There has been a crisis of governance in Kyrgyzstan, certainly. But an analysis focused on state failure conceals the extent to which what has occurred is also the product of a glaring social and economic crisis – part of the “long-range” fall-out from the global financial crisis that has pushed many families to the brink. Moreover, a focus on internal state “failure” ignores the degree to which Kyrgyzstan, like other small, poor countries that suddenly find themselves hailed as strategic partners in a dubious “war on terror”, has also been consistently failed by the international community. The Obama administration, like its predecessor, has been too willing to take surface quiescence in Kyrgyzstan as an index of “stability”, whilst failing to ask how its base deals have propped up a deeply authoritarian government. In this sense, last week’s crisis should be read as a failure of realpolitik as much as a failure of state. As politicians and diplomats hurry to negotiate new partnerships with Kyrgyzstan’s interim government, they would do well to heed the lessons of this failure, and to enquire how their “strategic partnerships” either exacerbate or address the inequalities that brought people onto the street in their thousands last week.[I have corrected an error in the published article that repeated several lines and made for confusing reading.]
« Older Messages in the Matrices of Records... | Five lines. That's how long th... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by k8t at 4:24 PM on April 7, 2010