He’s doing a series of favours for Trump so that he’d have his back if trouble ever arises with Russia, which is an increasingly realistic scenario given Kazakhstan’s recent decision to produce NATO-standard shells and its new military-logistics corridor with NATO via Azerbaijan and TRIPP.

Up until the first Board of Peace meeting last week, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was considered to be the foreign leader who’s behaved most obsequiously towards Trump, with his adulation of him during last fall’s summit in Sharm el-Sheikh widely being seen as excessive and self-humiliating. Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev is now giving Sharif a run for his money after proposing during the first Board of Peace meeting the creation of a special peace prize in Trump’s honour.

In the immediate run-up to it, an article was published under his name at The National Interest about how “Reliability Is the New Power”, but it suspiciously reads as AI-generated given the language and style employed or at the very least written by someone else. Most of it is just generic reflections on the evolving world order, predictable praise of Trump, and a commitment to continue expanding relations with the US. The backdrop concerns Tokayev’s last visit to the US in November for the C5+1 Summit.

Not only did Kazakhstan sign an MoU on critical minerals cooperation with the US, which was followed up on by its Foreign Minister participating in the US’ first Critical Minerals Ministerial in early February, but it also joined the Abraham Accords despite having already recognized Israel for over three decades. The preceding hyperlinked analysis assessed that “[he] likely did this as a personal favor for Trump so that he’d have his back if trouble ever arises with Russia”.

This could realistically occur “if Kazakhstan one day tries to follow in Azerbaijan’s footsteps by having its armed forces conform to NATO standards.” In an attempt to curry even more favour with Trump, Tokayev then approved the participation of his country’s troops in the “International Stabilization Force” that’ll deploy to Gaza, which was announced during the Board of Peace meeting. Altogether, he’s clearly going overboard trying to please Trump, and he’s doing this for the aforementioned reason vis-à-vis Russia.

Kazakhstan announced in early December, after Tokayev began pleasing Trump by signing the MoU on critical minerals cooperation the month prior, that it’ll begin producing NATO-standard shells. It was likely emboldened by last August’s “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP) that’ll serve to comprehensively expand Western influence into Central Asia. Speedily implementing this corridor was the reason why Vance just travelled to the South Caucasus to visit Armenia and Azerbaijan.

TRIPP won’t just unlock a new critical minerals supply chain between the US and Kazakhstan, but also lead to new military-logistics between NATO, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia, which could precede a Ukrainian-like crisis along Russia’s entire southern periphery. For as self-evident as this strategic threat may seem, it’s absent from the Valdai Club’s latest report about “Russia and Its Neighbours: Mutual Responsibility and Co-Development”, so Russia’s top experts might get caught off guard once again.

As it stands, Tokayev is behaving just as obsequiously towards Trump as Sharif has, but Kazakhstan is also advancing US interests vis-à-vis Russia in ways that Pakistan never could. This lends credence to the belief that he’s doing favors for Trump so that he’d have his back if trouble arises with Russia. Russia’s brightest minds don’t seem to think that’ll happen – in fact, they didn’t even mention TRIPP once in their report – but perhaps its intelligence services have a different assessment and will prepare accordingly.