Can MISO put the Russkies in the Soup?

OK, so I’m reaching a little bit for this week’s posting. But give me a break, you can’t be a creative genius every week and I’ve spent the past several weeks in Idaho where I didn’t even get much of a chance to enjoy the country side.

Today’s posting was inspired by the Washington Times (not the Washington Post) article: “US and Russia in a new standoff” which appeared in the August 21, 2012 website at: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/21/us-and-russia-in-a-new-standoff/. (Which is also the photo source)

The nub of the article is that Tajikistan is potentially a very strategic ally. That the Russians have had a strong military presence there which is slated to end in 2014. The year coincidentally that NATO would close its base in adjoining Krgrystan.

The article opines that while Russia is confident it can conclude a deal that would give them long term access, this is not necessarily the case. It appears that other countries such as India are also interested in employing Tajikistan as a military logistics point.

Suppose for the moment that DOD wanted to use Tajikistan very badly and that they were willing to offer military type assistance through increased mil to mil activities and by providing military equipment along with the training to the Tajik military. 

The question I pose for the community is: should MISO be part of the mil to mil exchange so that the Tajiks could learn the fine points of Military Information Support Operations? I must confess that I really don’t know too much about the history of Tajikistan so that I can’t comment if they even consider non-kinetic operations as significant. 

Having said that I would wager that if NATO offered some of the cyber expertise from their Estonian Center, this might be a very powerful incentive.

Thoughts?