Obama's victory is to Kazakhstan's advantage

Upon the re-election of Barack Obama as the US president, Kazakh-American relations will see almost no change, say experts.

Liter newspaper asked political scientists to evaluate the results of the latest elections in the United States.

Bolat Sultanov, Director of Kazakh Institute of Strategic Research:

- We have established good relations with American administration regardless who is the president of the United States. As a developed Central Asian state we play a significant role in the main American aim in the region -- NATO's withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014. And the United States is investing large sums in our economy. However, it's worth mentioning that Obama and Romney disagree on energy security issues.  

Barack Obama's position is quite preferrable for us. Besides, Mitt Romney is aggressively disposed towards Russia and China. If he won, tensions in our region would increase. Possibly, Kazakhstan could even face pressure from USA to make us worsen our relations with the neighbors.

Eduard Poletayev, political scientist:

- If Kazakh-American relations change after Obama's victory, they will only improve. Moreover, at the summit in Seoul he demonstrated support to the path our country's selected, especially our anti-nuclear initiatives.

In 4 years, our politicians and diplomats have well come to know Obama, therefore the main advantage is his predictability. Of course, he may give a surprise, but he is more predictable than Romney. The latter, to recall, tagged Russia the main geopolitic enemy of the United States. As we currently have entered various alliances with our northern neighbor and have bound ourselves with it by signing Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, problems in Russian-American relations would, to some extent, negatively impact our country.

Rustam Burnashev, political scientist:

- I don't think something would change for Kazakhstan. The US foreign policy virtually does not depend on presidential elections. Decision making system there is built in such a manner that it does not considerably depend on a single branch of government. Senate, Congress, judicial power, government of every state -- all decisions should be aligned with almost all the mentioned.

Therefore, to Kazakhstan the advantage of Barack Obama is just that he is a well-known politician with whom we have been building relations for the last 4 years. But I wouldn't name this a considerable advantage -- if Romney won, nothing would change for us as well.

WKT citing nur.kz