Unusually blunt comments highlight the country’s role in the battle for influence in Central Asia.…
The United States ambassador to Kyrgyzstan has said that the country’s increasing ties with Russia is threatening its democracy, an unusually blunt statement that drew criticism in the country’s pro-Russian media.
Kyrgyzstan’s “growing partnership with Russia … [is] a challenge to our efforts to support Kyrgyzstan’s democracy,” the ambassador, Pamela Spratlen, wrote in an article for an association publication for American diplomats. Spratlen did not elaborate on the claim about the threat to Kyrgyzstan’s democracy, but she did note that as a result of Russian pressure and influence, Kyrgyzstan evicted a U.S. military base, is set to join the Russia-led Eurasian Union, and has largely accepted the Russian narrative of what is happening in Ukraine.
“Kyrgyzstan’s new leadership would welcome a partnership with the United States, but places a priority on its relationship with Russia, which often comes at our expense. It remains an unanswered question how Kyrgyzstan can maintain its democratic trajectory while pursuing this partnership. President [Almazbek] Atambayev’s decision to enter the protectionist Customs Union by the beginning of 2015 exemplifies this challenge,” Spratlen wrote. “Confronted with a sea of internal and external challenges, President Atambayev has forged a strong partnership with Russian President Putin, seeing Russia as one of his few options for much needed assistance. This partnership has had its impact on our efforts, leading to the closure of the United States military presence at the Transit Center at Manas International Airport, while Russia retains its Kant Air Base outside of Bishkek.”
The statements highlighted Kyrgyzstan’s role as the most overt U.S.-Russian battleground over influence in Central Asia, and were a rare U.S. public acknowledgment of that competition.…
…the response to her statement was predictable. “It’s not at all a coincidence that the anti-Atambayev and anti-Russian demarche of the U.S. ambassador was made ahead of Kyrgyzstan’s entrance into the Customs Union and illustrates the poorly hidden intention to interfere in the process of Kyrgyzstan’s integration into the vitally important economic space with its strategic and regional partners,” wrote the Congress of Peoples of Kyrgyzstan, a nationalist group. “Kyrgyzstanis are well aware of these American ‘efforts’ to support democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria and how these countries were plunged into chaos and the abyss of civil war and then called for ‘independence’ in Ukraine.”
“From Pamela Spratlen’s article it’s clear that Kyrgyzstan is strategically important for the U.S. After all, normally diplomats don’t speak that openly,” said Mars Sariyev, a local pundit. That she wrote it, he added, demonstrates that “U.S. policy in Kyrgyzstan has failed.
For background, see:
The US Grand Strategy and the Eurasian Heartland in the Twenty-First Century Emre İşeria
School of Politics, International Relations and the Environment (SPIRE), Keele University, UK
See especially the section, "Geo-Strategic Dimensions Of The Eurasian Heartland," p. 33-39
The Heartland Theory and the Present-Day Geopolitical Structure of Central Eurasia
Eldar Ismailov and Vladimer Papava
