US Assistant Secretary in Turkmenistan: Can Virtue be Taught?

US Embassy--Ashgabat

Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert O. Blake, Ashgabat, February 2011

Assistant Secretary of State Robert O. Blake, Jr. quietly visited Ashgabat last week to meet with President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov before the conference on Afghanistan in Bonn, and to attend a ministerial meeting on terrorism co-organized by the UN Counter Terrorism Initiative Task Force, the European Union and the UN Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy in Central Asia.

In his speech at the meeting Blake spoke of Central Asia's Joint Plan of Action under the UN's Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, emphasizing the importance of human rights compliance while fighting terrorism:

The Joint Plan of Action includes a commitment to abide by and uphold the core values, including respect for human rights and the rule of law, that are too often compromised in efforts to combat terrorism. This is a very important point, because counterterrorism efforts can best succeed when they place respect for human rights and the rule of law front and center. Abusive and extra-legal behavior often only make the terrorism situation worse in the long-term, and it is important in our zeal to protect our citizens that we do not weaken their legal rights and protections.

Blake's remarks came on the eve of an unfortunate development at home tending to undercut his message, as the US Senate voted for the defense re-authorization act but failed to uphold the principle that American citizens arrested in the US in the war on terror shouldn't be subject to indefinite military detention on the president's order.

While in Ashgabat, Blake and Berdymukhamedov had a "lively exchange of views on the current state and prospects for bilateral partnership," the State News Agency of Turkmenistasn (TDH) reported. Here Blake said he appreciated Ashgabat's role in helping Afghanistan and promoting the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline which is supposed to both revive the Afghan economy and stabilize the region -- although the parties haven't agreed on all the gas and transit prices and security arrangements yet.

Then Blake took up the issue of the Turkmen presidential elections coming in February 2012, which look like a shoo-in for Berdymukhamedov as there is only one state-controlled party and the opposition doesn't seem to be really invited back to participate.

"In this context the Assistant Secretary of State said this important political action would be a splendid opportunity to demonstrate the results of the democratic, political, social and economic reforms in Turkmenistan," TDH quoted Blake as saying.

There haven't been hardly any results -- but this statement may have been part of the sort of clever technique your Mom used to try, praising her children for good behavior not yet in evidence in the hopes that expectation of virtue may actually evince it.

Of course long ago, in Plato's Dialogues, Socrates and Meno debated whether virtue could be taught and whether it could be acquired through practice, or whether it was inherent.

TDH takes the notion far further, ascribing more good to Turkmenistan than it actually has, but it's not clear who made this claim during the meeting:

It was noted that Turkmenistan’s constructive policy of reforms as a guarantee of sustainable development and further democratization of the country opened up the vast opportunity to foster Turkmenistan-US partnership and expand effective business contacts.

We've heard the idea before that the way to persuade Central Asian tyrants to democratize is to assure them that it's good for business -- from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the General Motors plant in Tashkent.

Foreigners' statements often wind up looking very different when they go through the meat-grinder at Turkmenistan's state media, so we hope there might be some clarification from State about where Turkmenistan really stands on democracy.