Democracy, autocracy, kleptocracy, and hypocrisy

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See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

At the time President Bush was delivering a ringing endorsement of the rose revolution that brought the new Gerogian representative government to power, across the former Soviet Union Uzbekistan’s dicator Islam Karimov was brutally mopping up some apolitical protesters whose property had been stolen. No one noticed except the Uzbeks and their Central Asian neighbors.

Nor is it likely Washington will make more than pro forma protests to the continued repressive regimes now ensconced all across the former Soviet Union from Belarus [the exception: Moscow’s friend] to the Chinese border. In Kyrgystan, the long American favorite candidate for democracy, Askar Akaev, has gone down. It’s being touted as another victory for populism [read “democratic” in the Washington wish-list] reinstalling regimes which, at least, momentarily, have more representative facades.

Whatever. The fact is Washington is dependent on Uzbekistan’s Karimov for an important “lily pad”, for our operations in Afghanistan where the residue of two decades of war and centuries of traditional oppression make our victory over the Taliban precarious. And there Osama Bin Laden’s continued hide-and-seek where we need cooperation and collaboration from “secularists”.who at least share that commonality.

In Kyrgystan, too, Washington is happy to accept conventional wisdom this was another democratic revolt. It is important because smack up against China’s westernmost [and troubled] province of Singkiang, the U.S., again, has an important forward projection of power – just in case. [It is just a few miles from a Russian base as well.] It doesn’t hurt either that Beijing apparently regards the new Bishtek regime as pro-American, even if the ingredients of the sudden collapse probably had far more elements of ethnic conflict [there are large Uighru, Kazakh and Uzbek minorities among the Kyrgyz], and corruption.

Some would see this as “typical” American [or big power] hypocrisy. They wouldn’t have to look far for other examples. But it’s important to remember after 9/11 Bush [correctly] didn’t promise us a rose garden. What was simply the case was the American “homeland” [a word we have avoided in the past because of its associations with European chauvinism and war] had been attacked in a new and virulent way and old policies had to give way to new defenses.

In handling this issue – the extent we direct policy toward achieving “democracy” [Winston Churchill said it best when he complained of the inadequacies of representative government but said he knew of none better] – U.S. strategy is going to have to make hard choices. The devil, as always, is in the details. It did not serve the interests of furthering good governance in Uzbekistan to take to the loudspeaker as the former British ambassador did to complain about the U.S., his own government, and finally his career, in denouncing Karimov.

Those of us worried because we either lived through or read the fine print of our long ignominious attempts to “democratize” the Chinese government in late World War II and the Civil War that followed know how hard it is to recognize the good guys [the Chinese Communists were just “agrarian radicals” and the Nationalists were thieving authoritarians some of best informed Chinahands told us]. Again the Islamicists who would [as they did in Iran] substitute an even more regressive orthodoxy including terror are often seen as “the white hats”. [How quickly it is forgotten that Egypt’s “opposition” Moslem Brotherhood reinvented Islamicist terror in the modern era in the 1920s; ask former UN secretary general Boutros Boutros Ghali whose father was assassinated.]

That is one of the problems in Central Asia where oldtime Communist apparatchiks [and indeed in Azerbaijan, one of their offspring] rule the roost. Opposing them are Islamicists, claiming and in some instances, actually performing, good works, and to be the voice of the people against the thieving classes.

Georgia, where the President was so enthralled with the new regime he broke into an uncharacteristic sympathetic dance, was only recently ruled by a former NKVD/KGB apparatchik [and former sophisticated foreign minister of the Soviet Union]. The U.S. had thought he was someone with whom we could work. The new boy, too, American-educated President Mikheil Saakashvili, will be under enormous pressure to produce for a poverty-stricken population sabotaged by Moscow’s efforts to reestablish its suzerainity [in, after all, what was Josef Stalin’s birthplace and training ground as bandit and would-be priest].

Bush was careful to say Washington wanted a negotiated settlement with Moscow to recover the two disaffected [largely by Moscow intrigue] Georgian provinces and to avoid publicly proposing the inclusion for now of Tiflis in the expanded NATO.

In the weeks, months, and years ahead, the choices will never be easy. America’s advocacy of “the shinning city on the hill” was built into the U.S.’ national conception and, now, into its international role. But advocacy is going to always be illusory, contradictory, and difficult of decision-making. Condeleezza Rice has her work cut out for her.