I’ve just had the following article published in the “Rhode Island Provident” of all places:
You would be forgiven for having been taken by surprise by the revolution in Kyrgyzstan. A few Scrabble enthusiasts may have been rubbing their hands at the news that (now that Mattel are allowing the use of proper nouns) the tiny mountainous nation in Central Asia will earn you 80 points for just one vowel – more if you can snag a triple word score tile. However, for the most part Kyrgyzstan has been unnoticed by the rest of the world.
It is now the site of a full scale revolution, the second in less than five years. The first, now known as the Tulip revolution, came about through opposition parties’ refusal to accept an election result they saw as tainted by vote rigging and an unfair use of the state run media. The President, initially seen as a reformer and a democrat, was forced out by mass protests and replaced with a former minister around whom the opposition had coalesced.
This, the second revolution, seems to have followed an identical pattern. Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the opposition’s choice of 2005, had lost his lustre by 2010. Having once been seen as the man to lead Kyrgyzstan away from its authoritarian tendencies and towards a democratic future – he was now seen as every bit as controlling and antidemocratic as the man he replaced. The 2009 elections were widely held to be fraudulent and in due course he too is being shown the door – Roza Otunbayeva, with long experience as a diplomat and politician, is the new hope of the opposition.
Unfortunately the new revolution is not a carbon copy in every respect. The 2005 revolution was a largely bloodless affair, whereas 63 people are already dead in 2010. Moreover, the man in Bakiyev’s shoes in 2005 – former physicist Askar Akeyev – was left with no support base and, after much posturing, realised he had no choice but to resign. Bakiyev has been keen to ensure he is not left in the same position and has been carefully nurturing a support base in his native south of the country – to which he has now fled. This raises the frightening prospect of civil war. In 1992 when opposing forces in neighbouring Tajikistan mobilized their home regions on either side of a similar power struggle the result was 2 years of bloody slaughter in which 50,000 people lost their lives.
Russia is the dominant power in the region, but clearly Obama must exert what influence he can to make sure there is no repeat of the slaughter. But this is a region where the US must tread lightly to avoid its motives being misunderstood. Many in the region thought the Tulip revolution was of the CIA’s making (or at very least actively encouraged by western organisations) with the aim of introducing a pliant regime who would host airbases for ongoing operations in Afghanistan. Some are now delighted to see “America’s Government” unravel. But this is a misrepresentation; in fact the US Government has traditionally shown a complete, almost callous, disregard for who is in power in Central Asia – happily handing over hard currency for airbases to Governments of all types.
The sad lesson of Central Asia is that you don’t get the Government you deserve. Kyrgyzstan is traditionally thought to be the most democratic of the Central Asian nations – that in turn has made it the least stable. Whilst the inhabitants of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan can do little about the dictators who rule them, the door to democracy in Kyrgyzstan was left open a crack and it is a crack through which the Kyrgyyz people have repeatedly tried to force themselves. Events may well have changed again by the time you read this, but it looks very much like the Kyrgyz people will not easily abandon their search for a leadership worthy of them.
It got me thinking about something the Liberal Democrats are bad at – as a consequence of the fact that the British political system is very bad at it: talking about foreign affairs and global governance issues. We are responsible for one of the largest and best resourced Foreign Offices in the world. Our international policy matters, matters deeply, to many people on every continent. Yet I cannot remember the last time I heard a discussion of British Foreign policy which wasn’t about Iraq or Afghanistan. Over vast swathes of the earth’s surface the actions of our Government are having a very real effect and we, the public, don’t seem to care.
Whilst this is a sad but perhaps inevitable effect of the parochial outlook of our news media it is a pity that we, as a liberal progressive political party are following suit. I would have hoped that as a party which valued internationalism and cooperation between nations we would have developed a complex foreign policy which is tailored to each nation – and values the fact that each nation is very different. After all you wouldn’t expect our policy in Iraq to be the same as our policy in Afghanistan, so why should our policy in Somalia be the same as our policy in Sudan. But it appears our foreign policy doesn’t go much beyond (commendable) general principles and the old favourites of Europe, Iraq and Afghanistan. All parties are guilty of this – but as the most progressive party in Britain my standards for the Lib Dems are higher. And of course the result of political parties not caring is that foreign policy will continue to be dictated by bureaucrats – I happen to think for the most part remarkably well – but in a total absence of political input.
The problem of course is that if our manifesto does not set out our detailed ideas for what our foreign policy should be in every respect is it leaves our candidates to make it up as they go along.
