So Kyrgyztan fell...

and really I don't have a problem with that. I like that in the mini-cold war the republican presidency is determined to ignite (with absolutely anyone who is willing to play ball- signs of a bully) some of the smaller less democratic nations are being destablised enough to have "popular" uprisings with the consequent elections.

I sense the US is hankering after getting more client states as their client states of many years are starting to inch away from them. This was bound to happen- as countries mature into genuine reflections of their people that are internally accountable, they will naturally less and less be reflective of a foreign power's requirements (unless it is on one-off issues).

What the US seems to be hoping is that these new democracies are going to remain immature and susceptible to US influence. That's hoping against hope.

As the experience in Europe and Latin America shows, once countries become genuine (possibly even mature) representational democracies AND they make common cause with neighbouring states that are similarly situated, their ability to march in lockstep with the US is "hampered."

I see the US has decided to sell F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan. Good. Unlike in the 80s, the regime the US is propping up with these sales is not an islamic one. Musharraf's regime is the first one in a long time to be reaping the whirlwind (Benazir's was another) of those early irresponsible islamic ventures. Yes, this props up the military in a state dominated bt he military. But, what if you got rid of the military in Pakistan and left the damn place to the Saudi-financed islamic radicals?

I think back in the 70s and the 80s, there was a view that Pakistan was a state in which any shallow vestiges of British liberal democracy were stymied and "if only" (and so on and so forth).

Now I think the world has come around to accepting that those vestiges don't exist any more. If the military domination disappears in Pakistan, Balochistan and NWPF by themselves will do enough to tip the place into a theocratic catastrophe.

India spent decades trying to internalise the western model and probably only did so in some genuine sense when Indira Gandhi tried to ditch the whole damn thing without consulting the Indian public. Now India has turned into a western colony without a genuine sense of understanding as to what that process involved- a true internalisation. That is not to say this is good or bad- it may have allowed us to experiment with new ideas on how to organise society. It has allowed us to incorporate marginalised people (however reluctantly) into a new societal framework that bore no relation to earlier models.

Anyway, to return, I don't fear for Kyrgyzstan- it's a money sink. The US is trying to check the rise of China and the re-emergence of Russia using strategic methods that only old-style Kremlin Appartchiks (who run Russia today) think work.

They may bitch and moan but the world is slipping away. Think about it, Trudeau wouldn't have subordinated Canada's interests to the US without it being absolutely necessary. Martin on the hand has a much easier job- he doesn't face nearly the same cold-war crushing embrace. In fact he wants to subordinate Canada to the US. It's just that now even the miniscule pressure of the Canadian public is enough to tip the balance against aligning (yes, yes, NAFTA is done but guess what? The entire world is turning into a free trade area...the pendulum will swing the other way and states will either re-emerge or recreate the bureaucratic welfare state at the multilateral level.)

In some ways the internal politics of Canada are like an international arena, the Federal Government can almost always act only through the provincial governments. Very strange.