To most Americans , Central Asia means the Kazakh Never Never Land of Sascha Cohen's alter ego. But Borat was shot on location in Romania, while once upon a time , the real Kazakhstan was the Wild West of the Soviet Union-- vast, horsey, dusty, and above all heavily armed. The Evil Empire ran its strategic weapons programs and its nuclear gulag side by side in Kazakh badlands , once home to literally thousands of tons of plutonium and weapons grade uranium.
But then, so were Nevada, New Mexico and Texas- so what ?.
The answer is that while the US government is still very much in charge of the former--and present-- nuclear weapons facilities in our none too wild west, The Kremlin cut loose Kazakhstan and the half dozen other 'Stans hosting its arsenals a generation ago. Much of the dangerously weaponizable content of those far flung facilities were rounded up with considerable derring-do in the first few years after the Soviet collapse.
Go read the rest, it's excellent.
Ian
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