One of the side effects of Kyrgyzstan’s move to deny NATO access to Manas airfield is a renewal in punditry about US-Uzbek relations. Take, for example, Chris Flavelle at Slate, who is viewing history through a weird lens.
Uzbekistan’s human rights record is so odious that even the Bush administration—no pushover for world opinion—cut ties with it four years ago. …[Insert strange history of US-Uzbek relations post-9/11]… President George W. Bush, though largely indifferent to public opinion, could afford to do the honorable thing in 2005 by walking away from an ugly regime in Uzbekistan, when Afghanistan was looking better and the base in Kyrgyzstan was still available.
Foreign Policy, sticking with their dull rehashing of arguments made more interestingly elsewhere since the WaPo takeover, recycles Flavelle’s argument* and lets slip that this all gives them the vapors.
Hopefully the Uzbekistan option is being floated by the Obamans as a bargaining chip with Kyrgyzstan and won’t actually come to pass. Kyrgyzstan’s not exactly Canada but Uzbekistan is in a class of its own as a human rights abuser and Fred Kaplan’s 2005 arguments for why the U.S. should steer well clear of the place still hold.
Given all his encouraging human rights rhetoric, it would be nice if Obama could just minimize his dealings with post-Soviet dictatorships.
It has long been my argument that the US has a terrible Central Asia & Caucasus policy insofar as it actually has one. In reality, we have a hodge-podge of ad hoc policies toward individual states in the region. Discussions about US policy in the region is usually emotional, context-free, and painfully lacking area expertise. The quotes above display all of these characteristics.
Keating is emotional about US-Uzbek relations. Yes, Uzbekistan is nasty. (The “one true fact” that people seem to cite about it if they know anything about it at all is that they have a weekly dissident boil out on the president’s lawn.) No, it’s not fun to deal with dictatorships. But, not dealing with Uzbekistan doesn’t make it a better place, and we deal with all kinds of places that rub our moral sensibilities raw. (I hear they sentence people to death for apostasy and blasphemy in Afghanistan. Kids go to prison with their mothers, as well.)
Both authors have an uneasy relationship with facts and context. First and foremost, I am not aware of public opinion on Uzbekistan. I would not be surprised if the number of people in the United States who have an opinion on Uzbekistan tops out at 50,000. Flavelle has a bizarre interpretation of US-Uzbek relations under Bush. Nothing about Bush administration policy toward Uzbekistan had to do public opinion or world opinion. In fact, for at least 2004 and 2005, different parts of the Bush administration seemed to be reading from different playbooks. Most importantly though, the US already has transit deals with Uzbekistan and other Central Asian states. Negotiations on those deals started prior to President Bakiev asking NATO to leave Manas. If Petraeus leaves Tashkent with a signed deal in hand on transit issues, it would be hard to argue definitively that the situation in Bishkek did anything but encourage the US to move more quickly.
I cannot help but think that pundits and journalists have sniffed out a good narrative. President Hopey “It’s all gonna be different now” McChangerton is facing a morally icky choice. And to give that narrative a bit more of a foundation, all this talk of Uzbekistan as a possible host for an airbase is being torn from context and blown up into something more than it likely is in reality. One thing I like about Obama is that he seems to be more of a Realist than many other US politicians. That gives me some (dare I say it?) hope that his administration might be able to craft a halfway decent, coordinated policy of engagement with Central Asian states. The punditocracy, however, does not appear to be on board with that possibility.
*Seriously. Compare Keating’s links to Flavelle’s. It’s a summary with a different picture. If you want interesting summaries of international news, go read the always superb Global Voices Online.
This post was written by...
Nathan Hamm – author of 2974 posts on Registan.net.
Nathan is the Founding Editor and Publisher of Registan.net, which he launched in 2003. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uzbekistan 2000-2001 and received his MA in Central Asian Studies from the University of Washington in 2007. Since 2007, he has worked full-time as an analyst, consulting with private and government clients on Central Asian affairs, specializing in how socio-cultural and political factors shape risks and opportunities and how organizations can adjust their strategic and operational plans to account for these variables. Nathan is currently seeking research, analysis, and consulting opportunities. He can be contacted via Twitter or email.
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{ 9 comments }
Why don’t we just go ahead and sign a deal for a US airbase in Iran to support Afghan operations? That should take care of Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza…then the pundits might denounce the Iranian regime, too. Iran has signalled willingness to work with Obama. Stranger volte-faces have happened before…I remember that the US supported Saddam Hussein’s attack on Iran, yet later overthrew his regime (a favor to Iran, IMHO).
Well engagement definitely has its merits, and who can argue that the US policy in Central Asia is not that coherent however:
1. I think US Central Asia policy is incoherent largely because the Central Asian governments are a model of incoherency. It’s hard to craft a policy with any nation when it doesn’t even really know what it wants. And when it does know, it changes its mind constantly and leaves others guessing its motives. Add to this fact that there’s hardly any regional cooperation, not because of any core ideological differences, but because of suspicions, grudges and personality clashes – the place is a political basket case.
