Kazakhstan,
long considered to be the most stable country in Central Asia, is in
crisis. It’s never prudent to predict an outcome when events are still
unfolding. We are still in media res. But it is possible to look back
and try to find origins for the current crisis. And it is essential
that we in the West do no harm.
Kazakhstan is different from its
Central Asian neighbors in one very significant way. Immediately after
independence 30 years ago, the president of newly independent
Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, said that if Kazakhstan is indeed to
be an independent nation, it will need a new generation that thinks in
different ways than in the past. To that end, he created the Bolashak
program (bolashak means future in the Kazakh language). Even before
Kazakhstan started to profit significantly from Western partners
developing its huge oil and natural-gas reserves in the Caspian Sea, it
began sending thousands of bolashak students abroad, not just for a
semester but for full university educations and sometimes even graduate
degrees. Many studied in authoritarian Singapore, but a large number
gained their university degrees in Western Europe and the United
States. And now, 20 years later, there’s a full generation of
globalized Kazakhstanis who came of age in other countries with other
cultures and who did, indeed, learn to think in different ways.
That’s
not to say that bolashak alumni are responsible for the current crisis,
but it is to note that a new generation has been waiting in the wings
to assume the highest levels of authority in both the public and private
sectors. While they certainly will not directly determine the outcome
of the current crisis and the future of the country, we should rest
assured that they will indeed play a role.
On January 5,
speculation was at fever pitch that Russia must somehow be behind what’s
happening. After all, wouldn’t it be a way to draw international
attention away from the ongoing Russia-Ukraine crisis, giving Moscow an
opportunity to move into Ukraine? After all, hasn’t Putin drawn a red
line that the United States and NATO need to leave the former Soviet
space since it’s Russia’s “special sphere of influence,” as he has
frequently called it? That’s a standard example of 1+1=2 thinking, but
reality has a way of eventually showing that 1+1=3 was more likely true,
or that things weren’t as we first logically thought and that other
elements we hadn’t initially considered had played significant, if
unforeseen, roles. Nevertheless, we can be sure that Moscow will do
everything possible to bend the current crisis to its own advantage.
One
way that is already happening is that the Russia-dominated Collective
Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) for the first time in its history
has agreed to send “peacekeeping troops” to Kazakhstan to help
authorities there quell the uprising. For the CSTO to deploy
member-state troops for an internal matter is indeed eyebrow-raising.
While this CSTO development is currently being characterized as
“temporary,” once Russian boots hit the ground in a former Soviet
Socialist Republic, they tend to find ways to stay. And it is no secret
that President Putin has long dreamed of guaranteeing that the former
Soviet space remain ever more Russia’s special sphere of influence.
Some
in Russia, including the flamboyant Duma member Vladimir Zhirinovsky,
have long called for Russia to annex Kazakhstan, or at least its
northern third. In fact, as former President Nazarbayev once confirmed
to me, that’s why he moved his country’s capital from Almaty to
Nur-Sultan (former Astana, former Tselinograd, former Akmola) on the
southern Siberian steppe. He said he planted his nation’s flag there to
ensure that Kazakhstan’s borders that had existed at independence would
remain sacrosanct.
Sometimes, the pot unexpectedly reaches a
boiling point and history happens. While this current page of history
is being written, I would hope that the democracy enthusiasts in the
U.S. government would exercise a bit of humble self-restraint,
especially in their public statements. Don’t get me wrong: the United
States stands firmly for democracy and with those whose dream it is that
their own nations become democratic in the Western sense. But at the
moment, to cheer in public simply feeds the Russian narrative that the
West, primarily the United States, instigates Color Revolutions in the
former Soviet republics.
U.S. official reaction so far has been
appropriate and measured. The official State Department readout of the
January 6 telephone call between Secretary of State Antony Binken and
Kazakhstan Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tileuberdi noted that Blinken had
“reiterated the United States’ full support for Kazakhstan’s
constitutional institutions and media freedom and advocated for a
peaceful, rights-respecting resolution to the crisis.”
By all
means, let’s support our Kazakhstani brothers and sisters in every
appropriate way possible. Let’s support democratic movements. But
let’s do it wisely, even behind closed doors if necessary, so that we
don’t besmirch those on the ground who are struggling for democracy.
And finally, let’s understand that our own American democracy is very
much a work in progress, as has been abundantly clear from our recent
history.
Let’s hope for the best and pray that history is following a positive script this time in Kazakhstan.