In Kyrgyzstan, 78 peaceful protestors were killed by police and security of President Bakiyev who took power in 2005 by overthrowing the previous corrupt regime. It took Baikev only five years to become just as corrupt as his predecessor.
The turn of the century was a time of great promise for the USA. It witnessed the collapse of communism and of the USSR; the disappearance from the world scene of America's main geopolitical adversary; and an unconditional victory of the ideas of freedom, democracy, and free market over totalitarian regimes and planned economy dominated by ideological shibboleths. The West was euphoric; the pervading idea was that an era of universal well-being was at hand. The philosopher Francis Fukuyama encapsulated the sentiment in his famous phrase, "end of history": humanity had reached the acme of its progress, and there were no more horizons to conquer.
Actually another, no less famous philosopher, name of Karl Marx, had made similar predictions over a century earlier. He wrote that the evolution of human societies was not endless; it would reach its apogee when humankind had achieved a socioeconomic formation in which man's most profound and fundamental aspirations were satisfied. Marx referred to that form of social organization as communism. Unfortunately for Marxist philosophy and fortunately for mankind, at the end of the 20th century communism, contrary to its founder's forecast, went down the ashes of world history.
Now, what is the current situation with the spreading of the ideas of freedom and market economy throughout the world? Frankly, the outlook is not all that bright, and the end of history is nowhere in sight. America, the leader of the free world, has got stuck in two seems to be endless wars, Islamist radicalism is going from strength to strength worldwide, a terrible crisis has hit the world economy a shattering blow, and America's national debt has reached the mind-boggling figure of $13 trillion. Totalitarian China's mixed, planned/capitalist economy is set to become the world's topmost.
With due respect for Marx, Fukuyama and other soothsayers bold enough to predict the course of human history, only one thing can be said with some certainty: such predictions are ever doomed to failure, for history is plain unpredictable. Moreover, any attempt to lead humankind along a preordained, ideologically strictly defined path is sure to fail amid great suffering and vast losses for both the leaders and the led. Poets often perceive humankind's existential conundrum clearer than philosophers or politicians, so the Russian poet Alexander Galich's words, "Beware of him who says 'I know how things should be,'" ought to be inscribed on every memorial to world wars -- hot, cold, and otherwise.
To go back from historical-philosophical excursuses to today's realities. Clearly, the ideas of the former US president George Bush Jr., for whom I voted twice -- my sincere apologies to the American people for that -- have suffered a total fiasco.
Bush used America's entire power and influence to spread freedom and democracy worldwide in a naïve belief that the peoples of the world would come out in jubilant crowds to welcome those ideas -- and incidentally promote US geopolitical and economic interests.
At the beginning things went smoothly. The countries of Eastern Europe and the Baltic states were indeed jubilant. NATO expansion undoubtedly strengthened US geopolitical influence in this area; true, economically these countries became Europe's liability, but that did not bother the US unduly. Then there was, of course, the question of what to do about Russia. It could either be integrated in the Euro-Atlantic alliance as an equal partner or resolutely kicked into the position of a weak regional power incapable of affecting world processes. Here, Bush and his advisors committed a grave error, opting for the latter scenario. The color revolutions project was launched with a view to weakening Russia's positions in the post-Soviet space -- naturally, to the drumbeat of slogans about spreading freedom and democracy. In one of his annual State of the Union addresses Bush declared, with much fanfare, that he had been proved right, citing as examples the victories of color revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, with similar upheavals in other FSU countries just round the corner.
The results of such policies are all too well known. The heroes of the "orange revolution" in Ukraine, Yulia Timoshenko and Viktor Yushchenko, immediately after victory went for each other's throats over the booty and jointly led the country's economy to its present basket case state. Besides, that beacon of freedom and democracy, President Yushchenko, turned out to be a fervent admirer of Nazi collaborators, awarding medals, pensions, and generally a privileged status to former SS men of the Galicina division who had exterminated, on Hitler's orders, countless Jews, Russians, Poles, and Ukrainians. In a recent presidential election Yushchenko garnered a ridiculous number of votes, on the borderline of statistical error. Yanukovich, generally seen as pro-Moscow, became Ukraine's president. So much for that revolution.
In Georgia, things went very much the same way. The heroes of the "revolution of the roses" fell out among themselves right after the victory; Premier Zhvania died under suspicious circumstances, his death openly blamed on President Saakashvili. Scared by the president's tyrannical ways and obvious mental instability, his former associates either left him or were squeezed out of positions of power, so that Georgia, that paragon of freedom and democracy according to Bush, is now ruled by the whims of one single person. Most dangerously, that person has proved capable of unleashing, on the night of the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, an all-out, bloody assault on a sleeping city, the capital of what Georgians see as a rebel province, with the loss of hundreds of innocent lives. Result, Georgia can say farewell forever to those rebellious provinces, S. Ossetia and Abkhazia -- they are now small but very, very independent states.
Kyrgyzstan, the birthplace of the "tulip revolution" is now in the news the big way. A few years ago it brought down Askar Akaev's corrupt regime and installed an even more corrupt one run by Kurmanbek Bakiev, his son Maksim, and his innumerable relatives. Now this regime has been toppled, too, and what will come in its stead is anyone's guess. If this one is a "color revolution," then it is most definitely the color of blood, with some 80 dead and about a thousand wounded -- and at the moment of writing the turmoil is not yet over.
I am sincerely sorry for Obama, as he is an involuntary heir to his predecessor's illusory and completely failed policies. He now has to decide what to do, and his choices are fairly limited. As regards Russia, it's apparently too late to revive the idea of fully integrating it in Euro-Atlantic structures. The last car of that particular train has swept by. Besides, the geopolitical situation has changed significantly, with China's ever increasing power and influence becoming a decisive factor in present-day geopolitics.
Yet another factor is the rise of the worldwide jihadist movement, a common enemy of the West, Russia, and China. There is an urgent need for these three to join forces in the fight against that evil and form a triune alliance for that purpose. The same alliance could be instrumental in solving the problem of nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. Incidentally, the two problems, combating jihad and nuclear proliferation, are interconnected, as humanikind's arguably worst nightmare these days is the jihadists laying their hands on nuclear weapons -- we have had some intimations of that danger in the case of Pakistan.
It should be remembered on the eve of the 65th anniversary of Victory in Europe that free and democratic West was an ally of Stalin's totalitarian regime in the fight against another common enemy, Nazism, during the Second World War. All the more reason to go the same way with a present Russia that with all its flaws in matters of freedom and human rights, has made a giant leap toward freedom. It is no longer an enemy of the free world, that much is clear as daylight. Rejecting its calls for a comprehensive system of world security would be another critical error on the part of the West because not one of the serious problems of such security can be resolved without Russia's participation. For this reason leaders of Western countries, and in the first place US President Obama should pass, as promptly as possible, from declarations about "resetting" to real moves in coordinating their fight against the world jihad along with Russia and, eventually, with China too.
Edward Lozansky is president of American University in Moscow.
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