Brill-Olcott’s essay
Following the transatlantic workshop in Hamburg organized by the Center for OSCE Research (CORE) following the questioning of the Central Asia democratic promotion, Martha Olcott presents her issues. She gives her reasons regarding the need for new consideration of Western Central Asian policy strategies, perceptions and instruments. She clearly declares the failure of the five Central Asian states failure in fulfilling democratic aspirations. She questions what people can do with delusions, what has been learnt from falsehood of hopes long awaited and the mistakes, which might be the causal factors of the failures. She sharply notes the availability of money for facilitation of programs against corruption, legal reforms and education. Border management is another concern, which she raises ostensibly in her essay voicing the limitations of reimbursement methods. Through her essay, the money required for straightening the problems, which had been earlier funds keep growing higher for their address. It makes her to request for even further proactive efforts from the West in their efforts of bringing situations under control. She requests the West to consider the opinion it holds about Asian countries.
In her opinion, success chances lie within political realities for individual countries progress. These are states struggling with the adaptation of the recommendations of the OSCE and looking for every possible means of progressing. The first step according to Martha is having a local view of the Asian countries. Secondly, there should be no appeasing of western culture through states like Usbekistan by imposing of western rules into the local human rights constituents. The third concern is about the lack of involvement of all Asian states in policymaking processes, and instead, the U.S. and European collaborating countries imposing policies through sanctions. It also comes out in her fourth opinion that both European and U.S. relationship with Uzbekistan would have been skillfully made, in a manner giving Uzbekistan a chance for responding to criticisms from the West. The firth concern was that there should be certain amounts of flexibility when the west is dealing with Asian countries. This should be in a democratic manner without the sanctions and affirmative actions’ as has been the situation. Lastly she suggested that the West should stop the generalization of we verses they when evaluating the regions events. They should in turn learn to be more inclusive in their approach, to avoid Central Asian manipulation.
The concerns by Martha concerning the positioning of the Slavic countries into the falsehood of independence are one that deserves further consideration. Central Asia was left with hard decisions to make after their counterparts parted, and joined the commonwealth. The decision left to the countries was left for individual decision making or group decisions. It all lay in the agreement designed for the incorporation of the countries into joining the commonwealth. After meetings, in Ashkhabad, the three Asian countries, preferred to go with the requirements of joining the commonwealth. This was a move that gave hope to the Central Asian countries, who joined thinking and hopeful of the advantages the move would give to their countries. However, that never produced results and Central Asian communities had to look for alternatives of making their lives manageable.
The independent nations were expected to be in charge of their affairs. However, the newly formed economies were facing the challenge of taking their countries political and economical needs. The efforts of newly independent nations meet certain challenges, which they must work against for achievement of optimal benefit of the freedom. Martha sees a lacking in this aspect as she realizes that all the hope and efforts the countries have been persuaded and sanctioned are all lies, he leadership within the highlighted states forming the Slavic countries are drawing from a history of traditional ruling styles. The leaders of these countries recognized the delicate positioning of their countries. They are concerned about economic liberation for their countries in a self giving manner with the leaders recognizing the risks of liberating themselves. Looking back to the point when the countries became independent, progress for liberation from economic problems does not show any significant progress. There is little to show about the companies progresses making Martha Brill Olcott to question and criticize the applicability of Central Asian myths of development. Political and economic reforms have retarded over the years, and the disappointment in the results requires appropriate consideration for the making of accommodative developments. It is the reason as to why she encourages policy makers in the U.S. to find ways of incorporating the needs of the Central Asian countries into the progression plans in a democratic and not sanctions manner. It is the reason why she questions the progress of the recommendations on the development of the Asian countries, stating that what looms openly is stagnation and no signs of progress.
Several problems are facing Central Asia. These are from political, economical to environmental issues. These problems are the source of tensions within and across countries. Land degradation is one aspect that Central Asia has had to bear with affecting countries like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. These countries are faced with multiple problems like environmental degradation, mismanagement of resources, and misuse of natural resources. These issues impact negatively in the economy, health stability, welfare and security of Central Asian countries. There has been a rising concern regarding the increasing degradation issues and Central Asian regional instability. This has been evident from the time the Soviet Union collapsed leaving most Central Asian countries out of balance. These situations have led to struggles with poverty and economic performance for these countries. The instabilities make it necessary for the international community’s’ to come up and lend assistance to these countries.
