Breeze Perspectives: The cost of oil
Increasingly pragmatic U.S. foreign policy puts a price on spreading democracy
By Jeff Genota, contributing writer
Posted on September 7, 2006

When we think of Kazakhstan, Borat from “Da Ali G Show” and his upcoming November film comes to mind. But to the Bush administration, Kazakhstan is no laughing matter as it steers its foreign policy to reflect emerging strategic realities. Kazakhstan, like most of central Asia, sits on top of large untapped oil reserves open for competition. Kazakhstan’s production capacities itself are forecasted to surpass Iran (currently the second-largest oil producer worldwide) by 2015. Since the security of oil can’t be guaranteed in the unstable Middle East, the Bush administration is rightfully following suit with another allied power, Japan. Recently, Japan’s outgoing prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, was in Uzbekistan to shore up some potential energy and trade deals and to catch up in the competition with other great powers Russia and China for the last full measure of oil.

President Bush’s apparent foreign policy flip-flop among others is another indicator that the previous themes that have dominated his past foreign policy rhetoric and policy have been fading away and turning toward more realistic goals. His foreign policy will eventually resemble that of another president, Richard Nixon, who at first was a firm anti-communist and later credited for establishing relations with communist China in 1972. Without that overture, your iPod would not bear “Made in China,” let alone exist. In the same way, Washington is looking for the best deal for secure sources of oil. A decade from now, then, Central Asia will dominate our headlines, and future JMU drivers can continue to clog Port Republic Road and campus streets daily. But little do we know that the price of normalizing trade relations with China led to ceasing our direct support for Tibetan independence. We will have to pay a similar price with Kazakhstan.

As U.S.-Kazakh relations grow closer, the trade-off will be the delay of democracy for ordinary Kazakhs (sadly, they won’t be seeing Borat’s film). The United States already paid a price when it criticized the Uzbek government’s recent suppression of a popular uprising, and lost its military bases supporting the war in Afghanistan. Be sure to expect more contradictory statements within the next few years as the administration scraps ideas such as fighting global corruption and re-adjusts its foreign policy to realism, chiding leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin for “retreating” from democracy, while corrupt leaders like  President Narsultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan — who has been charged by the Justice Department in 2003 for taking $78 million in bribes for oil contracts from a U.S. businessman — gets to be called a “friend” of the United States and receives an invitation to former President Bush’s Maine retreat.

While we sigh with relief that our oil supplies will still be around when we’re finally in the workforce, the people of Kazakhstan and the rest of Central Asia will have to wait longer for any glimmer of democracy and freedom that the president has envisioned in his second inaugural address that all nations should have.

Jeff Genota is a sophomore political science major.