Kazakh president for life hailed by U.S.

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In a move worthy of the world's most dastardly despots, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev recently approved a constitutional amendment that abolishes term limits for presidents, allowing him to seek office again in 2012, when his current term expires. Considering he managed to pull in a highly questionable 91 percent of the vote in 2005, there's no cause to believe the autocratic leader will be going anywhere anytime soon.

In response, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack has called the legislation "a step in the right direction."  Wh-what?

Presumably, McCormack was speaking in reference to the other legislation packaged with the amendment, which serves to give the Kazakh Parliament greater power and autonomy. Though McCormack acknowledged that the reforms were perhaps not "exactly what we would have hoped," he maintained that "we're not going to impose it on them." The "it" is, of course, democracy, the imposition of which has proven difficult for the United States in recent years.

This retreat to realpolitik has little to do with any lessons learned in Iraq; rather, it is a reflection of the vital interest Washington perceives in a strong, stable Kazakhstan. It so happens that the former Soviet state will be one of the world's top 10 oil producers within the decade. More immediately, Kazakhstan is a vital link in U.S. and E.U. plans to bypass Russia in the export of oil from the Caspian Sea. Outraged, Nazarbayev's opponents have accused the United States of "valuing oil more than democracy." Sorry, friends—welcome to the real world.