24 June 2019
June 21st, an international scientific conference «30 Years of Leadership» was held in Almaty. The event was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the date when Nursultan Nazarbayev took the highest office in the country.
The Director of the Institute of International Studies, Program Director at the Valdai Club Andrey Sushentsov and the Head of the Department of World and Russian History at MGIMO, Director of the Institute of World History at the Russian Academy of Sciences Mikhail Lipkin gave talks at the plenary session of the conference.
The conference was kicked off by the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and the first President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, who both gave welcome speeches to the guests.
Andrey Sushentsov spoke about Kazakhstan’s foreign policy course, describing it as «the policy of the golden mean.» He remarked more specifically that: «Because of its location in the centre of the continent, Kazakhstan personifies the deep continental regions of Eurasia. Centrality, and more precisely the golden mean, characterise Kazakhstan’s strategy. It is not a coincidence that in 1992 President Nursultan Nazarbayev suggested a new designation of the region: «Central Asia», which then became widely used. The golden mean is all about balance. Kazakhstan is located between two global powers: Russia and China, which are very different culturally and historically. However, Kazakhstan managed to avoid the fate of many other states on such borders. Kazakhstan and its leader have the huge merit of fostering a cooperative international order in Central Asia. Kazakhstan’s relations both with Russia and China show that countries, which are between centers of power, can have a constructive role in international affairs. »
Oralbay Abdykarimov, the Head of the Zhanaru National Movement Against Corruption, the Deputy of the Majilis Kuanysh Sultanov, the Director of the Center for Russian and Central Asian Studies at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Dave Pan, the Director of the Institute for Strategic and Regional Studies under the President of Uzbekistan Eldor Aripov, the former State Secretary of Kyrgyzstan Osmonakun Ibraimov, the American political analyst Ariel Cohen, the Deputy of the Majilis of the Azerbaijan Republic and Director of the Institute of Political Studies at the Academy of Public Administration of Azerbaijan Elman Nasirov, and Ravil Cherdabayev, a state figure of Kazakhstan all participated in the plenary session.
— See the MGIMO web-site for russian version
