On Thursday, July 28th, AEI is hosting an impressive panel of speakers to discuss Uzbekistan and the Bush Doctrine: U.S. Policy After Andijan. It looks like an impressive panel of speakers---Martha Brill Olcott of course will be speaking. (Hat tip: Laurence at Registan).

The Washington Post carried an interesting article about the region today, "Cold War Rivarly Reviving in Central Asia". Worth reading, but baffling. Unless there's an undertext to the Bush administration's "warning"---some unlikely diplomatic code for "we have the regime change team waiting in the wings"---the warning seems pointlessly weak: a warning to a foreign president that consists of a prediction that the people of the foreign country may rebel. Looking at the statements from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, I have no doubts that Karimov's pundits have also spoken to him about how the killings in Andijan affected his government's stability. The point and intent of Bush's warning, as reported by the WaPo, are unclear to me.

The Bush administration is preparing to issue a last-ditch warning to Uzbekistan through senior U.S. officials, possibly even President Bush, that Tashkent must allow an international inquiry into the bloodiest unrest since that former Soviet republic gained independence -- or face the danger of unraveling politically like Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, according to U.S. and European officials.

Cold War Rivalry Reviving in Central Asia
Top U.S. Officials to Warn Uzbek Over Unrest
By Robin Wright and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 13, 2005; Page A13

The Bush administration is preparing to issue a last-ditch warning to Uzbekistan through senior U.S. officials, possibly even President Bush, that Tashkent must allow an international inquiry into the bloodiest unrest since that former Soviet republic gained independence -- or face the danger of unraveling politically like Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, according to U.S. and European officials.

The gambit, the details of which are still being worked out, is part of a bigger-stakes rivalry, reminiscent of the Cold War, that pits the United States and Western allies against Russia and China for influence in Central Asia.

The strategic region has become critical to U.S. efforts to combat terrorism and promote democracy over the past four years. But Washington is on the verge of losing its toehold -- and access to a pivotal Uzbek military base -- because of tensions that have led Tashkent to turn recently to Moscow and Beijing.

The Bush administration is completing plans for an overture to President Islam Karimov, possibly beginning with a Cabinet-level emissary followed by a telephone call from Bush -- if Karimov is open to an international inquiry into the May 13 unrest.

"Certainly, the Uzbekistan government owes its citizens and owes the international community a serious, credible and independent investigation of these events. And we are continuing to push for such an investigation with the government of Uzbekistan and with our partners in the international community," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said yesterday.

A United Nations report issued yesterday concluded that grave human rights violations were committed when Uzbek troops surrounded thousands of demonstrators in downtown Andijan and fired indiscriminately into crowds of men, women and children. Based on credible witness accounts, the crackdown may have amounted to a "mass killing," it said. The report also called for an international investigation, which Karimov has firmly resisted.

The administration hopes to reach out to Karimov by month's end to stress the importance of the U.S.-Uzbek strategic partnership -- which has blossomed since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- while urging the authoritarian government to make a stark political choice so it does not meet the fate of the three other former Soviet republics, U.S. officials say.

"We hope one last push will get Karimov to see that repression leads to instability and the only way out is to embrace freedom. Otherwise, he's on a descending spiral," said a senior U.S. official involved with Central Asian policy who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive diplomacy.

For now, Washington has not gone along with a European proposal to issue an ultimatum to Karimov to agree to an international inquiry, with a deadline to reply, or face new sanctions in the form of an arms embargo and a visa ban for diplomats, European envoys said. U.S. officials said they believe that backing Karimov into a corner is not an effective way to win cooperation.

The stakes are high, since the United States has relied on the Uzbek base at Karshi-Khanabad, known as K-2, for military and humanitarian missions in Afghanistan. Uzbekistan, which was one of the first republics to ask Russian troops to leave after the Soviet Union collapsed, has reflected new U.S. influence in Central Asia.

Uzbekistan also symbolizes the central dilemma in U.S. foreign policy over whether democracy or fighting terrorism takes precedence. The Pentagon, facing limited alternatives, wants to keep access to the base; the State Department has advocated a tougher line on political change as the key to prevent further unrest.

The tensions between Washington and Tashkent have offered Russia and China an opportunity to squeeze the United States out of Central Asia. Russia, China and four Central Asian nations -- Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan -- demanded this month that the United States declare a date for withdrawing troops and aircraft from bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Eurasian alliance, said a U.S. withdrawal is called for because the active military phase of the Afghan operation is nearing completion.

At the summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin called for increased regional security cooperation. "Russia is trying to take advantage of the situation that the Bush administration's democracy policy has opened for them -- to increase the reliance of Central Asian states on Russia," said Martha Brill Olcott of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Beijing yesterday called on Washington to honor the request for U.S. troops to withdraw from Central Asia. "It's China going on record and using Russia's shared frustration in Central Asia to say that the U.S. global agenda is one that China is not willing to sign onto," Olcott added.

Karimov has recently visited both countries. "What we're seeing is Karimov shifting his alliances as the political winds change," said Fiona Hill of the Brookings Institution. "He sees willing partners in Russia and China who prefer the status quo."

Lynch reported from the United Nations. Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson contributed to this report.

