WASHINGTON, Oct 18 — While the Iran war smoulders, Saudi Arabia fights the Houthis and a new rift opens in United States (US)-Ukraine relations, Secretary of State Marco Rubio travels on Sunday to Uzbekistan, a nation far removed from the biggest US foreign policy challenges.
America's top diplomat is scheduled to land in Samarkand on Sunday to meet with leaders from the C5+1, a grouping that brings together the United States and the Muslim-majority post-Soviet states of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.
US officials have portrayed resource-rich Central Asia — the region between China, Russia, and Iran — as worthy of more attention than it received from US President Donald Trump's predecessors.
Trump hosted C5 leaders at the White House last November, when Kazakhstan agreed to join the Abraham Accords, a series of agreements under which Muslim-majority countries have normalised or deepened relations with Israel. Separately, Trump met with Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev at the United Nations General Assembly in September.
Regional politics aside, the trip fits an emerging pattern in which Rubio often visits regions not at the centre of the news cycle, while leaving some more fraught foreign-policy portfolios to other Trump aides, including special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and Vice President JD Vance.
For instance, Rubio has not visited Kyiv or Moscow since assuming office. He was not present for talks between US and Ukrainian officials in Florida earlier this month, when US officials pressed Ukraine to stop hitting Russian refineries.
Vance, not Rubio, represented the US in Pakistan during peace talks with Iran in April. Rubio's previous foreign trip, in early October, took him to Greece, Portugal, and Iceland.
Trump administration officials have typically rejected any suggestion that Cabinet-level officials should focus their travels on geopolitical capitals and hot spots.
For instance, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said on X (formerly Twitter) last week that the idea that only certain destinations were worthy of visits from secretaries of state "perfectly encapsulates the decadence and degeneracy of the contemporary US foreign policy establishment."
US-Russia relations loom
One Central Asian diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said officials in the region are wondering how long the US will continue targeting Russian sanctions evasion. All C5 states, while drawing closer to the US, have deep historical ties with Moscow, and the region has facilitated Russian imports and exports that violate US and European Union sanctions, Western officials say.
In the past, the US has pushed regional states to clamp down on those illicit flows.
But Trump struck a deal with Moscow this month to import Russian diesel, a move to lower domestic fuel prices before the congressional midterm elections. On Friday, Trump waived all provisions of legislation that would have allowed him to slap massive tariffs on some nations that buy significant amounts of Russian crude or otherwise help Moscow evade sanctions.
Experts have said India and Kazakhstan are among the nations that could have been affected.
India, which Rubio will visit after Uzbekistan, remains the world's No. 2 importer of Russian crude after China, despite Trump saying in February that India had agreed to stop buying oil from Russia.
Additional questions hang over a potential trade deal with India and an expansion of the Abraham Accords in Central Asia.
A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, described the trade deal on Friday as "pretty much done," raising the possibility that an agreement could be announced during the Rubio trip.
Separately, the US has talked to additional Central Asian nations about joining the Abraham Accords, Reuters reported last year, conversations that could in theory continue in Samarkand.
The US State Department has announced that over 200 business executives will accompany Rubio to Uzbekistan. The Central Asian diplomat said the Trump administration has focused its commercial efforts on expanding access to the area's rare earth mineral resources.
The Central Asian diplomat said Sergio Gor, the US ambassador to India, largely organised the trip to Uzbekistan. Gor, who was born in Uzbekistan and is a friend of Rubio, also serves as the US special envoy for South and Central Asian affairs.
After Uzbekistan, Rubio will visit the Indian cities of Mumbai and Jamnagar to meet with business leaders, including Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, who earned the Trump administration's favour earlier in the year by backing a new refinery in Texas. Rubio most recently visited India five months ago.
The trip is due to wrap up on Thursday.
