Thursday, April 08, 2010

Spring in Kyrgyztan


(fm the BC thread "Unthinking the unthinkable")

As Obama flies off to Prague to sign a treaty with Russia in the capital of the serially betrayed Czechs, by Simon Shuster in Moscow,
Time: Kyrgyzstan Uprising: Did Moscow Subvert a U.S. Ally? The last paragraph;
The U.S. State Department was quick to issue a statement saying its air base in Kyrgyzstan was "functioning normally." "We are continuing to monitor the circumstances. We continue to think the government remains in power," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in a statement on Wednesday. But that view is beginning to seem untenable: Bakiev has already fled the country, and the opposition says it is forming a new government. How amenable that government would be to the U.S. presence in Kyrgyzstan remains to be seen. What is certain is that the struggle for influence between Russia and the U.S. may again heat up in Central Asia.
This was a textbook KGB coup. It would not surprise me if some old hands from the CIA were listening to events unfold and reading them off in advance like actors watching a well remembered performance. We need to go back to wearing hats and suits with wider lapels. It is time to dig out the Eric Ambler and Graham Greene novels. It smells like 1949 is here for a return engagement, only worse than Henry Wallace, who eventually did admit his errors, won the election.

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