by Ryan Weber
Two recent articles by non-regional experts have shed an interesting light on US policy in Central Asia. In reading history, as well as a few Wikileaks, they examine what precedents US diplomats may be following as they brazenly cooperate with corrupt regimes. Rather than revealing any new information, what they show is how closely the US continues to follow old patterns - even those with disastrous outcomes. When short-term objectives conflict with long-term ideals like 'freedom' and 'democracy', it is the latter that lose ground. This is not only a problem for ideological purity - a luxury no 'superpower' can afford - but puts more practical long-term needs like regional stability and influence in jeopardy.
For this reason, US willingness to prioritize transit access and basing agreements over progress in human rights and political freedom among Central Asian states serves as a dangerous choice for US policymakers - and they should know better.
The Analysis
Amy Davidson, a senior editor at The New Yorker, offers remarkable insights about the disclosure of US embassy cables from Central Asia, and what they reveal - at a macro level - about the vulnerability of US policy in the region. The post appeared on her blog, Close Read, on December 15. It is not the most detailed analysis of the growing US transit system to supply Afghanistan - called the Northern Distribution Network, or NDN - but Davidson, who is not a regional expert, does pick up on some important aspects of the creeping priority assigned to the NDN by US policy makers. Her analysis includes a few implications on the US side of things that have been largely over-looked by the regional experts themselves, and as such her short piece, "Cables from Tashkent," is a must-read.
The following day, Michael Allen, editor of Democracy Digest, wrote a post about another unsurprising diplomatic revelation, this time not from Wikileaks, but instead from the British Foreign Office archives. In the piece (available here), Allen quotes David Owens, the British Foreign Secretary at the time, admitting "British and American policy should have been to guide Iran and the Shah towards reducing his powers to that of a constitutional monarch as a democratic government was developed." Instead, both Western powers continued to funnel massive amounts of arms and military support to the despot, and became increasingly reliant on the Shah's own internal security organization - the dreaded SAVAK - for intelligence and analysis about the regime.
It is easy in hindsight to see why this formula worked out so poorly for US interests. Not only were the Iranian people being crushed under mounting forms of repression, but the Shah - often described as a megalomaniac - made no secret of his own personal wealth and power, or its source. The United States became synonymous with the Shah for most Iranians, leading to the US being blamed even for the Shah's ill-advised policies of which it was not even aware. In the chaos that followed the Shah's downfall in 1979, the US found itself the "unfair" target of an impassioned maelstrom of public discontent. Hostages were taken, effigies were burned, and the Great White Satan became to Iranians what the Evil Empire was to Reagan-era Americans.
Again, none of this is new. While it was hotly debated during the 'reformist' period of post-Cold War scholarship, as was the earlier US-backed coup to overthrow the democratically elected, but anti-Shah, Prime Minister Muhammad Mussadiq, these US diplomatic transgressions have become an accepted, albeit unsavory, part of our acknowledged past.
What Allen brings to the discussion - and is woven throughout the subtext of Davidson's piece - is the shocking inability of US policy planners to recognize the volatile precedents they are currently following in their approach to the Central Asian states. Appeasing tyrants, as Neville Chamberlain famously proved, has a nasty habit of emboldening them. Iran offers an example of how a repressive US-backed state, even with a robust and well-disciplined military, can implode under these harsh conditions. And more importantly, how much the US has to lose by aligning too closely with unpopular regimes.
What is the US doing in Central Asia, and what does Wikileaks tell us?
In regard to Central Asia, the cables made public by Wikileaks have uncovered some juicy gossip, but few substantial revelations. As is well known, US interests in the region are highly-focused on transit rights in support of the war in Afghanistan - the NDN. Considerations of human rights or political freedom take a distant backseat to these "regional strategic" issues. That hasn't stopped US diplomats from mentioning the various abuses present in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and elsewhere, but there has not been sufficient pressure or resources applied to affect change in these "feel good" talking point areas.
