The current period of intense violence in the region has resulted in a serious unraveling of the Arab-Israeli peace process and suggest the near impossibility of Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation. Two defining moments have led to this conclusion: first, the Oslo agreement that raised high hopes for peace and then the failure of Camp David II that shattered them.
Kyrgyzstan is really coming to a turning point. Any further deterioration in its political conditions will justifiably earn it the label of an authoritarian state. Many already consider it to be one, although most would grant that it is the softest of the region's authoritarian regimes.
The Process of democracy building in Kyrgystan has faltered. Kyrgyzstan must open up again politically and work toward greater economic transparency both through the creation of an independent judiciary and through a more directed and far reaching campaign against corruption.
The new US military presence in Uzbekistan is one more sign of how the dominant geopolitical paradigms of the last half of the twentieth century are no longer operative. The Cold War and its aftermath post-Cold War period are at an end.