Kazakhstan’s June 2025 decision to award its first three nuclear power plants to Russia’s Rosatom and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) exposes a blind spot in U.S. strategy toward Central Asia. Washington has spent decades cultivating Astana as a strategic partner, but when Kazakhstan made one of its most consequential infrastructure decisions, the United States didn’t just lose – it never competed. No American vendor submitted a bid. No U.S. financing package was on the table. The United States simply forfeited. Partnership without infrastructure options is hollow. And infrastructure dependencies, once locked in, constrain a partner’s freedom to align with U.S. preferences when that alignment matters most.Washington didn’t just lose market share – it lost influence with a critical partner. Kazakhstan is the world’s largest uranium producer, a linchpin of U.S. nonproliferation cooperation since voluntarily surrendering its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal in the 1990s, and arguably Washington’s closest security partner in Central Asia. Still, when Astana moved to build civilian nuclear power, its only real options came from Moscow and Beijing. Infrastructure decisions made in peacetime shape the choices leaders face when pressure mounts. Kazakhstan just locked itself into Russian and Chinese supply chains for the next forty years. A Partner Without Options The U.S.-Kazakhstan relationship looks impressive on paper. The two countries elevated ties to an Enhanced Strategic Partnership in 2018. Defense cooperation is robust: joint exercises, National Guard partnerships, and threat-reduction programs date back decades. U.S. commanders have dubbed the relationship the most “well-developed” American security partnership in the region. Kazakhstan has also been a nonproliferation exemplar, returning roughly 1,400 Soviet warheads by 1995 and hosting an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) fuel bank. Economically, Astana controls critical supply chains Washington cares about. Kazakhstan mined roughly 23,000 tonnes of uranium in 2024 – about 39 percent of global output. The Biden administration launched a C5+1 Critical Minerals Dialogue in early 2024, partly to deepen ties with Astana on exactly these issues. But none of that translated into influence when Kazakhstan’s leaders picked their reactor vendors. The gap between partnership rhetoric and tangible leverage was stark. Why Russia and China Won Rosatom and CNNC won because they offered something Western competitors could not match: cheap state-backed financing bundled with turnkey delivery. Russia routinely underwrites nuclear exports with 20- to 25-year loans at 3 to 4 percent interest. Egypt’s $25 billion Rosatom deal reportedly carried a 3 percent rate over 22 years. China has similarly extended generous terms: roughly $6 to $7 billion in concessional financing for Pakistan’s reactor projects at rates of 1 to 6 percent. The U.S. Export-Import Bank, by contrast, only recently revived nuclear financing for small modular reactors and cannot take equity stakes or cover war risk. It was impossible for the United States to compete on these terms. Kazakh officials also emphasized the fuel-cycle bundle. Russia and China both operate integrated fuel chains: conversion, enrichment, fabrication, and, in some cases, reprocessing. For a first-time nuclear buyer, the appeal of a single vendor handling construction, fuel supply, training, and waste is enormous.Rosatom’s VVER-1200 design already has six units operating and fourteen more under construction worldwide. CNNC’s Hualong One has a similar track record. No American large reactor was even in the conversation. Astana framed the deals as part of an international consortia, but the reality is simpler: each project will depend on a single country’s package. That commercial reality creates strategic dependency measured in decades. When Infrastructure Becomes Influence Civilian reactors are sticky assets. They operate for thirty to forty years or more. Rosatom’s model bundles construction with decades of fuel supply, maintenance, training, and even spent-fuel storage under a single contract. CNNC offers a similar turnkey package. Every turbine part, software update, and regulatory certification ties the operator to the vendor’s ecosystem. Fuel arrives in multi-year batches. Switching suppliers mid-stream ranges from difficult to impossible. A state-backed vendor facing a political dispute cannot simply turn off a reactor. But it can throttle schedules, delay the delivery of spare parts, or trigger contract disputes to impose costs. Russia has already demonstrated its willingness to weaponize energy dependencies in 2022, when Gazprom progressively curtailed pipeline gas deliveries to EU member states; cutting