R.Kaiser's undiplomatic opinion about Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia

I decided to introduce my readers with thought provoking insights of Robert Kaiser - "Washington Post" has been made during the discussion in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in September 15, 2005. Yes, five years gone, but problems raised remain. Therefore I think it is better to remind. His views still concern me. "These are really silly documents about all of the commitments that Uzbekistan had made on that occasion to democratize Uzbek society, a kind of classic example of window-dressing diplomacy.It was ridiculous."..."And any smart, attentive, good citizen of Uzbekistan and of a member of the intelligence in Tashkent who read those documents at the time and thinks about them today thinks quite accurately that the United States is a laughable superpower that signs documents and does things that mean nothing to us. And I fear that has been the lesson for a lot of these people.Similarly, in Kazakhstan, Nazarbayev has every reason to think that he is cleaver than we are, that we insist on this and demand that and recommend the other and get none of them and then nothing happens..."it’s silly to be at all optimistic about the future(of Central Asia) ..."I interview all four other presidents on this tour three years ago. And I cooked up this provocative question that I asked all of them.I said, you know, I’m from America. The father of my country is George Washington. And a lot of our historians think that the greatest single gift George Washington gave to his country came at the end of his second term in office or the middle of his second term in office when he announced that that was going to be his last term. He was leaving voluntarily at the end of two terms. And that this was the single most valuable president in American politics and gave us some hope to establish a system based on the rule of law. And it was a huge moment in our history.Are you going to have one like that in your history? Are you,President Karimov, President Nazarbayev, President – are you going to do this. And that the three, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan just squirmed and dodged the question completely.

"...it’s really important to remember now that we are in for a really bad period
and a perhaps quite grim future,...That lumping these countries all together while geographically and historically convenient is wrong headed. There is one serious country in this group with a lot of oil and a lot of prospects and a big population, and that is Kazakhstan. The others are all relatively speaking insignificant
countries and will be for a very long time. It doesn’t mean they can’t cause a hell of a lot of trouble...http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/Central_Asia%27s%20Second%20Chance%2009-15-05%20Trans.pdf