Joshua Foust has a couple helpful posts on Kyrgyzstan’s presidential election and why Americans shouldn’t place too much importance on the president-elect’s recent comments regarding Manas air base. Ishaan Tharoor sums up why the Kyrgyzstan election matters to the region:

The Kyrgyz presidential election held this Sunday may mark the first fair and free transfer of power since the Central Asian republics won their independence following the collapse of the U.S.S.R. Despite evidence of incidents of vote-fraud and ballot stuffing in some areas, international observers seemed content with the verdict: Almazbek Atambayev, Kyrgyzstan’s current prime minister and the front-runner during the campaign, will be the country’s next President, having won some 63% of the vote — a huge majority in an election where 17 candidates were on the ballot. The Obama Administration applauded the vote, saying the Kyrgyz people “have taken an important and courageous step on the path of democracy.” That path, though, may also lead to a waning of American influence.

Atambayev said that the U.S. lease at Manas would not be renewed when it expires in 2014, which shouldn’t be terribly distressing to Americans. The U.S. is supposed to be out of Afghanistan by 2014 anyway, and the base has become a major irritant in the U.S. relationship with Kyrgyzstan. Atambayev’s remarks are entirely in line with the position that outgoing interim leader Otunbayeva took, which bizarrely prompted Michael Rubin to wish for her premature death, and it is quite understandable that an elected leader would take a position that is overwhelmingly popular at home. The U.S. presence has been unpopular in Kyrgyzstan for most of the last decade, and the dissatisfaction with the U.S. presence has only grown over time and deepened as the use of the base was connected to U.S. support for Bakiyev. When we consider what the so-called Tulip Revolution and Bakiyev regime did to Kyrgyzstan, waning American influence in Kyrgyzstan is probably not such a bad thing for Kyrgyzstan. Perhaps once the base is no longer the main focus of U.S. dealings with the country, the relationship can become a more balanced one. Former Kyrgyz Ambassador Baktybek Abdriasaev concluded his 2009 op-ed on the Manas subject with these words:

But if the base’s closure results in the United States regaining its critical voice and once again taking seriously its advocacy of democracy and human rights, that would be a silver lining to this disappointing story. It would mean an America that values its allies’ long-term stability more than a single military installation — and that could be a better investment in a secure future for all of us.