The first White House C5+1 summit took place last week – that’s the five Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, plus the US. “I understand the importance of this region,” said their host, US President Donald Trump – and he’s not alone.

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin was in Tajikistan for a Russia-Central Asia summit. In June, Chinese President Xi Jinping met the C5 leaders at a China-Central Asia summit in Kazakhstan. And the first EU-Central Asia summit took place in Uzbekistan in April.

A year ago, I wrote in these pages of the region’s growing importance, and yet it appears that outside certain foreign policy circles, the White House summit attracted such a low level of attention that one former US ambassador described it as “an atypical instance of substance with little fanfare” on the part of the Trump administration. To be fair, Mr Trump did say that “these nations were once home to the ancient Silk Road connecting East and West”, before adding, less accurately, that “sadly, previous American presidents neglected this region completely”.

In fact, Mr Trump’s own predecessor, Joe Biden, held a meeting with the C5 leaders in 2023, but it was in New York and on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. Last week’s summit was a big step up, as US ambassador and special envoy Sergio Gor underlined when he told the C5 that Mr Trump’s “commitment to this region is that you have a direct line to the White House, and that you will get the attention that this area very much deserves”.

The lack of “fanfare” is more reflective of the media coverage of the event, and that in turn may be representative of the fact that general knowledge of these five former Soviet republics is not high. If, however, it is true that rare earths and other minerals are going to be the “oil of the 21st century”, then that is a situation that should change, and fast. This is because the C5 countries have deep reserves of rare earths and are believed to possess far more in vast areas of so far unsurveyed lands.

Central Asia has 38.6 per cent of the world’s manganese ore and 30.07 per cent of its chromium – both used for a variety of industrial purposes – and produces about half the world’s uranium, critical to nuclear power production.

A rare earth metals mine in China's Jiangxi province. The country, which produces more than 90 per cent of global rare earth products, is considering restrictions on their export

In 2023, Kazakhstan exported nearly $5 billion worth of rare earths to Russia and China, compared to only $540 million to the US. With Beijing – which produces more than 90 per cent of global rare earth products – considering restrictions on the