Transcripts
Ambassador Ordway's Interview with Kazakhstan's Internet Radio Inkar-Info
Almaty, Kazakhstan
February 29, 2008
Question: Mr. Ambassador, first, let me thank you for agreeing to give this interview. I don’t want to waste your time, so, let’s move on to our questions.
My first question: As a matter of fact, there were no elections in Kazakhstan recognized by OSCE observers as free and fair. At the same time, Kazakhstani authorities keep insisting that elections were legitimate enough, as well as normal, free and fair.
What do you think stands for this contradiction in assessments of electoral process, what caused such a discrepancy?
Ambassador Ordway: First of all, I don’t think there is a sort of an automatic “up or down” or “yes or no” evaluation of any electoral process. I think if you read carefully what the OSCE has said about the Kazakhstani elections, it talks about not reaching certain international standards, about improvements in some areas and lack of improvements in other areas, but it is not the job of the OSCE or foreign governments to say that a particular election is legitimate or illegitimate in the sense that we recognize or don’t recognize the outcome of that election.
So we certainly think that there is lots of room for improvement in both electoral registration and implementation of elections in Kazakhstan. At the end of the day with these elections we, like the people of Kazakhstan, have to live with the results and make the best of them that we can. That’s what we do. We’re committed to the relationship with Kazakhstan. We’re committed to continuing the relationship with Kazakhstan’s leaders and its people, and that’s what we do no matter how much we may approve or disapprove of any particular electoral process.
Question: Thank you, and my second question. Mr. Ambassador, during “velvet revolutions” took place in Georgia, Ukraine and the Kyrgyzstani events, press often placed the accusations that United States was involved into those cases. What can you say about those accusations?
Ambassador Ordway: Well, first of all I think both accusations and credit were inaccurately taken. We certainly did not in any of those cases try to or act in any way that would have brought about a revolution or any other illegal activity. In fact Assistant Secretary Fried once said publicly that these revolutions represent a failure, not a victory, of American policy. Our policy is to try to encourage the development of democratic institutions and democratic practices. In most of these cases, these so-called revolutions represent a failure of those institutions to function properly. But it also represented in most of those cases a strong desire by the population to see democratic institutions and democratic practices implemented and it was that gap that paused the actions that led to these so-called revolutions.
Question: Many ill-wishers (and your country has some) say the United States, helping to develop democracy in some countries, act from selfish motives. So, the United States pursue its own profit bringing democracy to these countries. So, why the United States need the democracy in these countries?
Ambassador Ordway: I think there are a couple of reasons. First of all is that we have our own very deep tradition of democracy that is part of the founding of our country and is a very integral part of what the United States considers itself to be in the world. We therefore believe very strongly that democratic institutions, democratic values lead inexorably to stability and to prosperity. Since stability and prosperity are the kinds of things that make everybody’s life in the world better, to the extent that you have a more stable world, more stable regions, and more stable countries, it is good for us as a country and it is good for countries in the world in general.
We also believe, and we have a lot of history to demonstrate, that our best partners in the world, the countries with whom we can create alliances, do business, trade and investment, exchange cultural and educational values, are precisely the democratic countries of the world. So therefore a world that has more democratic countries is going to be a world in which we’re going to have more partners, in which we are going to be better able to carry out our economy, our life, and generally improve the situation of the world.
I think if you look at the analysis of the people who claim that we have these selfish interests, I think it is both cynical and inaccurate. If we really wanted to control the situation it’s not likely we would want to turn over control to the people of that country. It would probably not necessarily -- We do not always have the most popular positions on a day-to-day basis and we certainly do not think that it would be a very effective way to get a particular selfish goal by turning over or having some more democratic system.
If you look back at post-war history we had a couple of situations in the United States where we made a different choice, and in each and every case it backfired in a very significant way on both our short terms and our long term interests.
Question: However we can see the rise of anti-American sentiments in the world, and the same tendency is here, in Kazakhstan. As a journalist, I can say that lately the negative attitude towards war in Iraq and other situations becomes more and more common among journalists? How can you explain this rise of negativism against the States?
Ambassador Ordway: I’m not sure I totally agree with your premise. If you look historically, I think we’ve had some other periods, again going back to the 1950s and 1960s, where there has been a much more vivid, much more active worldwide wave of anti-Americanism that’s included in many cases some fairly violent reaction against American actions in the world. And despite the recent incident with the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, I do not think that represents the sort of typical picture that we see today in terms of people’s attitudes and actions towards America in the world.
When I was a student in university, it was during the Vietnam War era and I remember many of my fellow students would wear Canadian flags on their backpacks because they did not want to have to confront the individual anger that sometimes people felt toward Americans. I think we don’t see very much of that today in general in the world, and we certainly don’t see that very much in Kazakhstan. I think people on an individual level have really very good relations with Americans as people and as individuals.
But it is true, I don’t disagree with the fact that many of America’s policies in the world today, and particularly in Iraq, have been very, very unpopular. There’s a certain degree of unpopularity in the United States as well with those policies.
But our data and the public opinion research that we do in Kazakhstan suggests that despite the fact that people here may disagree or have a bad opinion of the role that America plays in the world, on the whole they have a rather positive view towards the United States and what it is doing with Kazakhstan.
