of 16 people. Extra forces were supplied for security purposes in the town. On January 31, 2012, the emergency was lifted by the President, and the normal situation was restored (“The State of Emergency lifted in Kazakh Oil Town”).

      Recently in Washington, President Nursultan Nazarbaev was praised for his talent for “statecraft”. He has built the nation successfully in every dimension (Kazakhstan: Astana Faces Emboldened Opposition”). Kazakhstan shares a very delicate political relation with Russia and so the former must be careful not to build its own identity at the expense of losing a good neighborhood.