Russia's war in Ukraine has strained Moscow's military and loosened the Kremlin's hold on Central Asia. China is rushing to fill the resulting vacuum through pipelines, railroads, and the Belt and Road Initiative. But a Hudson Institute fellow argues that the region's reluctance to swap one patron for another gives Washington a rare opening.
Ken Moriyasu outlined the dynamic in The Washington Post, identifying eight Eurasian swing states - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan - whose strategic hedging instincts the US should reinforce rather than ignore.
The logic tracks a Cold War playbook. NSC-68, the landmark 1950 policy document, established the principle that US strategy should position friendly regimes across Eurasia to engage the Kremlin's attention, keep it off balance, and force increased expenditure of Soviet resources. Moriyasu contends the same principle applies today - with China as an additional competitor.
Not all eight states are natural US partners. Pakistan maintains an all-weather strategic partnership with China - the second-highest tier of bilateral relations Beijing offers. Yet Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has positioned himself as a potential mediator between Washington and Tehran. Hungary joined China's Belt and Road Initiative in 2015 and attracts heavy Chinese investment, but US Vice President JD Vance was scheduled to visit Budapest in early April to campaign for Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The opening for the US is real but narrow. Under Trump, Washington prioritizes energy security, critical minerals, and strategic geography over what Moriyasu calls "democracy scorekeeping" - an approach that aligns with what hedging states want to hear. Washington must formalize this instinct into strategy before Beijing's infrastructure locks the region into Sino-centric patterns.
As Moriyasu puts it, once Eurasia's energy routes and trade networks settle into Chinese-dominated corridors, the US will lose leverage for decades.
Earlier, "Hvylya" analyzed why Beijing's refusal to take sides on Iran is eroding trust among its own allies.