The Karimov Debate

Returning to the windy Kaplan piece, I was particularly struck by his argument for what to do in Uzbekistan. Here's the excerpt:

The Asia expert Mark Helprin has argued that while we pursue our democratization efforts in the Middle East, increasingly befriending only those states whose internal systems resemble our own, China is poised to reap the substantial benefits of pursuing its interests amorally—what the United States did during the Cold War. The Chinese surely hope, for example, that our chilly attitude toward the brutal Uzbek dictator, Islam Karimov, becomes even chillier; this would open up the possibility of more pipeline and other deals with him, and might persuade him to deny us use of the air base at Karshi-Khanabad. Were Karimov to be toppled in an uprising like the one in Kyrgyzstan, we would immediately have to stabilize the new regime or risk losing sections of the country to Chinese influence.

This argument is obviously very familiar from the Cold War - it was perhaps put most eloquently by Jeane Kirkpatrick in her famous Commentary piece that caught the eye of President-elect Reagan, Dictatorships & Double Standards. The thrust of the argument was that the US must support autocratic (as opposed to totalitarian) regimes in countries where there was threat of communist (totalitarian) success. Kirkpatrick charged Carter with allowing such regimes to collapse due to his over-concern with human rights. (Kirkpatrick's main examples were of course Iran and Nicaragua.) Authoritarian regimes, according to Kirkpatrick, left the fundamental institutions of the country fundamentally in place - so that democracy could conceivably grow - while totalitarian regimes attempted to reorder everything. Both Shi'ite theocracy in Iran and communism in Nicaragua, according to this view, were crippling authoritarian systems.

Today in Uzbekistan there is of course no threat of communism. The main threats people like to cite are radical Islamism and China. Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov likes to talk about the first threat. Here's the elderly tyrant in the Steven Lee Myers' write-up:

"Their aim is to unite the Muslims and establish a caliphate," Mr. Karimov said of militants who stormed Andijon's prison early Friday, the Russian news agency Interfax reported from the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. "Their aim is to overthrow the constitutional regime," he said.

Karimov's Tashkent regime is constitutional inasmuch as every state in the world has some sort of constitution; possessing a constitution has little to do with the government if it's inadequate or ignored. But I don't think anybody contends in good faith that Karimov has a democratic bone in his body. But they are susceptible to his evocation of the Islamist specter. Let's move to that. The IWPR has a nice explanation of the violence that's afflicted Uzbekistan for the past year. There is indeed the threat of Hizb-u-Tahrir, who allegedly killed some fifty people a year ago, were also possibly behind the attacks on the US and Israeli embassies last July. But since then, most of the uproar has been against governmental abuses. The invaluable Ahmed Rashid wrote in December that the Karimov regime has begun closing down its borders and attempting to isolate the country. It's pulled out of the CIS mutual defense pact, and causes difficulties for US supply caravans from bases in the country to Afghanistan (on top, of course, of continuing its destabilizing support of ethnically-Uzbek General Dostum). To say that aiding Karimov is part of a battle against Islamism, in either Uzbekistan or Afghanistan, seems like a tough sell.

However, at least he's not in the China camp, says Kaplan. Indeed. Where to start?

Containment has always been an uncomfortable policy, but I'm about to argue it wasn't necessary for much of the Cold War. However, we're not yet, as much as Kaplan wishes otherwise, in a Cold War with China. To push for the moral compromises that comes from containment (mainly Kirkpatrick's embrace of authoritarians) for a prospective Cold War is completely unacceptable. Particularly if this new Cold War were completely non-ideological. If Kaplan wants America to abandon its embrace of Wilsonian democratization - as he quite explicitly does - then whether Uzbekistan is in an American or Chinese (or Russian) sphere of influence will make very little difference morally or for the people of Uzbekistan. It will merely be part of a new realpolitik Great Game. Or the continuation of one, for since the end of the Cold War, the world has been to content to support authoritarians throughout while pushing for oil and natural gas. But are the costs worth it, particularly if you accept at all Bush's analytical linkage of authoritarianism and radical Islamism? (Obviously Bush himself accepts these links, which is why his uncomplicated support of Karimov is so glaringly hypocritical and counter-productive.)

Perhaps Uzbekistan is another way to engage China. Any economist will tell you that China will increasingly need more oil and natural gas, and anybody with a map will see that it makes quite a bit of sense for much of the Central Asian oil to go east. If America agreed to such a deal, it might lesson China's need for oil from, say, West Africa. Moreover, China could be encouraged to help US anti-terrorist efforts in Central Asia, because the destabilization from Islamist terrorists would have a great effect on China. (This may be playing with the devil, however. China's human rights abuses in Xinjiang are at least comparable to Karimov's in the Fergana valley.)

There are obviously no easy solutions here. But supporting Karimov in order to fight Islamism is counter-productive, and supporting him in order to contain China creates a materialistic American foreign policy that simply isn't worth fighting for.