Finally, I’ll just give you a few little statistics which I think indicate what is the real attitude of Kazakhstanis towards the United States - or at least young Kazakhstanis. There are about 2,000 Kazakhstani students that have chosen to study in the United States. We think this year there will be about 5,000 to 6,000 Kazakhstani university students who will spend two or three months this summer working in the United States which is about a 50 percent growth in the last two or three years in this program. They’re not going there to get rich because they don’t come back with a huge amount of money.
Question: I can also add that many of them would have been pleased to stay..
Ambassador Ordway: Actually, our figures are quite good there. Unlike many other countries we find that the Kazakhstani students, including the work/study program students, do come back in very large numbers. There are very, very few that actually stay in the United States.
Question: They just don’t have the opportunity to stay but I wanted to discuss it from different point of view. You display the facts and numbers, my assessment of the situation is note so global. Since the first days of Kazakhstani independence to present, I was a witness and participant of all those processes and I can say that among the journalists, politicians and intelligentsia, the U.S. image is getting worse.
Ambassador Ordway: Let me tell you a little bit about my experience. I spent from 1978 to 1981 in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. And from 1985 to 1987 I was in the USSR. I can tell you that among the category of people you’re talking about, the United States had an unbelievably positive image despite the huge efforts of communist propaganda that depicted otherwise. In fact the image was probably better even than the reality. But it was really a situation of black and white, of good and evil. Now it’s all gray. So I don’t think there’s any way the United States could have the same image in places like Kazakhstan that it had in December or January 1991-1992. It’s absolutely impossible, because the image was not real.
The other problem, I think, is there was this idea that the United States could be the great savior and could make everything right. But the situation is very complicated. It’s got its ups and its downs, it’s got potholes, and it’s got all kinds of complications and we have all kinds of interests here, so we do not play the role of this great savior from outside who can come in and make everything right.
I think the other problem is, from the point of view of maintaining this high level of image, that we of course have a very high principle view, a view of what the situation ought to be, but we work with a different reality. We try to work as effectively as we can with that reality and I think, for some people, the difference between our principles and the way we work lowers the image that we have. But we’re going to continue because we will continue to speak our ideals and work pragmatically and with the reality.
Question: So, my next question is right about ideals. Many people, including Kazakhstanis, say that the principles of democracy, which suits well for the United States and Western Europe are not acceptable for us, there are no universal democratic principles and every country should build its own democracy, specific or even “transitional” democracy, if we can say so, with the specific principles. How realistic is the concept about “different types of democracy”, or it is still some universal process?
Ambassador Ordway: I think the answer is yes and yes. I think there are some fundamental, universal principles of democracy that are valid no matter whether you are in Asia or Africa, Latin America, Europe or North America. And there are international covenants and international agreements which capture many of those ideals, whether it’s in the United Nations charterance on human rights or the international covenants of civil and political rights or the final act of OSCE.
But it’s also true that whenever you build a structure or build a building you have to take into account the local circumstances. You can’t build the same building in every landschaft around the world. There are certain elements of American democracy, such as our completely incomprehensible primary system or our very archaic electoral college that we think are very democratic, but I certainly wouldn’t recommend exporting anywhere else in the world.
And sort of on the import side, I think that every country has to decide what makes the most sense, and there are lots of different variations and possibilities within these general democratic principles to still build a country which is fundamentally and basically democratic and will be recognized as such, both internationally as well as by its own population.
Question: And last question, no, I have one more. Let’s discuss a bit if Kazakhstan as well as Russia, Ukraine needs its “national idea”. There are some people (like me, for example) who think “national idea” is nonsense. What is your point of view, does the United States have any “national idea”?
Ambassador Ordway: That’s a very interesting intellectual debate. About 15 years ago or so, as the Cold War came to an end, there was a bit of a discussion in American intellectual circles about whether we needed to have - if not a national idea, at least an American international idea to figure out what our role was in the world now that it wasn’t simply opposing communism. Anyway, there were lots of words, and it eventually petered out into nothing.
In the late 1990s when I was in Moscow, there was the beginning also I think of a big debate about what the Russian idea is. I think, somewhat ironically, it sort of was exactly the same as in the United States. There was a lot of discussion, a lot of argument, a lot of words, and it really never went anywhere. People can’t agree on whether there should be a national idea, let alone what the national idea is.
I think that if a country does form itself or can unify around certain ideas or certain ideals, that’s going to be a natural process that everybody will recognize. It’s not something that can be achieved in some sort of a national debate forum. But the discussion itself can be very useful and I think can help clarify positions of people and can help at least bring out the question of who are we as a people and what are we doing. Even if it doesn’t resolve the issue, it can be a healthy process.
What would be very dangerous would be to have a discussion and then have someone or some small group of people say this is our national idea, everybody has to subscribe. That I think can lead to very socially splitting results in a country.
Question: There are many debates now about Kazakhstani Chairmanship in OSCE, and many people, even those from democratic camp, think that decision taken in Madrid is some sort of advance, and we have to work it. In this context, how do you assess the practice of blocking websites, which is a reality right now?
Ambassador Ordway: I think that any stifling of free speech, whether it is in print or on the internet, is not consistent with the kinds of commitments that we have heard over the years from Kazakhstan, nor is it consistent with the image that either the membership or a chair of the OSCE should really want to have. I don’t think we’re under some sort of a delusion that the road to 2010 is going to be absolutely straight and without any curves at all in the road, but what we want it to do is be as good a road as possible and will have the fewest number of distortions or sharp turns along the way. We’ll certainly continue to try to work both pragmatically as well as in terms of what we say publicly in order to try to encourage this type of development which is good for Kazakhstan and good for the organization.