The situation in Uzbekistan utterly frustrates me. After 9/11 people asked, “Why do they hate us?” Uzbekistan is a perfect example of why. The Uzbeks are ruled by a despot who does not believe in Freedom (which is supposed to be the one value that we are trying to spread). Uzbekistan however has an airbase that is of vital importance as a staging ground for combat operations in Afghanistan. The U.S. makes the choice to support a government that massacred its own people. American dollars keep that regime in power, thus setting the stage for the possibility of blowback. It would be a mistake to think that this most recent massacre is just a one time thing that surprised our government. Over a year ago I blogged about this article (a MUST READ) reporting on a prison in Uzbekistan. Gulags are “in” right now.
Time Magazine’s Asia edition features Kishore Mahbubani’s new book, “Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust Between America and the World,” which offers other reasons to explain how we squandered our once glorious reputation, and what we can to do change our course (although this second part is reportedly not very substantive):
Some of the ground Mahbubani covers is familiar enough, but much is not. One of his arguments is that the loss of trust between the U.S. and the rest of the world started years before George W. Bush invaded Iraq “unilaterally.” Mahbubani is particularly astute about how the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 damaged America’s image overseas. He writes, for example, about how disillusioned Thais were when the U.S. did not bail them out after it had bailed out Mexico during a similar currency crisis in 1994. The reason the U.S. spurned Thailand may seem obvious to a lot of Americans”you’re not on our border,” one U.S. Treasury Department official supposedly told the Thais. But for a country that had followed the global financial rules as dictated by Washingtonopening itself up to large capital flows from abroad, only to get hammered as that same money flew back out in a matter of daysthe truth hurt in ways that most Americans still don’t get. The perception was that the U.S. would prop up another nation if threatened with a massive wave of illegal immigration, but otherwise cared only that big American banks should be able to get their money out of Thailand ASAP. Is it any wonder, Mahbubani writes, that Chinathe one major country that didn’t play by Washington’s rules back thennow sees its influence gaining steadily, probably at America’s expense?
Hopefully the fact that Mahbubani takes plenty of shots at the Clinton administration will get even Republicans to read what he has to say.
Mahbubani is equally forceful about U.S. abuses at its war-on-terror prison camps. He writes that Guantánamo Baywhere inmates have been held indefinitely without formal chargeshas had a “profound effect” on the liberal élites that are America’s “best friends abroad.” Many Americans don’t yet see the corrosive effects of this injustice, viewing Guantánamo as a necessary evil in a grim but vital war against the people who brought down the Twin Towers and beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. But I’ll bet Christopher Hill gets it. Hill is the U.S. diplomat now charged with trying to get key negotiating partners in line to deal with North Korea and its nukes. One of the most troublesome U.S. allies is South Korea, which is in the midst of a kiss-and-make-up lovefest with its brothers to the North. A few weeks ago, Hill had a testy exchange with South Korean journalists over why Seoul’s blame-America-first media don’t write more about the heinous human-rights abuses in the socialist paradise next door. It’s a good question. One answer, no doubt, is the distrust of America fomented by Guantánamo.
Further reading:
Mahbubani’s essay in the Globalist: Dealing with the Muslim World- Five Western Mistakes
NPR’s story on the U.S. resisting a NATO probe of the massacre in Uzbekistan
