{"id":353,"date":"2006-08-08T02:16:25","date_gmt":"2006-08-08T06:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=353"},"modified":"2018-08-21T00:40:29","modified_gmt":"2018-08-21T04:40:29","slug":"14730-%c2%a0%c2%a0-karl-e-meyer-the-dust-of-empire-the-race-for-mastery-in-the-asian-heartland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=353","title":{"rendered":"14730.&nbsp;(Karl E. Meyer) The Dust of Empire: The Race for Mastery in the Asian Heartland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Mey\u00ader pro\u00advides a basic primer on the his\u00adtory of Cen\u00adtral Asia and the Cau\u00adca\u00adsus. It\u2019s a short vol\u00adume, so it can only suma\u00adrize the com\u00adplex\u00adi\u00adties. Still, even a well-edu\u00adcat\u00aded read\u00ader is like\u00adly to know noth\u00ading about this large por\u00adtion of the Earth. New\u00adshounds usu\u00adally refer to the post-Sovi\u00adet Cen\u00adtral Asian republics as \u201cthe Stans\u201d. Well, at least a flip\u00adpant nick\u00adname is more atten\u00adtion than these places got before.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Despite its low pro\u00adfile in pub\u00adlic dis\u00adcourse, Cen\u00adtral Asia has got\u00adten plen\u00adty of atten\u00adtion from geopoliti\u00adcal schemers and impe\u00adr\u00adial pow\u00aders, invari\u00adably cre\u00adat\u00ading dis\u00adas\u00adters. Some\u00adthing about the place gen\u00ader\u00adates fan\u00adtasies and delu\u00adsions. And no coun\u00adtry is more prone to liv\u00ading in fan\u00adtasy than the Unit\u00aded States, the lat\u00adest impe\u00adr\u00adial pow\u00ader to decide it is going to bring enlight\u00aden\u00adment to the land of the moun\u00adtain war\u00adrior clan and the pop\u00adpy. As Mey\u00ader demon\u00adstrates, the delu\u00adsional chat\u00adter com\u00ading from Wash\u00ading\u00adton is iden\u00adti\u00adcal to that which emanat\u00aded from Britain and Romanov Rus\u00adsia, and the Sovi\u00adet Union when they began the same dis\u00adas\u00adtrous projects, end\u00ading in defeat for them\u00adselves and end\u00adless mis\u00adery for the peo\u00adple of the region.<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Among the inter\u00adest\u00ading details is an account of the 19<sup>th<\/sup> cen\u00adtury Amer\u00adi\u00adcan trav\u00adeler George Ken\u00adnan (great-uncle of the 20<sup>th<\/sup> cen\u00adtury diplo\u00admat). Ken\u00adnan worked as a tele\u00adgraph line sur\u00adveyor in the Tsarist regime. He trav\u00adeled through Siberia and the Cau\u00adca\u00adsus, and was one of the first to protest the Tsars\u2019 prison camps and repres\u00adsion, in a 1891 book called <em>Siberia and the Exile Sys\u00adtem<\/em>. The book trig\u00adgered, says Mey\u00ader, the one of the first sus\u00adtained Amer\u00adi\u00adcan inter\u00adna\u00adtional human rights cam\u00adpaigns. In it there is a fas\u00adci\u00adnat\u00ading lit\u00adtle seg\u00adment, which he quotes:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em><span class=\"dquo\">\u201c<\/span>The Gov\u00adern\u00adment first set the exam\u00adple of law\u00adless\u00adness in Rus\u00adsia by arrest\u00ading with\u00adout war\u00adrant; by pun\u00adish\u00ading with\u00adout tri\u00adal; by cyn\u00adi\u00adcally dis\u00adre\u00adgard\u00ading the judge\u00adment of its own courts when such judge\u00adments were in favor of polit\u00adi\u00adcals; by con\u00adfis\u00adcat\u00ading the mon\u00adey and prop\u00aderty of pri\u00advate cit\u00adi\u00adzens whom it mere\u00adly sus\u00adpected of sym\u00adpa\u00adthy with the rev\u00ado\u00adlu\u00adtion\u00adary move\u00adment; by send\u00ading four\u00adteen-year-old boys and girls to Siberia; by kid\u00adnap\u00adping the chil\u00addren of \u201cpolit\u00adi\u00adcally untrust\u00adwor\u00adthy\u201d peo\u00adples and exiles, and putting them into state asy\u00adlums; by dri\u00adving men and women into insan\u00adity and sui\u00adcide in rig\u00ador\u00adous soli\u00adtary con\u00adfine\u00adment with\u00adout giv\u00ading them a tri\u00adal; by bury\u00ading secret\u00adly at night the bod\u00adies of peo\u00adple whom it had thus done to death in dun\u00adgeons; and by treat\u00ading as a crim\u00adi\u00adnal, in posse if not in esse, every cit\u00adi\u00adzen who dare to ask why or wherefore.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Amer\u00adi\u00adcans, in those days, looked upon the crimes of the Tsars with hor\u00adror and con\u00adtempt. Now the Tsars, or their even more bru\u00adtal Sovi\u00adet suc\u00adces\u00adsors, would doubt\u00adless be pop\u00adu\u00adlar del\u00ade\u00adgates to any Repub\u00adli\u00adcan convention.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mey\u00ader pro\u00advides a basic primer on the his\u00adtory of Cen\u00adtral Asia and the Cau\u00adca\u00adsus. It\u2019s a short vol\u00adume, so it can only suma\u00adrize the com\u00adplex\u00adi\u00adties. Still, even a well-edu\u00ad\u00adcat\u00aded read\u00ader is like\u00adly to know noth\u00ading about this large por\u00adtion&nbsp;of&nbsp;\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=353\">Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[946,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b-reading","category-bu-reading-2006"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9467,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions\/9467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}