Will US President Donald Trump Visit Central Asia? |
Crossroads Asia | Diplomacy | Central Asia
Will US President Donald Trump Visit Central Asia?
No U.S. president has ever traveled to Central Asia while in office. Could Donald Trump be the first? Sure. But will he be? That’s a different question.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with leaders of C5 Central Asian countries after a dinner in the East Room of the White House, Nov. 6, 2025.
As U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s planned trip to Uzbekistan – at the head of a large delegation of American businesses – approaches, once again Central Asian governments and people are angling for a presidential visit. Both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have repeatedly invited Trump to make the trek; he’d be very welcome in the region and they’re hoping the novelty of being the “first” will get them on the presidential calendar.
In an interview with an Uzbek TV station, U.S. Special Representative for Global Partnerships Paolo Zampolli, said, “I know [Trump] wants to come to Uzbekistan. The president has an extremely busy schedule. But he told me about his intention to visit Uzbekistan. I myself am constantly promoting this issue. So, he will definitely visit Uzbekistan one day. We hope this visit will take place as soon as possible.”
That’s not exactly a firm commitment from a notoriously fickle administration, no matter the rabid headlines about the comments.
There has been no shortage of U.S. officials traveling to Central Asia since the dawn of the second Trump presidency. These include an October 2025 trip to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan by Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and Sergio Gor, concurrently the U.S. ambassador to India and also special envoy for South and Central Asian affairs. In February 2026, Gor returned to Central Asia, visiting Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. In July 2026, Senator Steve Daines, a Republican from Montana – who co-founded the bipartisan Senate Central Asia Caucus in 2024 – traveled to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan (and also Azerbaijan).
U.S. engagement with Central Asia has shifted from Afghanistan – an all-encompassing subject that dominated relations from 2001 to 2021 – to critical minerals, an especially hot topic for governments keen on dealmaking.
In November 2025, amid the fanfare of the C5 1 summit in Washington, in which all five Central Asian presidents were welcomed to the White House for the first time (although it was not the first presidential level C5 1 summit, as some have erroneously reported) – Rubio declared his intention to visit all five Central Asian states in the coming year.
“I personally intend to visit in the coming year,” he said during a reception after meeting with his Central Asian counterparts, as reported by Reuters. “All five,” Rubio added. “So I know it would probably be a week-long trip. So we’ve got to work on that and make that happen together.”
To date, the highest-ranking U.S. official to complete what I dubbed the “grand Stan slam” was then-Secretary of State John Kerry in 2015. It was during that trip that the C5 1, at........