Kazakhstan has been engaged in bilateral relations with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since 1992, when the country joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) established by the alliance in December 1991 as a forum to discuss and coordinate security issues with its new partners. Kazakhstan’s practical security cooperation with NATO officially started in May 1994, when it signed a framework document of the Partnership for Peace (PfP) program launched in January 1994 to allow developing interaction between NATO and non-member states in the Euro-Atlantic area. The Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC), which replaced the NACC in 1997, is a main platform for the NATOKazakhstan security dialogue providing the overall political framework for cooperation within the PfP program, while at the regional and national levels cooperation is maintained, respectively, via the NATO Liaison Office in Central Asia based in Tashkent and one of the embassies of the NATO member states serving as a contact point.
Dauren Aben holds a Master’s in International Relations from Kainar University, Almaty, Kazakhstan, and a Master’s in International Policy Studies and certificates in nonproliferation studies, conflict resolution, and commercial diplomacy from the California-based Monterey Institute of International Studies. Dauren previously worked as a senior project manager and researcher at the Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education. In 2011-2014, he worked as a senior research fellow at the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. In 2008-20