{"id":192932,"date":"2009-02-04T00:06:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-04T05:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/02\/04\/kyrgyzstan-to-close-us-airbase\/"},"modified":"2009-02-04T00:06:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-04T05:06:00","slug":"kyrgyzstan-to-close-us-airbase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/02\/04\/kyrgyzstan-to-close-us-airbase\/","title":{"rendered":"Kyrgyzstan To Close US Airbase"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>President Kurmanbek Bakiyev of Kyrgyzstan <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/world\/asia\/la-fg-kyrgyzstan-base4-2009feb04,0,6704305.story\">Kjust announced his intention to close the Manas air base<\/a> at a press conference with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.<\/p>\n<p>He is claiming that the US is not paying enough, and my guess is that the Russian aid also announced influenced him:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>Russia, meanwhile, was ready to pay. The Kyrgyz president collected pledges of a $2-billion discounted loan and a $150-million grant. The Russian government also agreed to cancel Kyrgyzstan&#8217;s $180-million debt and to build a hydroelectric power plant.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I think that Russia does not want Afghanistan to fall back into the Taliban&#8217;s hands, but I also think that they see the bases in former Warsaw Pact and FSU nations as being a deliberate attempt to create a &#8220;ring of steel&#8221; in order to contain Russia.<\/p>\n<p>I think that there are elements in the US military, and elements in the past administration (Cheney, Rice, etc.) who have been rather strong supporters of the &#8220;ring of steel&#8221; concept, so it&#8217;s not like they are paranoid for nothing.<\/p>\n<p>From a tactical perspective, the loss of Manas is crushing, as it will, leave Pakistan as the only supply route available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Kurmanbek Bakiyev of Kyrgyzstan Kjust announced his intention to close the Manas air base at a press conference with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. He is claiming that the US is not paying enough, and my guess is that the Russian aid also announced influenced him: Russia, meanwhile, was ready to pay. The Kyrgyz president &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1153,964,1040,1006],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-foreign-relations","category-former-soviet-union","category-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192932"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}