Traditionally, U.S. foreign policy does not change radically when a new president enters the White House. Yes, the new political appointees at the top of the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, and the State Department, as well as at other departments and agencies that have a voice in setting and implementing foreign policy, will work with the senior career foreign-policy professionals to decide what, if anything, needs to be reviewed and updated; but, in the end, there is almost never a radical change in U.S. foreign policy.  This has been true for U.S. policy in the Caspian region of the South Caucasus and Central Asia ever since the fall of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 when the former Soviet Socialist Republics became sovereign and independent nations, whether they were ready for that or not.  

For the last three-plus decades, U.S. foreign policy for Central Asia has been remarkably stable.  Every policy document from that entire period states this:  “The United States supports the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of the newly independent states.”  Early on, the emergence of these new nations was seen as important enough that the State Department created a separate, new office that reported directly to the secretary of state rather than work up the chain from an assistant secretary of a long-established geographic bureau.  That new office was given the acronym S/NIS – NIS meaning a Newly Independent States office that reported directly to the Secretary, or S.  

In a relatively short time, however, these newly independent states were folded into the Bureau for Europe and Eurasia that, pre-1991, had included the office for the USSR.  But when former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wanted to bulk up the relatively new Bureau of South Asia, she moved the five Central Asian states out of the Europe and Eurasia Bureau and created the South and Central Asia Bureau.  Over the years, that has caused some bureaucratic policy disjunctions, especially since the Department of Defense is organized differently.  But in the end, the work gets done.

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