bringing countries – or dictators – to the tipping point is a lot easier and more inexpensive than it used to be.

warsaw moscow belgrade tbilisi kyiv bishkek minsk

you need a lot of beer to come up with a good template.

If Bush deserves little credit for the amazing number of anti-incumbant, democratic uprisings lately, then Clinton certainly deserves little credit for the “booming” 90s economy. He was just around at the right time, however you’ll find many, many liberals willing to give Clinton the benefit of the doubt. I’d just like to have single standards.

By comparison the PORA civic campaign had organized 73 regional groups with tens of thousdands of activists. Accrding to PORA, they distributed 79 million pieces of literature, held more than 1500 public actions and set up the network that brought the falsification during the election to international attention. This is from a brochure distributed at the “Official ceremony of completion of activities of PORA Campaign, Kyiv, January 29, 2005.”

The people outside a country are really only competing for the Oscar for best supporting actor. If they ascribe a starring role to themselves, they are mistaken (except in cases of actual invasion).

The role of the OSCE is more subtle. It is one of the factors that sets norms, that defines possible outcomes, that sets the frameworks within which political players act. When people in Eastern Europe said they wanted to live in normal European countries, part of that definition of normal came from OSCE values. Other parts came from the Council of Europe or from the European Union. Other parts of that idea of normality came less from institutions than fromculture, personal experience and other factors.

Still, the role of the OSCE in helping to define this framework is important, and it’s important in Kyrgyzstan because of that country’s membership in the organization as a slightly different legacy of the Soviet experience. (Compare the norms defined by the OSCE with those set by ASEAN, the OAU, APEC or a Middle East regional grouping.) The heritage of Helsinki is one of the planks that the Kyrgyz opposition reached for when it built a platform to oppose the what the Akayev government had become.

It’s good for the West that these norms were available because they represent a source of legitimacy separate from ethnicity or religion.

As a postscript, I would say that “people like V. Havel” include Jacek Kuron, Lech Walesa, Adam Michnik, Gyorgy Konrad, Marcin Krol, Gabor Demszky, Vytautas Landsbergis. Go see what they’ve said about the CSCE, the Helsinki committees and their importance to dissidents.

The contempt for the sovereignty of independent nation states by NGOs and their supporters is quite astounding.

http://www.registan.net/?p=4626
(Scroll down to a recap on an LA Times now behind an archive wall.)

Was the extensive effort of the US to help the Ukraine opposition organize real or were the Guardian columnists commenting on it, Timothy Garton Ash (pro) and Jonathan Steele (anti), just caught up in some fantastic mirage? But maybe we were just after all that Ukranian oil, much like our clever exploitation of the Georgian situation.

Could Bush do more? Sure. But the fact remains that he as increased democracy funding abroad, we give far more direct help to oppositions than the EU, and its starting to pay off.

RD - as the WSJ article makes quite clear, the US refused to fund activities in Kyrgyzstan that might be construed as creating an effective opposition, encouraging civil disobedience etc. Its efforts had only marginal consequences. The US manifestly is rather worried at what is happening in Kyrgyszstan – it didn’t want this. Different story in Georgia – but there, energy politics played a not-insubstantial role.

Peter – yes – there’s no doubt that incumbents may appeal to stability to try to get foreign support. But I simply don’t agree that Bush has agreed that democracy everywhere is the answer – the rhetoric outpaces the reality by a very substantial margin.

You have a point, but doesn’t the fact that the Belarusian Foreing Minister is warning of instablitity also give you pause or cause second thoughts?

As you know, the administration backs and backed to varying degrees appalling dictatorships in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Central Asian countries partly because of the war with Islamic fundamentalits, who are every bit as nutty as the people in Florida.

But I believe, after 911 Bush decided dictatorships where creating more instability and more terrorists rather than preventing chaos.

http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/rights/articles/eav121703.shtml

http://www.iri.org/pdfs/2-25-05InPutinsBackyard.pdf

In short, we’ve made a substantial contribution to the “regional contagion effect” supposedly driving this. This post seems like a determined attempt to ignore all that in case Bush got any credit. The hard fact is he had increased democracy aid funding, NGOs are using some of this, and its paying off.

Of course there are.

it takes a cursory glance at the last decade of the country’s history to disprove that notion.

In the American news media at the moment, there’s no time for a cursory glance at the history of a country nobody’s ever heard of. They’re starving that poor woman in Florida to death! Who on earth has time to think about anything else?

You’re right that I’m starting from a position of skepticism on this matter. As I explained, my casual observation is that CSCE/OSCE involvement hasn’t correlated particularly well with democratization, and that happens to fit well with my general views about how political changes such as democratizations take place. But I’m certainly open to serious arguments for alternative points of view. Is your International Organization article (or some version of the arguments contained therein) available online? If so, I’m keen to read it.

It would probably also seem obvious to you that the sun travelled around the earth. That’s to say, your argument combines naivete with a huge amount of over-reaching.

I’m curious to see what you come up with.