Democrats swept House and Senate races. What would their Central Asia policy look like?

The Democrats have won the US Senate and the House of Representatives, gaining control of the upper and lower chambers of Congress for the remainder of Donald Trump‘s second term. Will the shift in power be felt here in Central Asia, and will his administration’s multibillion-dollar regional engagements survive, if at all? 

Two tight Senate races in the 2026 US midterm elections remain uncalled at the time of writing, including the knife-edge result in Mississippi and the other one in Alaska.

It is now the Democrats who will influence US foreign policy approaches vis-à-vis the likemindeds, the opponents and, not forgetting, the non-aligned rest. 

Both the Senate and the House can fund or restrict foreign aid, legislate sanctions and change trade rules, as per the constitution, and their committees can also hold hearings and investigate how they carry out policy.

The Senate has two powers the House does not share: it confirms US ambassadors and senior officials, and its consent to a treaty requires two-thirds of senators present. The US Congress wields tangible power over trade policy and the terms of US assistance.

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The Congress shapes US foreign policy, but how much?

Catherine Putz, The Diplomat‘s managing editor and Central Asia expert, believes that regardless of which party is in power, Congress has very little influence on US foreign policy, let alone Central Asia policy. «If the Democrats do retake the House, they will largely focus on domestic issues,» she told Kursiv Uzbekistan on Thursday. 

«Ostensibly, the House Foreign Affairs Committee and its subcommittees could hold hearings interrogating the Trump administration’s foreign policy decisions, including those involving Central Asian states, with a sharper tone and focus than under Republican control,» Putz suggested.  

Such a committee could look into human rights and rule-of-law issues in the region, as well as the Board of Peace, which Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan were invited to join. That aside, Central Asia ‘will not be a top agenda item’ for the Democrat-dominated Congress, the journalist remarked. 

Can US–Central Asia ties outlast the 2026 midterms?

Trump and his foreign policy team invested a sizeable amount of time, trade commitments — and diplomatic pleasantries — in harnessing relations with the region. 

Last year he welcomed the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to the White House for a summit focused on trade, transport and critical minerals. The US Commerce Department said at the time that companies signed a raft of deals worth over $25 billion in total on the sidelines of the meeting, among them: 

• Uzbekistan Airways’ firm order for eight additional Boeing 787 Dreamliners.
• A $1.1 billion agreement to develop two tungsten deposits in Kazakhstan, signed by Kazakhstan’s Tau-Ken Samruk and US firm Cove Capital. 
• At a follow-up meeting in Samarkand in October 2026, the US and Central Asian governments backed further development of the Trans-Caspian trade route and pledged closer cooperation on border security and counterterrorism.

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Several factors have contributed to the revival of once anaemic US-Central Asian relations, which includes increased cooperation on critical minerals as well as a strong focus on energy and trade transport routes, Putz commented. 

‘One of those is a US administration less concerned with the details than with making deals … There are also the basic geopolitical winds of the day, not the least of which is great power competition,” she opined. 

Why Central Asia needs allies across US party lines

While geopolitical headwinds are a factor, Central Asia has already shown a greater appetite for cooperation and collaboration with the US. For their part, regional governments ‘may have leaned too hard into messaging that plays well with the Trump administration’, Putz maintained. 

The sidestory: Food, power, routes to Europe: What Central Asia wants from (and for) CIS

Recalling that the US has had two and a half centuries of regular changes at the top, she said Central Asian capitals ‘should be thinking about how to insulate their relationships with the US from the tumults of US politics’. 

‘That’s done by investing in relations across the political spectrum, by making the case for why Central Asia matters to the United States as broadly as possible, and by really focusing on what the two sides can accomplish together’.

How have Democratic presidents approached Uzbekistan?

In the 1990s, the Clinton administration proactively engaged the newly independent Central Asian states, ostensibly in a bid to consolidate their sovereignty and build ties with the West. Bill Clinton himself met with Uzbek president Islam Karimov at the White House in 1996 to discuss political and economic reform.

The ongoing war in Afghanistan influenced much of Barack Obama‘s rhetoric about the US-Uzbek relationship. Uzbekistan was an important transit country for the NATO-run Northern Distribution Network, so the administration temporarily lifted some aid restrictions in 2012. 

‘Just look at the C5+1, which the second Obama administration first launched in 2015. That platform has grown, but it has remained a consistent throughline in contemporary US Central Asia policy, and that consistency matters’, Putz reminded. 

The US and Uzbekistan launched a Strategic Partnership Dialogue in 2021 — the first year of Joe Biden’s presidency — covering trade, security and reform. His administration has consistently raised media freedom, civil society and human rights issues, but generally backed Uzbekistan’s efforts to diversify trade routes and markets.  

‘Don’t forget: the first US president to meet with all five Central Asian presidents at the same time wasn’t Donald Trump in 2025; it was Joe Biden in 2023’, she concluded.