Failure for involvement in the rescue of the companies would lead to further deterioration of the regions’ economic status. When these countries develop, they become independent, it gives them the chance of living peacefully with their neighboring countries instead of having to conform to the tensions, and conflicts faced in most Central Asian regions. Regardless of the existing pertinent environmental issues in Central Asia, the air and land pollution produce diseases and these can be tackled through support from outside countries. That is why certain organizations like the World Bank, CAREC and UNECE have come up to implement projects for saving the environment. The financial support from these international companies may be welcome for the sake of the environment; however, it remains crucial for the countries to maintain control over their environmental issues (Smyth).
Central Asian Countries have varied food issues. Some of the countries face serious food problems. Most of the countries struggle with the issue of food security. Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are well of on matters of food but their water situation remains in a wanting situation. Food security is an issue, which requires allocation of resources for food imports, instead of dependence on aid from humanitarian organizations. The issue of food insecurity in Uzbekistan is not a serious one as compared to other countries. food problem is targeted to inflict the country for a considerably long time given the fact that the country is registering a gradual increase of population. Whenever populations grow, it is only normal that the numbers requiring feeding grow. The tragedy in the Aral sea has had a grave effect in the soil quality of these countries. With poor soil quality and insufficiency of water, agriculture becomes a problem leading to the impossibility for cultivation in the regions.
Kazakhstan is the other country, which has managed to escape the problem of food insecurity in Central Asia. For this country, its government has food programs through planting and livestock raring. With recent droughts in the country, it was almost being shaken, but despite the pledge of food security by the government of Kazakhstan, critics and economic analysts report that the country can only be confident about its grain supply. The country still has a lot of dependency of imports of barley and other foodstuffs. However, with the continued government involvement in irrigation and fertilizer provision for the promotion of better agricultural produce, the country will be able to reduce on its food imports and in turn, manage to have a stable economy with adequate food supply for its citizens (Ansori, Naumenko, Saadi & Sultanov)
With rising world economies, the economic crisis is having its impact on both small and large economies in the world. Middle-income countries are in search of means of improving regional economic approaches to help them through with the growing crisis. Countries are becoming focused on trading within their regions and on cross border trade through free border systems. For countries with few political complications regional business approaches work well enough. However, there are reports stating that those countries facing political crisis, unstable monetary control and insensitivity to globalization and controlled fiscal policies depend more on cross border businesses. This is because developing supply chains regionally is easy when countries are at peace with one another’s’ political status making it easy integrating governmental regulations. Developing regional trade is the best means of ensuring that countries have strong building blocks around them with neighboring countries. Development of such companies come out from developing of business ties, they work hard at promoting regional stability depending on the political needs of the companies. Making a country into a position of regional business is very encouraging to its economy. However, Central Asia does not have much of these benefits because of its numerous trade agreements with other nations. Resolution of conflicts becomes hard and that leads to infringement of guiding rules. These sanctions drug the economic situation in the region and leads to the evidential drag in economic stability. When a country is blocked by sanctions to conduct its businesses effectively, the result is usually negative and damaging to its operations. This, being the scenario in most of the Central Asian countries, the reported food, economic, political, environmental and regional crisis remains wanting of interventions both regionally and internationally (Foxley).
Works Cited
Ansori Burzumekhr, Naumenko Yaroslava, Saadi Shakar & Sultanov Asker. Two Central Asian countries cope with food issues. Terrain, natural resources help Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan 18 May 2011. Retrieved from: http://centralasiaonline.com/en_GB/articles/caii/features/main/2011/05/18/feature 01 23rd April 2012.
Foxley, Alejandro. Regional Trade Blocs: The Way to the Future? Carnegie Report, September 2010. Retrieved from: http://carnegieendowment.org/2010/09/16/regional trade-blocs-way-to-future/1v66 23rd April 2012
Smyth, Peter. Central Asia’s problems require regional solutions. Wednesday, 12th May 2010 Retrieved from: http://www.struanstevenson.com/media/speech/central_asias_problems_require_regiona solutions 23rd April 2012.