2. A new policy is good and fine – but not if we’re forced into one out of desperation. If Patreus is going to Uzbekistan to beg for a base or transit rights because we have no other choice then lets not pretend that anything positive for Uzbekistan is going to come out of this.
There are dangers in this kind of ‘engagement’ – a lot of Uzbeks are going to be coming home jobless from Russia in the upcoming months. It’s possible there could be social unrest in the region. I don’t think we don’t want to be seen as propping a dictatorship because its convenient for us.
We broke off relations with Uzbekistan? This is news to me. The way I remember it is they kicked us out.
Notice that Flavelle’s bio said he once ran a bar in Kyrgyzstan. Anyone know which bar that was?
I have a hard time with the “propping up a dictator” argument against engagement. I’ve yet to see any convincing claim that a sizable portion, let alone a majority, of any Central Asian state’s population 1) has strongly negative feelings about its executive leadership (as opposed to the police, district officials, etc.); or, 2) views the US as instrumental in their suffering. These countries aren’t Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. They’re former Soviet Republics. If I had any worry about US relations and potential instability, it would be that the public would accuse the US of fomenting unrest in the region.
And I think that each of these countries knows what it wants. They may not know exactly how they want to reach their goals, or their various goals may be contradictory. In the case of Uzbekistan, they may have a hard time (for whatever reason) coming right out and saying what they want. None of this prevents the US from having a policy toward the region, even if that means that the level and type of engagement is different. We’re actually kind of at a moment like that now. Building a stable and secure Afghanistan is our primary goal in the region. We start from there and get transit deals with everyone but Kyrgyzstan (so, it would seem), build bridges from Tajikistan to Afghanistan, and link the Central Asian electrical grid to Afghanistan’s. Obviously that means more engagement with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan than with Kyrgyzstan, which keeps claiming against all evidence that Afghanistan is stable and safe.
If we want anymore than that, then we need to figure that out, communicate it, and use it as a foundation to create engagement. We should avoid a repeat of the 2001-2005 relationship with Uzbekistan when it seemed that the goal was engagement itself.
I was living in tashkent when Uzbek/US ties were cut, and they were most certainly cut by the Uzbeks. We were poking our noses into their recent massacre of peaceful demonstrators in Andijan. They would have no nose poking, so the US (along with all western NGOs) were given the boot.
First of all, our policy towards Central Asia should not be grouped with our Caucasus policy, as those regions, especially recently, have different circumstances which require different approaches.
Second, I think a discussion needs to be had over whether or not there is still a need to formulate a coherent Central Asian policy. Quick note: by “Central Asia”, I’m using the old Soviet definition, excluding Kazakhstan. If you look at the current situation, the overarching regional characteristics do not favor (or in some cases do not even allow) any serious level of U.S. involvement. America’s only usefulness to the Central Asian republics is as a counterbalance to Russia. The threat of working with the Americans, be it in terms of military engagement or hydrocarbon exports, forces Russia to meet the (usually financial) demands of the republics. Recently, Russia has shown that it is willing to do this (such as paying market prices for gas exports and the current case with Manas). As long as the Russians are prepared to outbid the Americans – and as long as their investment comes with the requirement to end local American activities – then Moscow will continue to come out on top, and we will constantly be shoved aside. Even projects related the stabilization of Afghanistan are not immune to these geopolitical struggles, despite the fact that a stable southern neighbor is in everyone’s interest. Recent events make clear that Moscow will be calling the shots in terms of US activity in Central Asia related to Afghanistan, while the Russians will try to limit as much as possible. So long as the republics agree to Russian hegemony (in terms of military presence, economics, and in some cases political influence), which they seem to be willing to do if the price is right, we’re on the sidelines. What good does a playbook do you when you’re off the field?
Basically our only option, if we wish to try to remain “engaged”, is to fill our niche of gaining some ground when Russia is trying to short-change a republic, then lose it again once Moscow pays up. These situations will vary from country to country, and will not require a region-wide policy (and may not require us, even – the Europeans can fill this role as well). Of course we’ll keep up the façade of saying Russia has no sphere of influence, and that we’re actively engaged, and so on, but it will be a hollow shell.
Ultimately, this lack of a Central Asian policy was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Under the Bush administration, when our foreign policy was being run by the DOD, we haphazardly engaged individual governments, often with a focus on military relations. We never directly engaged the region as a whole on a vast array of issues, as did China through the SCO and Japan (with limited success) through the Central Asia plus Japan initiative. Our absence at a regional level has now eliminated the need for our presence. Now we can only look for small, temporary victories. For now, the time for a coherent region-wide policy has passed.
As I said above, I don’t include Kazakhstan in this gloomy outlook – their commitment to a larger presence on the international scene, as well as the heavy U.S. investment in their oil industry, will continue to grant the U.S. some diplomatic capital in that country. But that’s another discussion.
More on the Iran-Afghanistan supply option, here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/17/MNGF15RGMK.DTL
Nathan, OT:
do you know anything about this?
Tatyana, I haven’t heard anything about that. Here’s another link about the story.