What's Uzbekistan Like?
How's that for a question? It's the same as if someone asked 'What's the USA (or any other country) like?' The answer depends on who you are and what you're looking for. If you're looking for free and fair elections and a government that embraces the rule of law, don't look to Uzbekistan.
Karimov is an autocratic, kleptocratic leader whose security forces use primative, sometimes reprehensible, occasionally barbaric, methods to keep order. This is a given.
With that stipulation, governments have three choices:
1) Sever ties and have no further contact. This option may or may not include attempts to push sacntions through the UN or to impose them unilaterally.
2) Attempt regime change. In Uzbekistan, Karimov has consolidated power sufficiently well that this would require, IMHO, military action. Nothing short of that would bring him down.
3) Maintain ties and try to work on improving conditions for the population of Uzbekistan by working on the margins.
I can't think of any other options, but perhaps my readers can.
I am strongly against option 2. I don't think it works very well and we have current examples to support that belief. The USA is overstretched at the moment militarily anyway, so perhaps if it were to be done, some other military would have to take it on.
Option 1 would be very satisfying and people who hate the Karimov regime would find it a moral victory. I mean, how can you deal with someone with his track record? If you so much as talk with him, don't you have blood on your hands? This is the option of moral purity. The problem with this option is that it really would have no effect other than cause greater harm for the people of Uzbekistan. Karimov and his cronies are well ensconced and they'll do just fine regardless of sanctions or diplomatic relations. If there's any suffering to be done, it will be the people of Uzbekistan who'll have to bear the brunt. I refer you to North Korea and Cuba for examples to support this opinion. Some (mostly Reagan supporters) say that economic pressure from the US is what led to the collapse of the USSR, but I'm more inclined to believe the USSR needed no help to implode.
That leaves us Option 3. Hold your nose, and work within the system to try to make changes at the edges that may bear fruit some day. After all, Karimov is 80 and can't live forever. While there's no reason to think that the man who replaces him (no, I don't think it's going to be Gulnora and so it will almost certainly be a man) will be a Thomas Jefferson, it's possible to spread ideas and infrastructure that may make it easier for any successor to have more liberal (in the classic sense) political practices. We in the West have a tendency to want things to change NOW. In Asia, it's easier to think more in terms of centuries. It's horribly unsatisfying, but it probably has better long term prospects.
End of part one.
Karimov is an autocratic, kleptocratic leader whose security forces use primative, sometimes reprehensible, occasionally barbaric, methods to keep order. This is a given.
With that stipulation, governments have three choices:
1) Sever ties and have no further contact. This option may or may not include attempts to push sacntions through the UN or to impose them unilaterally.
2) Attempt regime change. In Uzbekistan, Karimov has consolidated power sufficiently well that this would require, IMHO, military action. Nothing short of that would bring him down.
3) Maintain ties and try to work on improving conditions for the population of Uzbekistan by working on the margins.
I can't think of any other options, but perhaps my readers can.
I am strongly against option 2. I don't think it works very well and we have current examples to support that belief. The USA is overstretched at the moment militarily anyway, so perhaps if it were to be done, some other military would have to take it on.
Option 1 would be very satisfying and people who hate the Karimov regime would find it a moral victory. I mean, how can you deal with someone with his track record? If you so much as talk with him, don't you have blood on your hands? This is the option of moral purity. The problem with this option is that it really would have no effect other than cause greater harm for the people of Uzbekistan. Karimov and his cronies are well ensconced and they'll do just fine regardless of sanctions or diplomatic relations. If there's any suffering to be done, it will be the people of Uzbekistan who'll have to bear the brunt. I refer you to North Korea and Cuba for examples to support this opinion. Some (mostly Reagan supporters) say that economic pressure from the US is what led to the collapse of the USSR, but I'm more inclined to believe the USSR needed no help to implode.
That leaves us Option 3. Hold your nose, and work within the system to try to make changes at the edges that may bear fruit some day. After all, Karimov is 80 and can't live forever. While there's no reason to think that the man who replaces him (no, I don't think it's going to be Gulnora and so it will almost certainly be a man) will be a Thomas Jefferson, it's possible to spread ideas and infrastructure that may make it easier for any successor to have more liberal (in the classic sense) political practices. We in the West have a tendency to want things to change NOW. In Asia, it's easier to think more in terms of centuries. It's horribly unsatisfying, but it probably has better long term prospects.
End of part one.