Kaplan on Asia

Dr. Anonymous blogs about an article that Robert Kaplan wrote for the Times about Asian and its political future:

Robert Kaplan, a writer for the Atlantic Monthly, considers American imperialist concerns in Asia in the Times. The article is anything but pacific.

Here’s my favorite part:

Asia’s military-economic vigor is the product of united political, economic and military elites

Aside from the grossly sweeping nature of the statement, it may not even be very accurate, as far as grossly sweeping statements go. He wrote this in the weeks after: the Japanese prime minister resigned; Nepal’s Maoists quit the government; Pakistan is in the throws of yet another change of rule; Sri Lanka is in the middle of the civil war that does not end; Burma’s government is facing perhaps the most serious challenge to its rule since 1988, and India’s Left has threatened to pull the rug out from under the ruling coalition because of a proposed nuclear deal with the U.S.

Tensions in Run Up to Armenian Elections

Near|Abroad blogs on the upcoming elections in Armenia:

Tension continues to mount in Armenia in the run up to parliamentary elections next weekend. Armenia’s past elections have been marred by charges of corruption and intimidation by authorities. The government’s opposition seems determined to raise the stakes in the wake of an election result that is not free or fair.

News Analysis: Elections in Turkmenistan

There were elections recently in the former Soviet Republic, Turkmenistan. The country had been ruled, dictitorially, by one president, Saparmurat Niyazov, for the past 21 years, until his recent death on Dec. 21, 2006. Here are some of the news and views about the elections from around the world.

Europe:

BBC News
Feb. 11, 2007
High Turnout for Turkmen Election

Voters were choosing between six men, in the gas-rich Central Asian nation’s first multi-candidate election.

Interim leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, a former dentist, is seen as the clear favourite…(Read More)

Institute for War & Peace Reporting (U.K.)
Feb. 9, 2007
Turkmenistan Needs to Choose its Friends Carefully

As the February 11 presidential election in Turkmenistan draws close, there is little doubt who will win, but considerable uncertainty about what will happen next. Will Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov really live up to his pledges to reform education, health and pensions and give his people greater opportunities to travel and access information, or will he revert to the tough style of the man he replaces, the late Saparmurat Niazov?

On the foreign policy front, most observers agree Russia will remain Turkmenistan’s key partner, not least because it buys most of the country’s natural gas. But Turkmenistan’s proximity to Iran is likely to give it some role to play - albeit unwillingly - in the confrontation between Washington and Tehran…(Read More)

International Herald Tribune (France)
Feb. 11, 2007
Turkmenistan Votes For New Leader
By C. J. Chivers

MOSCOW: Turkmenistan held the first officially contested presidential elections in its history Sunday, conducting a carefully choreographed vote almost certain to be won by a confidante of the reclusive Central Asian country’s late autocratic leader.

The election, organized by the tightly controlled state after Saparmurat Niyazov, the only president in the country’s 15-year history, died in late December, was not formally monitored by international observers, who sent small teams of experts that were not expected to make any public statement about the government’s conduct…(Read More)

North America:

Eurasia Daily Monitor (U.S.A.)
Feb. 9, 2007
Turkmen Elections Provides Opportunities For International Condemnation of Authoritarian Regime
By John C. K. Daly

As foreign observers gear up to monitor Sunday’s presidential elections in Turkmenistan, the first since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, more adventurous foreigners can catch a bus from Ashgabat and journey some 40 miles north of the capital into the Karakum desert, where they can visit one of the more odious remnants of the Soviet “gulag archipelago,” a custom-built prison housing about 150 opponents of the Niyazov regime.

They had better hurry, as it might not be there much longer. According to Deutsche Welle, the facility is being demolished and its prisoners transferred elsewhere (Novye izvestiya, February 7)…(Read More)

East Asia:

Chosunibo (South Korea)
Feb. 12, 2007
Turkmenistan Votes for Presidential Successor

Voters in the isolated, gas-rich Central Asian nation of Turkmenistan are voting for a successor to replace the late president, Saparmurat Niyazov, who died last December. VOA’s Lisa McAdams in Moscow reports the current acting president, Gurbanguli Berdymukhammedov, is expected to easily defeat his five lesser-known challengers.

By mid-day local time Sunday, Turkmenistan’s Central Election Commission declared the election valid, saying more than half the country’s registered voters had cast ballots in the country’s first multi-candidate election…(Read More)

South Asia:

Tehran Times
Feb. 12, 2007
Turkmens Begin Voting for New Leader

KIPCHAK, Turkmenistan (AP) — The people of Turkmenistan, ruled for more than two decades by Niyazov, began voting Sunday for his replacement in their first presidential election with more than one candidate — but still only one party. The multiple candidates in the election are among a series of hints that Turkmenistan, a strategic Central Asian nation with immense natural gas reserves, may be slowly changing its ways. But it’s unclear how far it will move out of the late President Saparmurat Niyazov’s shadow…(Read More)

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