I doubt we disagree about where we want Uzbekistan to go – it needs a healthy dose of capitalism, with lots of Western investment, and, yes, lots of American influence.

Uzbekistan has the potential to move quickly from very poor to middle income country.

But that hasn’t been on the cards uncer Karimov who turned his back on capitalist reform about ten years ago. The private sector realised that – there was no major new US investment in Uzbekistan in 2001-5. It was only the US government that deluded itself that working with karimov could change him.

Whether or not it was “worth a try” is debatable, but beyond doubt it didn’t work. And some aspects of co-operation with Karimov were morally polluting.

I wasn’t in an ivory tower. I was in the thick of it.

In retrospect, maybe we didn’t do so bad in Uzbekistan. I mean, which policy is right when dealing with a dictator as erratic as Karimov? Engagment or isolation? In the end we’re doing both. But we can now genuinely say that we tried to engage the Karimov regime and got nowhere.

Now that we’re out of Uzbekistan, in many ways I’m glad that we were there.

If your 1st statement is true then ‘constructive engagement’ would seem to be the only policy with any hope of convincing Karimov to impliment policies for the good of the majority of Uzbeks.

I would think a policy of condemnation from an ‘ivory tower’ would be ‘myopic, morally corrupting, ineffective, visibly hypocritical and unsustainable’.

Andy posted yesterday that the Uzbek government handed an eviction note to the American embassy in Tashkent last Frida [...]

The US tried for too long to paper over the cracks and argue in international fora that Karimov was reforming and just needed time. I believe that, for a while, wishful thinking led the US actually to believe this.

The result was a position, particularly on defence and intelligence co-operation, that became untenable and appeared to expose a massive hypocrisy at the centre of the Bush doctrine of spreading democracy and freedom.

It is I think important to realise that for Karimov it was the threat of economic freedom, not just political freedom, which turned him away from the US. Uzbekistan is much closer to a North Korean insular model than the South East Asian model that the US seemed to mistake it for.

The policy of constructive engagement (or “critical engagement” to use Jack Straw’s phrase) was myopic, morally corrupting, ineffective, visibly hypocritical and unsustainable. Let us hope it is now buried.

Put a cork in it.