I have found all of the following things fascinating today, but have unable to trump up substantive blog posts about any of them.

1: Milbarge has two long and fascinating posts up at Begging the Question-- one about whether President Bush should ask Justices Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Stevens on the next Court nominee (Milbarge says no) and one about how nominations to the Court will realign their duties as Circuit Justices. I recommend them to readers who are meta-Supreme-Court nerds who don't already read BTQ.

2: Michael Chertoff has promising plans to overhaul the Department of Homeland Security.

3: Professor Jack Balkin observes (with the help of Akhil Amar) how the Twenty-Second Amendment basically functions to bring most 2-term presidents to be maimed by scandal. (I tend to think we should repeal Amendment 22, but I also think we should overturn U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton. Go figure.)

4: Mr. Garrett Graff discusses the members of the White House Press Corps that Scott McLellan can count on to change the subject away from Karl Rove.

I was going to write about Orin Kerr's post on judicial experience (the gist was that I think Professor Kerr is right to downplay it, except that I think the European model of a truly career judiciary, starting as a 26 year old traffic court judge, is dangerous for certain legal fields), but then I ran out of anything to say.

So instead, I'll note a really annoying trend among diners today, as exemplified weekly in the excellent Tom Sietsema's food chat at the Washington Post (Sietsema is the post food critic). Every single session, Mr. Sietsema gets an email from some outraged diner who's either been treated somewhat poorly by a restaurant, or seen a small bug, or something else, and is incensed that they haven't received a free meal. I can't imagine anything whinier.

I agree entirely that such things shouldn't happen in a restaurant. Part of running a restaurant is keeping things clean, at least in the west (I can imagine explaining to a Damascan falafel vendor that the roach that just flew past your nose requires a free sandwich). But eating out is not, and should not be, a tense game between the diner and the restaurateur, in which the former arrives only in the hopes that something will go wrong, stuffing occasional bits of food into their mouths in between furtive glances for potential meal tickets in the form of many legged intruders. As Mr. Sietsema says, "bugs happen". Spills happen. People have bad nights. If you're really offended, stay away from the restaurant and tell your friends to eat elsewhere. But don't expect a free meal.

Incidentally, this is a tangential topic to another pet peeve of mine - the over cleanliness of the american food industry. But I'll start with this before progressing to the benefits of bacteria.

In two previous posts (here and here), I attacked the notion that there is something fishy about Congress exercising its constitutional power to regulate the District of Columbia, and in particular attacked this NYT editorial suggesting that if Congress wants to retrieve the powers it has delegated to the local D.C. agencies it ought to take a pay cut. (But see U.S. Const. Amdt 27 (forbidding such a pay cut for Congress to take effect until after the 2006 election))

PG penned a solid retort to my first post, and then, finding my second post non-responsive, penned an even more thorough one here. I concede partial defeat. Yes, even in situations where it has plenary power to regulate-- over national parks, over forts, arsenals, and other needful buildings, over conquered territory, and over the District of Columbia, Congress should regulate with a special humility. And yes, this belief is logically independent of whether one believes Congress should have (or should exercise) plenary Constitutional power with respect to the states. I stand corrected.

However, there are valid competing considerations in this and other such cases. One includes the legislature's personal preference about what is right. Just as Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul may vote for general legislation even if it would fail a popular referendum, Congressmen may sometimes validly decide that the interests of an important or oppressed minority of the District are more important than those of the majority, or that the majority of a district has misjudged some critical empirical fact that makes a bill more or less desirable. More importantly, Congressmen may-- indeed are obligated to-- avoid passing legislation that is unconstitutional, no matter how much their constituents want it. (I think such an obligation probably extends to repealing unconstitutional legislation already passed, at least in some circumstances.) To be sure, these considerations sometimes compete, and reasonable people can disagree about how they should come down. As, for example, PG and I seem to. I stand corrected.

But in blogospheric fashion, I will end this concession with a new argument. I am puzzled as to why PG ends her post by knocking the idea of legislative constitutionalism:

Surely if the D.C. gun restrictions are "presumptive[ly] unconstitutional," their unconstitutionality ought to be corrected by the part of government, either local or federal, that generally decides whether something violates the Constitution, i.e. the judiciary. ... While I understand the argument that each branch of government should act to enforce the Constitution -- that it does not belong to the judiciary alone -- to say that something is "presumptively unconstitutional" in the absence of a judicial finding demands more than the barefaced statement.

The Connecticut legislature has issued a non-binding moratorium on uses of eminent domain while they contemplate new legislation to fight the abuse of the power throughout the state. There has also been some talk of simply eliminating the City of New London. I presume that will be a nonstarter, but one should never underestimate the imperialist urge.

It's curious, I think, how even those of us who believe in some judicially enforceable limits of the states against the national government tend not to get worked up about the rights of municipalities. I think some degree of decentralization is wise, but it doesn't bother me at all that under many state constitutions, a municipality exists completely at the sufferance of the state government. Maybe it should, and maybe it will, but it doesn't.

[In Connecticut, for example, the legislature is required to deligate authority to municipalities as "it deems appropriate", and is forbidden to target them with special structural legislation, but there is an exception for laws that eliminate a town. See Conn. Const. Art. 10, Sec. 1]