NATIONAL ECONOMIC INTERESTS AS DETERMINANTS OF ECONOMIC-SECURITY STRATEGY: A CONCEPTUAL AND POLICY ANALYSIS OF UZBEKISTAN

Economic security is never defined in the abstract: states define it through what they take their national economic interests to be. Yet the link between ranked interests and the content of an economic-security strategy is seldom examined, and in Uzbekistan, where reform has been rapid and the economy has opened, it is poorly documented. This article asks how national economic interests shape economic-security strategy and whether Uzbekistan’s strategic goals match the exposures that official data reveal. Using qualitative document and policy analysis, it builds a five-interest framework from the national-interest and security-studies literature, codes the 2022–2026 and 2030 development strategies against it, and compares the result with IMF, World Bank, Central Bank and Statistics Agency indicators for 2024–2025. The strategies state prosperity, external standing and defence interests explicitly and address stability and energy through output and inflation targets. However, they set no explicit goal on concentration: in 2025 gold supplied 29.3% of exports, three partners accounted for 43.3% of trade, and in 2024 Russia was the source of 77% of remittances. The article concludes that an economic-security strategy is credible when ranked interests are translated into measurable exposure thresholds with institutional ownership, and it proposes a published exposure dashboard and counter-cyclical rules for windfall revenues.