When Westerners looks at Uzbekistan, do they remember Neville Chamberlain? Photograph in the public domain.

Editor’s note: neweurasia’s bloggers and readers have been debating the recent decision by the European Union to lift the Andijan sanctions from Uzbekistan.  Schwartz adds his opinion to the debate, this time from a Westerner’s point of view. (Cross-posted from neweurasia’s affiliate site, Transitions Online.)

Time and again, Uzbekistan holds a mirror up to the West. Consider the recent seismic shift in the European Union (EU)’s stance toward the country’s ruler, Islam Karimov, and his regime.

In response to the Andijan Massacre of 13 May 2005, the EU Council smacked the Uzbek government with economic, military, and diplomatic sanctions. At the time, Human Rights Watch (HRW) hailed it as a “landmark decision” and “much-needed concrete meaning to [the EU's] human rights policy.”

However, during the intervening years the Council maintained low-level contacts with Uzbekistan’s rulers. The sanctions were gradually eased until finally, this past October, the decision was made to lift them altogether.

The Council has stated that, although still concerned about human rights in the country, they are satisfied that “the dialogue and cooperation between the EU and Uzbekistan have acquired a new scope and quality,” including several commitments from the Uzbek government.

More importantly, the Council described its strategic thinking as “a view to encourage the Uzbek authorities to take further substantive steps to improve the rule of law and the human rights situation on the ground…”

In laymen’s term, if Uzbekistan is an ornery donkey, then the Council is now opting to subdue and train it by means of a carrot instead of a stick.

Frankly, it seems the stick method failed. The sanctions did little to hurt the Uzbek government. If anything, the real result was to drive the Karimov regime deeper into the arms of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which took their side during the Andijan crisis and happily filled the void left by the West’s pull-out.

Nevertheless, the stick method continues to have strong support. HRW slammed the Council, saying, “[T]he EU has effectively abandoned any credible effort to achieve human rights improvements through its Uzbekistan policy.” It has been joined by a global chorus of international media and human rights organizations.

But let’s take a moment to dissect the opposition’s logic: authoritarian governments are evil and democratic governments (their many faults notwithstanding) are good; ergo democracies should either reform dictatorships or cut them off.

It’s a difficult argument to refute for two reasons. First, because it doesn’t take an investigative journalist to see that Uzbekistan is ruled by an aggressively paternalistic regime committed to ruthless control over its populace. This is a very bad donkey.

Second, because it re-frames the perennial ends-versus-means debate in terms of motivations: this donkey has no genuine intention to reform. It’s just saying whatever it needs to say in order to gobble up that carrot, whereupon it will immediately return to its old habits.

So, the opposition is essentially saying Uzbekistan isn’t the donkey, the West is. We’re the ones who’ve been baited by the carrot – a carrot rotten with duplicity.

If you’re a Western reader and you’re experiencing an unsettling sensation of déjà vu right now, it’s because there are two memories lurking in the back of your mind that are now getting evoked.

The first is of 2004, when Britain’s ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, was sacked. Murray had used his position to call attention to his government’s dealings with a regime so bloodstained by human rights abuses. He went on write a memoir with the provocative title, Murder in Tashkent: A British Ambassador’s Controversial Defiance of Tyranny in the War on Terror.

To his supporters, Murray was a beacon of truth and justice in a world overcome with shadows. To his detractors, most notably Registan.net’s founder, Nathan Hamm, he was a small-minded fanatic.

“I believe that heaping condescending scoldings upon the Uzbek government, as Murray has done, is not an effective strategy for those genuinely interested in stopping torture in Uzbekistan,” wrote Hamm in a 2005 editorial for neweurasia’s predecessor website Thinking-East.net.

“Uzbekistan’s government is pretty touchy, and the type of criticism preferred by the Left tends to lead to backlashes from touchy governments.”

“I’m not saying that it’s necessary to walk on eggshells or keep all criticism out of the public’s view,” Hamm added.

I’m saying that it’s necessary to tone down the rhetoric and recognize and reward improvements when improvements occur. And they do occur, despite what bombastic, overheated critics may assert.”

The debate between Murray and Hamm is, on one level, about whether to engage or disengage with regimes that are morally reprehensible. On another level, however – a more fundamental one – it is about redemption.

At this deeper level we find the second memory: 30 September 1938, when Neville Chamberlain waved the agreement signed by Adolf Hitler and fatefully declared, “I believe it is peace for our time.”

Today’s question of whether to engage or disengage is really a reformulation of that much older and more troubling question – the one we failed to answer correctly in 1938 – to appease or fight.

For Murray, the redemption at stake is the West’s. There is a right and there is a wrong: the Uzbek government has made its choice, one which, if the West is to be judged well in the tribunal of history, compels us to rebuke and resist.

For Hamm, the redemption at stake is Uzbekistan’s. If you know where to look and keep a pragmatic mindset, there is always reason to hope. Reform should be measured not by our scale alone, but also by the realities of Uzbek society.

The good news is that Uzbekistan is not Nazi Germany: Karimov, vicious though he may be, is an inward-looking tyrant. He has neither the intent nor the means to lay waste to Central Asia as Hitler did to Europe.

The bad news is that the Murray-Hamm debate was effectively shut during the interlude of the last four years.

Whatever baby steps toward change Hamm detected were swept away in the aftermath of the Andijan Massacre – precisely because the West took the hardline position of Murray. If the Council’s decision does ultimately have a positive effect, however, Hamm may yet be vindicated and Chamberlain’s ghost exorcised.