It may sound like I am getting overly obsessed with detail but I strongly believe that a liberal foreign policy has to be detailed. In the 90’s liberal interventionism – practiced badly – got a bad name whilst the mistakes of conservative isolationism (Rwanda) were not learned. This decade therefore, the debate seems to be framed in terms of two opposing sides: neo-conservative interventionism and liberal isolationism. The results have been disastrous and there is a pressing need for somebody to make the case for liberal interventionism: that is intervention that offers a helping hand rather than a hail of machine gun fire, and which appreciates that countries, like individuals, are different. They may have ways of working which, while different, are not wrong. A top-down one-size-fits-all approach will never work – indeed it is a hallmark of Orientalism. These are all classic liberal principles – let us start applying them in our dealings with the rest of the world.
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9 Comments
Great piece. I agree in principle with your conclusions here. There is a need to re-define Britain’s role and attitude to the rest of the world so that we aren’t seen primarily as a belicose power – this has been the unfortunate outcome of 40 years of post-imperialist foreign policy and more recent ‘adventures’ in Iraq and Afghanistan – these can be defended, but have massively perverted our international image, despite the ethics of previous action in the Balkans and Sierra Leone and to the detriment of real debate about the rest of our foreign policy . The upshot is that we need to learnt to lead with aid rather than force, and be seen to do so.
That said, we also need to be ready to take action where required – you site Rwanda as an example, others could be Sudan. However, there is a fundamental difficulty in our doing so, because of our glorious, or perhaps inglorious past. It is easy for the UK and the west to be painted as villains regardless of our intentions. Aid missions almost inevitably need to be backed up with some form of protection, which means boots on the ground.
The moment this happens, the mission becomes a target and has to be further militarised – Somalia’s UNOSOM missions are a case in point, and this hugely affected US policy throughout the 1990s, with the effect that they sat on their hands through much of the balkan bloodbath, as well as Rwanda.
It is time for foreign policy to be re-defined – and i hope that the Lib Dem promise of a SSDR fits within this, so that our military posture fits and becomes an adequate tool of our foreign policy aims.
Fred,
Ummm do you know Kyrgyzstan?
Frankly an axis of Western intervention from the drone attacks in Pakistan, through propping up the warlord government of Afghanistan, then into the Central Asian stans, no matter how well intentioned, is a recipe for absolute disaster. You must be nuttier than Blair, even though I am prepared to believe you mean better. You would enrage Muslim opinion and Russia simultaneously – probably China too.
“Liberal” interventionism – if by that you mean military intervention – is discredited for a reason.
Craig
i don’t want to mispeak for Fred, but i really don’t think that was what he was saying – the quoted article certainly doesn’t call for intervention in Kyrgystan, looking at the issues that the impression of such intervention has already caused.
In any case, you can be support liberal and humanitarian intervention without being militaristic, and our foreign and defence policy needs retrenching to address that issue and how we are seen. This won’t be easy – we need to overcome the spectre of Iraq and address the issue of Afghanistan and Pakistan. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.
I would welcome a realignment of our foreign policy and military aims along the lines of large, well-protected aid missions (which can take large supplies without fear of looting by governments or desperate citizens), and police actions in support of (and at the request of) legitimate but weak governments.
We don’t need to be interventionist to do any of that. Instead of trying to change other nations to be how we want them, why not find out what they want to be, and help the ones whose goals are acceptable to us?
Oh, for goodness sake, Craig. You had a decent point with antagonizing China and Russia, but had to spoil it with suggesting that Fred was calling for military action, and blathering about “Muslim opinion”.
The thrust of this piece was one of diplomacy and offering financial/material incentives. Most of all, it was a call to stop the unhinged obsession about Iraq which, arguably, was one of the single greatest factors which allowed the invasion by allowing Blair’s Law to be effected. Then, of course, there’s the question of just how you think anything could be done about Uzbekistan without ‘enraging’ Muslim opinion and Russia – and probably China too.
(Assuming that by withdrawing any state support for Karimov, thereby having clean hands whilst others do the boiling and repression isn’t particularly moral.)
As for “Muslim opinion”, how well d’you know the Kyrgyz people (ethnic and national group)? They are nominally Muslim, to say the least, no matter how much contemporaries try to tack on Islam onto the underlying shamanism and Tengriism and animism. I would recommend a few books by Peter Hopkirk or Colin Thubron.
As for ‘enraging’ “Muslim opinion”, it beggars belief that anyone claiming to be an upper-case or lower-case L/liberal could come out with this guff. D’you have any sources to demonstrate that this great homogeneous mass known as “Muslim opinion” knows about much less cares for a few valleys by the Tien Shan?
Or are you, in fact, throwing more kerosene on the Third Worldist fire by communalising entire population groups, and promoting the Osama bin Laden line that ‘true’ Muslims must have the same anti-Blair and Cobbettesque obsessions as you?