None of this is news to those who have followed US policy in the region, even casually, nor is it necessarily scandillous to any historian of US diplomatic history. That the United States puts its own short-term tactical priorities over the well-being of local citizens or the application of Western 'ideals' like freedom, equality or democracy abroad has been a standard mark of post-Cold War realism. Anyone claiming otherwise - from US diplomats to private contractors - is doing so disingenuously.
This is not to say that the US does not seek, in at least some ways, to promote political tolerance, electoral transparency, media freedom, and other basic markers of an open society in these countries. It certainly does, and some of the fiercest defenders of US policy come from individuals tasked and paid by the US government to promote just these values and advances. However, as on-the-ground operators are all-too aware, the "priority" entrusted them by the US State Department is often undercut - by the (real) priorities of the US State Department.
The problem of Wikileaks is not that it has revealed crucial aspects of US priorities or uncovered hidden agendas, but rather that it confirms - in the harsh light of their own internal memos - just how comfortable State diplomats are with the compromising positions they adopt. Corrupt politicians are seen as "pliable to US interests" and the awareness of rampant nepotism marks many political family members as possible sources of "unofficial influence."
In other words, when the US is forced by short-term strategic needs to cooperate with corrupt regimes, the US State Department resorts to exactly the type of back-room deals and unethical behavior for which the State department criticizes those regimes.
On the one hand, this is hypocrisy, laid bare in such a manner as to be undeniable. On the other, it is (marginally) effective - transport of US supplies through Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and other NDN countries has increased over the past 2 years, decreasing US reliance on unstable routes through Pakistan.
But, as Davidson and Allen point out, it also has a third major effect - it may undermine, or even destroy, the ability of the US to achieve future objectives in the region long-term. It's been 21 years since the fall of the Shah, and the US still has not re-established diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran. While the US continues to maintain a generally positive rendering among the opposition movements in Central Asia today, there is no guarantee this will continue. If US criticism of Human Rights abuses falls silent, or is perpetrated with the same degree of hypocrisy and inaction that marks US efforts at political reform in these states, what reason do oppressed citizens have to see the US as anything other than a partner in their oppression?
Left with Questions, Not Answers
Today's diplomats are certainly a savvy breed, and operate in a global geopolitical environment at once historically complex, and also uniquely flexible. There is no more Iron Curtain, no black-and-white, and no single boogey-man to push diplomats into irrational action (the general defense of the Mussadiq episode).
Why then does the lesson of Iran seem so absent from the discourse on US policy toward authoritarian states in the Former Soviet Union? How is a policy of neglecting long-term strategic regional influence for the benefit of short-term equipment supply chains possibly a rational - let alone good - option?
These are questions for which there is one simple answer - poor planning - but few simple solutions. A single transit route for the Afghan conflict through Pakistan is demonstrably unacceptable, and the ramifications of 1979 render the fastest supply route - through Iran - still impossible.
It is immature and impractical to to suggest that the US should have no relationship with anti-democratic regimes, but it must keep in mind the fundamental difference between short-term leverage and long-term influence. The previous will always be tempting, but the latter is infinitely more valuable.
A correction: It's been 31 years since the fall of the Shah.
ReplyDeleteThe problem isn't that we make deals for short term gain, it's when we forget that we made them for the sake of expediency and become fiercely loyal to a status quo as an end in and of itself. This is what prevents us from then abandoning the repressive regimes we made deals with because we simply fail to imagine that if we present our interests as purely mercenary then the next regime (better or worse for the people of the country involved) will be more likely to go ahead and cut a deal with us.
And on the other hand, at some point our strategic interests will run into places where they are irreconcilable with others. At that point, the nut becomes harder to crack because it leaves very few options--none of them palatable.
I think you nailed it. Whether we're looking at Iran, Israel, Cuba, or elsewhere, the transformation - even ossification - of short-term expediency into long-term "strategic partnerships" - often without a rationale to support such shifts - is both a big problem, and defining element of US foreign policy.
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