US Involvement in the Color Revolutions

In response the US revised its initiatives; the new U.S. policy in Central Asia ¹⁷⁴ was mainly manifested in a prompt series of diplomatic measures to maintain and strengthen the U.S. military presence in Central Asian countries. The U.S. Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) visited Kyrgyzstan (At that point Kyrgyzstan had undergone a Color Revolution and was seen as pro-Western in alignment.) and Tajikistan, in July 2005. Kyrgyzstan agreed that the United States could continue to use its Manas Air Base, and said that as long as the security situation in Afghanistan has not yet stabilized, the Manas base will still exist.

Tajikistan stressed their support for joint operations by providing their airspace and territorial space per their responsibilities as a member state in coalition efforts to counter the threat of terrorism.

4.2.3.4 US Involvement in the Color Revolutions

Sreeram Chaulia mentions that the principal argument is that the main and direct causes of the Color Revolutions were United States foreign-policy interests (strategic expansion, energy security and the war on terrorism) as they were serviced by Ingos. In addition due to rising worries that the US was utilizing these “Color Revolutions” to engineer more pliable governments, friendlier to US initiatives and interests, in Central Asia, the US ostensibly took measures to calm these fears and to repair relations with these regimes.

Samuel Huntington asserts that in 1974 the United States first began to implement “a major shift in US policies toward the promotion of human rights and democracy in other countries”

through the mechanism of American international NGOs ("Ingos") as a means to promote regime change in targeted countries. Building on this theory, Sreeram Chaulia further asserts

available at:

http://www.apnewsarchive.com/2005/U-S-Completes-Withdrawal-From-Uzbek-Base/id-33fc5823ee3b4a62a76e 581dcea24a3b, (accessed: 20140519).

174 鄭羽，「 蘇聯解體以來美國對中亞政策的演變） 1991-2006（」，俄羅斯中亞東歐研究 4 (北京: 2007):

64-66。[Zheng, Yu. Sulian Jieti Yilai Meiguo Dui Zhongya Zhengce De Yanbian (Changes of American policy in Central Asia since dissolution of the USSR (1991～2006)) Eluosi Zhongya Dongou Yanjiu (Russian Central Asian & East European Studies) 4 (Beijing: 2007): 64-66.]

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that the causative agent behind the Color Revolutions was none other than the United States taking action through proxies to achieve American foreign-policy interests, particularly strategic expansion, energy security and later the war on terrorism) and the tools to engineer these so-called revolutions were none other than the aforementioned Ingos. ¹⁷⁵ Through the intervention of US-sponsored Ingos, Georgia, the Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan were all subject to these engineered efforts. (There is some evidence to suggest the same for the current crisis in the Ukraine, but that is not within the purview of this study.) Moreover, it can be said that the US is selective when promoting human rights and democracy, doing so only when it serves American foreign-policy objectives. In regard to this the scholar, Thomas Carothers says,

"The United States has close, even intimate relations with many undemocratic regimes for the sake of American security and economic interests… and struggles very imperfectly to balance its ideals with the realist imperatives it faces." ¹⁷⁶

Energy-rich Central Asia is an attractive place to US policy makers and industry.

However, the American strategy in Central Asia is not limited to energy. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States hoped that the Central Asian countries would carry out reform politically and economically, to become more democratic and prosperous, more inclined to the strategic plans and wishes of the United States (and oriented towards the United States), more susceptible to be manipulated and influenced by their strategies, so that the United States could well reach their desired goals. ¹⁷⁷ Some Central Asian countries chose to tolerate such a situation, allowing opposition parties and newspapers to criticize government stances on current events. In Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, their opposition parties lacked the ability to replace the regime in elections, which caused significant changes in the geopolitical situation in 2003 and 2004.

175 Chaulia, Sreeram. “Democratisation, NGOs and "colour revolutions,” open Democracy, January 19, 2006, available at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-institutions_government/colour_revolutions_3196.jsp, (accessed: 20140120).

176 Khan, Muqtedar. Prospects for Muslim Democracy: The Role of U.S. Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, Fall 2003): 10.

177 “Central Asia and the South Caucasus: Reorientations, Internal Transitions, and Strategic Dynamics-C,”

Federation of American Scientists, Oct, 2000, available at: http://www.fas.org/irp/nic/central_asia.html, (accessed: 20140519).

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In 2003, Georgia's "Rose Revolution" (November 2003-January 2004) occurred, being the first incidence of a Color Revolutions to occur in the former Soviet Union, where the Georgian opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili overthrew the ruling regime of President Eduard Shevardnadze. ¹⁷⁸

In 2004, the “Orange Revolution" in the Ukraine occurred when the opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko won the presidential election in November of 2004, replacing the regime in power at the time, somewhat replicating the events in Georgia. ¹⁷⁹

The “Tulip Revolution” (or the First Kyrgyz Revolution) occurred in March 2005 after the Kyrgyz parliamentary election was over, overthrowing the then ruling regime of President Askar Akayev, a regime known for extreme corruption and dictatorial rule. ¹⁸⁰

In addition due to rising worries that the US was utilizing these “Color Revolutions” to engineer more pliable governments, friendlier to US initiatives and interests, in Central Asia and the former Soviet Union under the guise of “promoting democracy,” the US ostensibly took measures to calm these fears and to repair relations with these regimes. At that point U.S.

policymakers argued that in order to achieve their long-term goal which is to establish a stable economic and political presence in Central Asia, the United States and the governments of the region should work together to strengthen the democratic system and defend human rights.

181 Nonetheless, with Uzbekistan and other regimes under the eye of interests such as Amnesty International and local leaders wary of being overthrown US influence suffered a serious setback.

As one of these measures US policy has since focused upon promoting economic

cooperation with Central Asian countries, to reshape the attractiveness of the United States to

178 “How the Rose Revolution happened,” BBC News, May 10, 2005, available at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4532539.stm, (accessed:20140519)

179 Soltanifar, Mohammad. “US–Russian Rivalry in the Caucasus: Towards a New Cold War?” Centre for World Dialogue, available at: http://www.worlddialogue.org/print.php?id=345, (accessed: 20140224).

180 “A tulip revolution,” The Economist, Mar 24, 2005, available at: http://www.economist.com/node/3785139, (accessed:20140519)

181 Kukeyeva, Fatima. Color Revolutions in the Central Asia and the US Position (Taipei: Taiwan International

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Central Asian countries. On October 14th, 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

announced during her visit to Kazakhstan, ¹⁸² that the United States Agency for International Development aid will further fund the Central Asian countries for an integration project to expand trade and investment in Central Asia, to help Central Asian countries to simplify customs procedures in accordance with international standards and best practices.

Meanwhile, the US worked to ensure that after the completion of the Baku - Tbilisi - Ceyhan oil pipeline, that Central Asia could provide sufficient oil export supplies. With the United States’ active support, in June of 2006, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan finally reached an agreement that 25 million tons of Kazakhstan’s oil would be shipped by oil tankers from Aktau on the north Caspian Sea to Baku annually, an amount that is nearly half of the pipeline’s transportation capacity. ¹⁸³