It was always a source of wonder to me, little mentioned at the time, that the policy of the really quite unpleasant otherwise “Project for a New American Century” neo-con think tank in the late nineties with regard to Iraq was that rather than risking a direct invasion, the US should adopt a policy of vigorously defending the southern no-fly zone in the same way as they had in the north, where in the north it had afforded sufficient protection for the Kurds to build strength. The idea was that if we gave the same indirect protection to the Shi’ite population in the south, between them they may fairly quickly gain the confidence to overthrow Saddam for themselves and not involve us all in a lengthy and possibly geo-politically disastrous war.
Having lived in several places in my life that have been the subject of coups or human rights abuses, I am somewhat keener than, as an anarchist at heart, I ought to be on interfering on behalf of oppressed people, and I’ve spent some time wondering how that could be justified in an anarchist society, let alone merely a liberal one.
The anarchist society would not of course have a military intended to “project force” around the globe. But it would likely have free market defence specialists, committed equally to highly efficient defence in time of attack but also to the non-aggression principle. And what I thought was that those of that anarchist society who were, for example, concerned about a particular oppressive situation in the world would be able, through private charity, just as we do with food aid, say, contract those defence firms to insert themselves in a purely protectionist/defensive role between the oppressed and their oppressors.
Sometimes they would be overt – perhaps such as in Darfur where the conflict is so open, in others, perhaps like Iran, they would have to be covert, literally acting like a hidden body-guard for people who need to retain the ability and confidence to go out, meet and plot with each other, under the eyes of the regime.
The idea is that this sort of protection rather than being overtly the interference of another state in one’s internal affairs, is intended simply to protect the ability of oppressed groups to bring about their own self-determined change when the time is right.
This is the opposite of a liberal case – indeed it is an assertion of current New Labour and FCO orthodoxy. It is precisely the same as Miliband’s argument. See Miliband’s Independent article “We must restore belief in the efficacy of Liberal interventionism”
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/david-miliband-we-must-restore-belief-in-the-efficacy-of-liberal-interventionism-1032226.html
It is not only Iraq which discredited this article of Blairite faith. It is Afghanistan too, where we are involved in an occupation with no planned end, which is propping up a government of electoral fraudsters comprising of the biggest warlords in the country and the biggest heroin producers in the world – including General Dostum and the Karzai family. Truth is a fundamental value of liberalism, and is always jettisoned in military adventures abroad – the lie that the Taliban are bigger drug producers than the Karzai government members being an arch example.
As for Alec’s challenge, I have n fact I beleive read everything published by Paddy Hopkirk and Colin Thubron, not to mention having spent longer in Central Asia than either of them. The Kyrgyz thankfully like other Central Asians are moderate and modern Muslims with little attraction to fundamentalism. But they would be surprised to hear they were animists. Christianity in the UK also grafted on many traditions from preceding religions here – it is simply the same process. They would be most insulted to be called “nominally” Muslim. Of course I don’t agree with Osama Bin Laden – about almost anything, I imagine – but common sense should tell us that potential blowback is something we should be wary of in any further forward policies in Muslim countries.
“Liberal interventionism” is commonly understood to have a potential military component – just google the phrase for numerous examples. Fred referred to a threat of civil war. If he meant to rule out military action, he would have been wise to say so.
How to deal with regimes like Karimovs? Traditional ways – sanctions, economic pressure, very limited relations, arms embargoes. We do all of those to Burma and none of them to Uzbekistan.
Fred is right in saying that Kyrgyzstan has been the most liberal of Central Asian states. One thing he and I might agree we should do immediately is open an Embassy there – we don’t have one. Big aid programme to help Rosa’s government would be good too. Policy should be concerted with Russia in the region as far as possible,
The idea that the great and influential of the august FCO can be bracketed with a political iteration which has been about for 15 years, and in power for 10, is one of the odder things you’ve said. Odder, even, than the definition of New Labour with the high politics of your disagreements on foreign policy rather than stuff like New Deal or Sure Start or tax credits which hoi polloi actually care about.
Then, that’s something we have in common.
Your ‘claim to fame’ comes from your posting to Tashkent for somewhat over two years. I don’t know how much time Hopkirk spent there during his period at ITN or research,but Thubron has written, off the top of my head, three books based on his travels in the region – so arguably challenges you.
But, turning this into a contest about who can pee furthest up the wall would be a bit silly, do you not think? Understanding of the politics of a region can come from ‘watching’, as they say in the diplomatic and intelligence fields.
This statement by you is little more than an appeal to [your] authority. Has anyone else here been to Central Asia? No? Okay, shall we defer to Craig Murray on every matter? No.
