Foreign relations. Nazarbayev with Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, 2012.

Nazarbayev with Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, 2012.

Kazakhstan has stable relationships with all of its neighbors. Kazakhstan is also a member of the United Nations, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). It is an active participant in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Partnership for Peace program.

On April 11, 2010, Presidents Nazarbayev and Obama met at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C., and discussed strengthening the strategic partnership between the United States and Kazakhstan and pledged to intensify bilateral cooperation to promote nuclear safety and non-proliferation, regional stability in Central Asia, economic prosperity, and universal values.

In April 2011, President Obama called President Nazarbayev and discussed many cooperative efforts regarding nuclear security, including securing nuclear material from the BN-350 reactor, and reviewed progress on meeting goals that the two presidents established during their bilateral meeting at the Nuclear Security Summit in 2010. President Obama also thanked President Nazarbayev for his support to foster security and prosperity in Afghanistan. In a letter to President Nazarbayev dated August 16, 2011, President Obama praised Kazakhstan as "a longtime world leader in nuclear security".

Kazakhstan is also a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Economic Cooperation Organization and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The nations of Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan established the Eurasian Economic Community in 2000 to re-energize earlier efforts at harmonizing trade tariffs and the creation of a free trade zone under a customs union. On December 1, 2007, it was revealed that Kazakhstan had been chosen to chair OSCE for the year 2010. Kazakhstan was elected a member of the UN Human Rights Council for the first time on November 12, 2012.

Since independence in 1991, Kazakhstan has pursued what is known as the "multivector foreign policy" (Kazakh: көпвекторлы сыртқы саясат; mnogovektornaya vneshnyaya politika), seeking equally good relations with two large neighbors, Russia and China, and the United States and the West in general. The policy has yielded results in the oil and gas sector, where companies from the U.S., Russia, China, and Europe are present at all major fields, and in the multidimensional directions of oil export pipelines out of Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan also enjoys strong, and rapidly developing, political and economic ties with Turkey. Kazakhstan formed a customs union with Russia and Belarus which will be transformed into a common economic space soon.

Russia currently leases approximately 6,000 km² (2,300 mi²) of territory enclosing the Baikonur Cosmodrome space launch site in south central Kazakhstan, where the first man was launched into space as well as Soviet space shuttle Buran and the well known space station Mir.