Craig Murray has commented on my earlier post about EU policy towards Uzbekistan:

You make the somewhat childish debating error of asserting that because I have said that US republicans do something, I am claiming that only US republicans do that thing.  I have in fact published numerous pieces, both on my blog and elsewhere, attacking Germany’s policy in Uzbekistan. Not sure if this link will show, but this one entitled "Uzbekistan and German Disgrace" is just one example: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/05/uzbekistan_and.html

Well, childishly or unwisely or otherwise I was basing myself on p.37 of his book, which singles out ‘conservative politicians in the USA’ and ‘short-sighted US Republicans’ for confusing Uzbekistan leader Karimov with true democrats elsewhere in the former communist world.

Later on p.60 is a fullish description of the mighty ‘K2’ US airbase in Uzbekistan which is mentioned elsewhere in the book at different points. But it takes us until p.330 to discover that our benign EU partner Germans too have a significant military airbase in Uzbekistan.

And it takes us until p.378 tucked away in Note 73(!) to find out the name of "the most frequent and obsequious" Western Minister to visit Uzbekistan, namely "Joschka Fischer, the trendy Green German Foreign Minister". 

Craig likes to express his views in a blunt, provocative way. See eg his recent remarkable two-for-the-price-of-one sexist swipe on his website aimed at the Labour candidate who lost in the Glasgow East byelection:

… the graceless vituperation of the defeated New Labour candidate, the shrew-faced bitch Margaret Curran …

It is fair to take his book about Western policy in Uzbekistan as his considered view on that subject. And that book hits far harder at US/UK perfidy than at eg German perfidy. Hence my childish simplification.

Maybe a book dwelling in greater length and in a balanced way on contradictions in EU as well as US policy towards Uzbekistan would have been more accurate, subtle – and persuasive? And for all those reasons less likely to sell?

Next. On to analyse Chapter Four of Craig’s book, where he meets President Karimov and the German and US Ambassadors…