Besides, David Kelly – who spent more time in Iraq than you – supported the 2003 invasion, so would you have deferred to him?
By whom? You? Someone who considers an Internet petition to be a baneful force (and, wrongly, accused me of endorsing it)? Liberal interventionalism is a Humpty Dumpty term, which means whatever the speaker wishes it to… and I found nothing objectionable about Fred’s interpretation.
Now you’re loosing it faster than Hamid “All Go Talibyebye” Karzai. Google for goodness sake! I’ve just Googled for “Craig Murray is a tit” and got a match. This was your claiming that Rory Stewart was MI6: this was wrong when Scooter Libby did it to Valerie Plame, and wrong when you did it to Rory Stewart.
Many Haitians consider themselves to the Christian, but theirs is clearly imbued in animism. What of it?
And much of British society has been nominally Christian for generations, not least with that weird left-wing cult called the CofE. My Scottish Episcopal upbringing definitely had pre-Christian traditions, although the Free Presbyterian background of my maternal grandfather would have seen it as one step up from ‘Papism’ which – his generation, at least – saw as synonymous with paganism (Easter still is seen as a “pagan event” by many of these Scottish Protestant groupuscules).
Only if you consider it to be an insult, and that your status as the arbiter on what this homogenous Muslim mass thinks and does not think is beyond reproach. You sound more and more like a notalgist for Empire and regimentalism of Races with your every comment.
I understand his views on climate change are inspirational.
Only if you think “Muslims” are a little bit savage and that their homicidal tantrums are to be expected. By the same token, the invasion of Afghanistan was “blowback” for the mass-slaughter of 3,000 Americans (and the crew of the USS Cole, and 200 Kenyan workers) and Iraq for Saddam being a murderous tyrant who terrorized Iraqis.
Plus, this is clearly a reference to the July 2005 bombs: you know as well as I do that those responsible were radicalized aback the Kashmir conflict and the Saudi-Pak nexus in Afghanistan. Or, are you taking the Osama bin Laden line, post-2001 and with access to Western media that he really was concerned about Palestine or Afghanistan or Iraq or whatever was being projected onto him?
Plus, d’you consider the Oklahoma City bombing to have been “blowback” for the Waco and Ruby Ridge Sieges?
And, why is a so-called l/Liberal talking about “Muslim countries”? They are countries populated by individuals who may or may not be Muslim.
Like Iraq 1991-2003? Given that you were involved in the set-up, I’m none too surprised you are downplaying its major failure: that is, not achieving the deposition of Saddam Hussein and alleviation of Iraqi misery.
Like Zimbabwe? Like North Korea?
Oh, yes, the SPDC which is going to collapse any day now, and Aung San Suu Kyi who has been allowed to run again in elections. Forgive me, but what do British companies actually supply to Uzbekistan beyond a shoelaces for military boots or which she doesn’t get elsewhere?
You are on firmer ground when you are publicizing state repression within Uzbekistan or the amorality of the likes of Sting, but become rapidly unstuck when you try to map it into your wider Cobbettesque worldview.
Blimey, being talked about in your absence is fascinating. I had to admit I hadn’t realised this post had gone up yet and had missed this thread.
To set the record straight I wasn’t talking about military intervention, indeed I can think of virtually no circumstances where that would be warranted. Perhaps I misspoke, and it was certainly a mistake to evoke the spirit of Blair’s Chicago speech. My intention was merely to make the point that it would be disastrous if the consequences of our (entirely correct) opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (In my case I could also add Kosovo) were that liberal thought on foreign affairs became isolationist. We cannot allow conservatives to dominate the international policy discussion. Every time I read Foreign Affairs these days I become scared because I realise that policy makers think the way Craig assumed I was thinking.
Whilst Clegg was mostly very good last night – by far the best – he did talk a little too much for my liking about only acting in the national interest overseas. For me a liberal is not someone who wants a liberal nation but someone who wants a liberal world. Fascinating as your discussion has been I’m afraid my point was no more sophisticated than to say we ignore the outside world at our peril.
It was anyway more of a corollary to my main point which was that political parties need to get more sophisticated in their foreign policy. Manifestos have two audiences, the public who (at least in theory) have to choose between them and the civil servants who have to implement them. General principles and broad brush strokes may be enough for most of the former but they don’t give much of a steer to the latter. Craig, I’m sure you will agree that the manifesto of the ruling party didn’t have a huge impact upon the manner in which you did your job. You yourself give a perfect practical example of the sort of thing we should be saying. Imagine if our manifesto said “a Liberal Democrat government would open an embassy in Kyrgyzstan”