[Mb-civic] Retreat From the Freedom Agenda - Jackson Diehl - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Retreat From the Freedom Agenda
<>
By Jackson Diehl
The Washington Post
Monday, April 24, 2006; A17

President Bush's retreat from the ambitious goals of his second term 
will proceed one small but fateful step further this Friday. That's 
when, after more than two years of stalling, the president will deliver 
a warm White House welcome to Ilham Aliyev, the autocratic and corrupt 
but friendly ruler of one of the world's emerging energy powers, Azerbaijan.

Here's why this is a tipping point: At the heart of Bush's democracy 
doctrine was the principle that the United States would abandon its Cold 
War-era practice of propping up dictators -- especially in the Muslim 
world -- in exchange for easy access to their energy resources and 
military cooperation. That bargain, we now know, played a major role in 
the emergence of al-Qaeda and other extremist anti-Western movements.

To his credit, the reelected Bush made a genuine stab at a different 
strategy last year in Azerbaijan and another Muslim country, Kazakhstan. 
Both resemble Iran or Iraq half a century ago. They are rapidly 
modernizing, politically unsettled, and about to become very, very rich 
from oil and gas.

With both Aliyev and Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev planning 
elections last fall, Bush dispatched letters and senior envoys with a 
message: Hold an honest vote and you can "elevate our countries' 
relations to a new strategic level." The implicit converse was that, 
should they fail to deliver, there would be no special partnership -- no 
military deals, no aid, no presidential visits to Washington.

Both Aliyev and Nazarbayev made token efforts to please Bush. But both 
dismally failed to demonstrate that they were willing to liberalize 
their countries rather than using oil wealth to consolidate 
dictatorship. The State Department said of Aliyev's parliamentary 
elections, "there were major irregularities and fraud." Nazarbayev's 
election was worse. Since then, two of Nazarbayev's opponents have died 
or been murdered in suspicious circumstances. Three of Aliyev's foes are 
being tried this month on treason charges, and his biggest rival has 
been jailed.

Aliyev is nevertheless getting everything he might have hoped for from 
Bush. Aid is being boosted, the Pentagon is drawing up plans for 
extensive military cooperation -- and there is the White House visit, 
which the 44-year-old Azeri president has craved ever since he took over 
from his dad three years ago. If Nazarbayev chooses, he will be next. He 
has been offered not just a Washington tour but a reciprocal visit by 
Bush to Kazakhstan.

Why the retreat on the democracy principle? Azeri observers speculate 
that Bush may want Aliyev's help with Iran, which is its neighbor and 
contains a large Azeri ethnic minority. But administration officials 
tell me a more pressing reason is a rapidly intensifying campaign by 
Russia to restore its dominion over former Soviet republics such as 
Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan -- and to drive the United States out of the 
region.

Though nominally Bush's ally in the war on terrorism, Russian President 
Vladimir Putin has cynically exploited Bush's effort to promote 
democracy in Eurasia. His diplomats and media aggressively portray 
Washington's support for free media, civil society groups and elections 
as a cover for CIA-sponsored coups. Autocrats who stage crackdowns, such 
as Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov, are quickly embraced by Moscow, which 
counsels them to break off ties with the U.S. military. State-controlled 
Russian energy companies are meanwhile seeking to corner oil and gas 
supplies and gain control over pipelines, electricity grids and 
refineries throughout Eurasia. If they succeed, Russia can throttle the 
region's weak governments and ensure its long-term control over energy 
supplies to Central and Western Europe.

In late February Putin arrived in Azerbaijan at the head of a large 
delegation and proceeded to buy everything Aliyev would sell, including 
a commitment to export more oil through Russia. Earlier this month he 
welcomed Nazarbayev to Moscow, and scored an even bigger success. Not 
only did the Kazakh leader endorse Putin's plan for a Moscow-dominated 
"common economic space," but he also signed a deal that will double 
Kazakhstan's oil exports through Russia. Despite heavy U.S. lobbying, 
Nazarbayev has yet to firmly commit to sending oil through a rival 
Western pipeline, which begins in Azerbaijan and ends in the Turkish 
port of Ceyhan.

Putin's aggressive tactics forced the hand of the administration, which 
had been holding back its White House invitations in the hope of 
leveraging more steps toward liberalization. "We don't want to see 
Azerbaijan closed off by the Russians, because that will close off the 
energy alternative to Russia for Europe," one official said. He added: 
"If Azerbaijan falls under Russian influence there will be no democracy 
agenda there at all."

In short, the race for energy and an increasingly bare-knuckled contest 
with Moscow for influence over its producers have caused the downgrading 
of the democracy strategy. It might be argued that the sacrifice is 
necessary, given the large economic and security stakes. But, then, that 
was the logic that prevailed once before. According to Bush, history 
proved it wrong.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/23/AR2006042301017.html?nav=hcmodule
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060424/db861607/attachment.htm