Nord Stream 1 flows from full capacity to zero within months as part of an effort to undermine European support for Ukraine. The leverage is slower with nuclear energy than with pipelines, but it runs deeper. The strategic risk is not that Kazakhstan would refuse a specific American request. It is that infrastructure dependency quietly narrows the range of options Astana feels it has – on sanctions enforcement, on diplomatic positioning, on intelligence sharing – without any single crisis ever forcing the question into the open. Decisions shaped by supply-chain vulnerability rarely make headlines, but they compound over time. A partner whose reactor operations, fuel deliveries, and technical support all flow through Moscow and Beijing will inevitably calibrate its foreign policy accordingly. The Turkey S-400 precedent is instructive. Ankara’s 2019 purchase of Russian air defense systems triggered U.S. censure and led to its ejection from the F-35 program. Nuclear deals lack that dramatic rupture point, but the entanglement is longer and harder to unwind. Reactors run for generations with no clean exit ramp. For U.S. partnerships to carry weight, partners must retain practical freedom to align with Washington when it counts. Kazakhstan’s case shows how energy infrastructure can narrow that freedom without anyone noticing until the constraints are baked in. What Washington Should Do In the near term, the United States should accept Kazakhstan’s vendor choices without punishing Astana for a decision Washington failed to contest. Practical cooperation remains valuable: supporting IAEA safeguards, funding regulatory and emergency-response training, and helping Kazakh officials map sanctions risks and fuel-supply vulnerabilities. The State Department’s Foundational Infrastructure for Responsible Use of Small Modular Reactor Technology (FIRST) program has already begun installing training simulators and funding feasibility studies in Kazakhstan. These investments build expertise and trust without pretending the reactor contracts can be undone. Over the medium term, Washington must rebuild a competitive export offer. The ADVANCE Act, enacted in July 2024, streamlines U.S. nuclear export approvals, and proposals like the Civil Nuclear Export Act aim to expand Export-Import Bank authority for full reactor financing. But statutory fixes alone will not close the gap. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation can take equity stakes and issue loan guarantees – tools it has already deployed for reactor projects in Poland and Romania. Combining that flexibility with Export-Import Bank scale could eventually produce a package that competes with Rosatom and CNNC. Building domestic capacity for high-assay low-enriched uranium enrichment would let Washington offer fuel-cycle assurances without relying on foreign suppliers. In the long run, civilian nuclear exports need to be treated as a domain of strategic competition, not a commercial afterthought. The National Security Council and State Department should work with the Energy and Defense departments to map infrastructure dependencies across partner countries and prepare contingency options before crises arrive. Military planners should factor energy partnerships into contingency planning the same way they factor basing access or overflight rights. Finally, Washington should not concede Central Asia’s energy future. Even if the nuclear competition in Kazakhstan is lost for now, other arenas remain open. Investments in the Middle Corridor trade route, continued engagement through the C5+1 format, and deepening critical minerals cooperation all keep options alive. Competing Means Showing Up Kazakhstan’s situation is not unique. Uzbekistan is pursuing reactor projects with both Rosatom and CNNC. Poland chose Westinghouse for its first plant, backed by substantial state financing. The Czech Republic barred Russian and Chinese vendors from its tender on security grounds. Across the globe, civilian nuclear procurement is subtly sorting countries into infrastructure blocs that will shape alignments for decades. Great power competition is not only about military posture and diplomatic messaging. It is also about who builds the infrastructure that ties economies together for generations. Russia and China appear to understand this. Their nuclear export machines are instruments of strategic influence, not just commercial ventures. Washington’s treatment of civilian nuclear as a private-sector matter has effectively ceded the field. If the United States wants partners who can choose alignment when it matters, it must give them something to choose. Kazakhstan shows what happens when Washington is absent from the competition. The next reactor tender, wherever it is, should find the United States in the room.