Situation we shouldn't ignore

Sometimes in foreign policy, it's important to know how limited your choices are.

That's the case today for the United States in Kyrgyzstan, where just over five years after one corrupt authoritarian president was toppled in the "Tulip Revolution" a second corrupt authoritarian president was given the boot.

Why should it matter at all to the U.S. what happens in a landlocked, mountainous, intensely poor, former Soviet republic?

Because the U.S. maintains a strategic air base at Manas, a short drive from the country's capital. Before this latest chaotic change of government, tens of thousands of American troops passed through Manas on their way to service in Afghanistan each day.

It's an important base, and Kyrgyzstan is located so strategically in Central Asia that Russia has an air base of its own there. Both countries pay the Kyrgyz government millions of dollars for the privilege, though it's likely that much of that money has been siphoned off by various kleptocrats.

After the "Tulip Revolution," U.S. policy had been to do whatever it took to assure that Manas remained operational, even if that meant turning a blind eye to the successor regime's authoritarian tendencies and its repression of political opponents.

Now that the successor has been booted as well, the challenge will be to chart a course that balances American strategic interests with American principles.

What are our interests there? The strategic military ones are obvious.

But in the longer term, it's also in America's interest for Kyrgyzstan to establish a stable democracy.

And to do that, there needs to be not only political reform but reform and development of the Kyrgyz economy.

That's a pretty daunting agenda in a region where clan connections take precedence over all others, where borders between countries are ill-defined, and where poverty is endemic.

Complicating all this, there is the matter of Islam, which generally in the words of one author "rests lightly" on Central Asia.

In a post-Soviet ideological vacuum, while those in power have focused on enriching themselves rather than uplifting their people, fundamentalist and radical Islam could step into the gap.

The choices, then, are complicated and sometimes - as the record of the past five years demonstrates - mistakes will be made.

But this is a region we ignore at our peril. - J.R.[[In-content Ad]]