Book Review: S. Frederick Starr & Svante E. Cornell, “Eurasia’s Shifting Geopolitical Tectonic Plates: Global Perspective, Local Theaters”

The Long Game on the Silk Road features an overview of the 25 year-long policies of the US and the EU toward Central Asia and the Caucasus. Twenty-five years later it is fair to evaluate the results of the policies they adopted and also to take a fresh look at the assumptions on which they were based. Have the policies in place served American and European interests? Where they have not, how can they be improved? And above all, after a quarter century have these countries become more relevant to western interests, or less so? These are the questions this book will address, focusing on the South Caucasus and Central Asia, or the so-called “southern” region of the former Soviet Union. The book insightfully addresses the significant role of the region in world politics, lays out the problems in Western policies toward the region, and provides concrete recommendations on how to ameliorate them.

Authors: Polad Muradli
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