There’s an important geopolitical lesson to be learned in the tumultuous events taking place now in Kyrgyzstan. Last Friday, the interim president of Kyrgyzstan, Roza Otunbayeva, appealed to Russia for help. The southern cities of Osh and Jalalabad were in the throes of deadly violence between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, the worst since 1990 when 300 people died, and it took thousands of Soviet troops several weeks to calm things down. Today, the official death toll stands at nearly 200 , but many more are feared to have perished, and thousands have been injured. Last Friday, Otunbayeva declared a state of emergency and admitted that the government had completely lost control of the southern part of the country. That region — a stronghold of former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev — has been unstable since protestors violently ousted him from power in April (Bakiyev initially fled to his southern stronghold, and is now in exile in Belarus).

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A former republic of the Soviet Union, Kyrgyzstan is the only country in the world to host both Russia and American military bases (the Transit Center at Manas, which lies on the outskirts of Bishkek, the capital, is a major point in the NATO supply chain for the war in Afghanistan). Most of Kyrgyzstan’s political elite — Otunbayeva, who served as her country’s ambassador to Moscow, included — were educated in Russia. Having visited the country in April, I can personally attest to the warm feelings that most Kyrgyz have toward Russia, feelings that are rather distinctive for citizens of a former republic of the Soviet Union, where the memories of occupation, repression, and cultural suppression tend not to die easily.

Part of the reason for these warm feelings has to do with the nature of the Bakiyev regime. Like the rest of Central Asia’s leaders (though to a lesser degree), Bakiyev was an unpleasant and illiberal man who jailed his opponents, cracked down on the press, and generally weakened his country’s already feeble democratic institutions. Normally, Vladimir Putin doesn’t care so much about these qualities in other leaders (he doesn’t care about them at all in himself), but by late 2009, the Kremlin’s tone towards Bakiyev took a more negative turn. The reason for this was quite simple, having little to do with Bakiyev’s record on human rights or governance: the Kyrgyz leader had accepted a very generous loan offer from the Kremlin in 2008 with the implicit understanding that he would evict the Americans from Manas. After initially announcing he would do so, he reneged on the threat after the United States agreed to increase the amount it was paying to “rent” Manas by more than threefold. Cue the Russian feelings of betrayal.

What followed was an onslaught of negative coverage of Bakiyev in the Russian media, which is hugely influential in Kyrgyzstan. On April 1, Russia raised export duties on oil to Kyrgyzstan, a move that sparked the riots just days later that eventually led to Bakiyev’s downfall. Leaders of the interim government that took power in Kyrgyzstan, not least of them Otunbayeva herself, were effusive in their gratitude to Russia. “We are grateful to the Russian Federation, grateful to the Russian prime minister, for the support, significant support from the Russian Federation in recent days in exposing this nepotistic, criminal regime,” she said at the time. I heard similar sentiments repeated on the streets. As for the Russians, they immediately pledged their full support to the interim government, condemned Bakiyev for his corrupt ways, and scored a massive public relations coup in the former Soviet space.

But now that Kyrygzstan is slowly descending into anarchy, the Russians could not seem to care less. As I explained yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, Russia actually stands to gain from the instability in Kyrgyzstan’s south, as it will draw Bishkek closer to Moscow and demonstrate Russia’s indispensability in the region. After happily taking credit for bringing about the downfall of the country’s previous ruler, they show little interest in helping to clean up the mess. The Russian government officially denied Otunbayeva’s handwritten request for help. The most they have done is dispatch a battalion of 300 soldiers to defend the already present Russian force and their families. And it’s doubtful that Moscow will do anything more; on Monday, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a sort of poor man’s NATO composed of Russia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Armenia, and Belarus, dissolved an emergency meeting without supporting the deployment of a peacekeeping force.

It has been reported that Kyrgyzstan’s interim government also requested military assistance from the United States, and was denied. The US, like Russia, is supplying some humanitarian assistance. Regardless, Washington’s obligations in Kyrgyzstan are of a far lesser order than Moscow’s, and there’s reason to believe that, were Kyrgyzstan a part of America’s “neighborhood” it would do more than lift a finger to alleviate the situation. Unlike the United States, which can almost always be counted upon to deploy its military and good offices to assist in humanitarian crises across the world, never mind when they afflict countries in the Americas, there is no such compassionate or idealistic streak in Russian foreign policy. The United States frequently puts its soldiers in harm’s way to mediate or resolve armed conflicts that have little to no effect on American national security, as in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Whereas those nations are all far flung from Washington’s standpoint, Kyrgyzstan is in Russia’s backyard.

So here’s a question for all those giddy or even nonchalant about America’s alleged decline on the international stage and the subsequent “rise of the rest” as an alternative to a world order shaped by American hegemony: contrast America’s ongoing role in Haiti, and Russia’s behavior (or lack of it) in Kyrgyzstan, and ask yourself which world you’d rather live in.