In fact, I claimed that the various revolutions were not sponsored by the U.S., but that a very poor choice of words by Lorne Craner (then A/S at DRL) after the Rose Revolution would have made the leaders think the U.S. was behind them, as he seemed to take credit for it.

I was part of the staff working behind the scenes with our Central Asian policy for the last several years. While not entirely satisfactory in its outcome (with respect to Uzbekistan), it was not cowboy diplomacy. Some very dedicated individuals at State and Defense and within our embassies have really labored over the right mix of sticks to carrots.

You are wrestling with the some tough issues…and I check in on you pretty often to see what new observations you’re passing along. Keep it up.

Meppen

Your original post is not about the color revolutions at all– you insert the highly suspect assertion that the color revolutions were essentially western-run into an entirely unrelated sentence as a modest subordinate clause, following the principle that the more something is repeated, the more true it must be. If western sponsorship of the color revolutions becomes a widely-accepted cliche, then no one will have to prove it.

The way I see it is this: there were democracy promotion programs in all of the countries– indeed, they exist in most countries of the FSU. These programs put money into promoting free press, civil society support, opening political debate, political party development and many, many other areas. These programs are not secret– on the contrary, they are quite transparent and anyone who wants to can know what they’re doing. What happened that was much more significant was that people in these countries had legitimate gripes and there were also entirely internal forces in each country against each of the regimes. Turnover is a normal event in the political life of most countries– why should it be so shocking that turnover happened in a handful of CIS countries.

Of course, independent media outlets and opposition politicians, some of which may have at some time attended a US- or Soros-sponsored conference or activity, took some role in these revolutions, but that doesn’t make these things US-sponsored by any stretch of the imagination. You can play “six degrees of separation from Uncle Sam” all you want, but it really does sound like conspiracy theorizing. I like to think that US Government activities had some small role in promoting increased pluralism in politics in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan– if true that’s something to be proud of, but I just don’t see HOW the revolutions could have been sponsored by the West– that’s MUCH harder to proove. So Freedom House helped publish opposition papers– that’s supporting press freedom and it’s an entirely legal activity that anybody who wanted to knew about; I certainly don’t think it’s what tipped the scales against Akaev. Saakashvili went to study in the US on an exchange program– big deal, that doesn’t make him forever unable to take an independent position; Shevarnadze studied and built much of his career in Russia, that does not ipso facto make him a Russian pawn.

You have expressed the same belief in the past — you are always stating things like NGOs were behind Andijon and the various colored revolutions as you act as a unthinking, glorified stenographer for Uzbek and Russian propaganda — so my argument is not with Kyrgyz diplomats but with you. Your position is ignorant and borders on racist for presuming that if something happens in Kyrgyzstan, it is not possible for the Kyrgyz to have done it themselves. There was no outside involvement, indeed many of those involved have complained publicly that they got no support from the West during the revolution when they thought they would.

The Kyrgyz diplomat is quite right in saying that the West pressured them not to send the refugees back — they very did pressure them as the Kyrgyz government was looking as though it was going to bow to Uzbek thuggishness and send them back to be tortured. Kyrgyzstan had an obligation under international agreements that it signed voluntarily not to return refugees to a country where they might face torture or execution. Fortunately sense and decency prevailed in Bishkek and they were not sent back whatever your diplomat wanted.

Laurence, like myself and many other Americans, you may well owe your existence to the fact that your forebears were allowed to seek refuge here. It is an extremely important part of international law that is not to be shrugged off lightly.

My posts were based on comments I heard from the Kyrgyz diplomat who spoke at Brookings. Your argument is with him, or with Brookings, not me.

A few statements from Lorne Craner and a printing press does not a revolution make. In fact the U.S. has nearly always preferred the status quo in Central Asia, not regime change. The Embassy in Bishkek was utterly unprepared and uncertain as to what to do during the events, as were most people.

Just because some right-wing nut case from the Pentagon says something, it does not make it true. Otherwise there would be no insurgency in Iraq and they’d all be waving flowers at the American forces there. The Pentagon is the least credible institution in the United States when it comes to knowledge of other societies.

Meppen blamed “cowboy diplomacy” in the aftermath of the Rose, Tulip and Orange Revolutions, which he said were sponsored by the United States. Meppen even quoted from statements made by State Department official Lorne Craner claiming credit for them, and pointed to Freedom House’s role in printing opposition newspapers in Bishkek.

So, your argument is with one of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s former top aides, who was certainly in a position to know what the US was up to–not with me.

He told the audience that Kyrgyzstan wanted to return Uzbek refugees after Andijan, because “some of them were criminals.” Because of “pressure” from the West, Kyrgyzstan did not return them.

In other words, Kyrgyzstan had been advised by Westerners–who pay lip service to regional cooperation–not to cooperate with its neighbor.

I mean, just look at ORT or Rossiia, the most watched news outlets by the Uzbek elite, to see how Russia is supplying Central Asia with a more polished source of xenophopia, narrow-mindedness and rumor-mongering.

What’s more strange than an “anti-Russian tone” at an open forum on Central Asia is that academics are taking cheap shots like this one: “Probably not what the US State Department and USAID types who paid for the Tulip Revolution wanted to hear, or even the UNDP or Brookings people.” Real constructive…