The Caucasus and Central Asia are two regions of the world that some geographical or historical interpretations refer to as one region, a claim that can even be disputed. Certainly, the similarity is true that the independent history of the countries of the two regions, which gained their independence from the Soviet Union, began after 1991. However, this historical past has largely determined the Western attitude towards the Caucasus and Central Asia.

And the book by S. Frederick Starr and Svante E. Cornell outlines precisely this American and European political thinking toward Central Asia and the Caucasus, which forms the basis for the judgment of many political and geopolitical analysts belonging to Western cultural circles and which has become particularly relevant today, in the twentieth century of the twenty-first century, given the tense geopolitical processes of the 1960s. The book identifies the American and European conceptual and structural as well as theoretical and practical obstacles related to Central Asia and the Caucasus from which Western thought and attitudes suffer in order to understand the political and social processes in the region. The pair of authors trace the origins of Western policy toward Central Asia and the Caucasus to the 1975 Helsinki Final Document, which established Western notions of international political and economic relations and criteria for the concept of democracy, and the categorization of democracies, an attempt for the 21st century that resulted in rather uncoordinated and often highly contradictory policies and also proved counterproductive.

Moreover, Starr and Svante's work highlights the failure of Western leaders to relegate the importance of this region to a subordinate status and to follow a false economic and political model that pushed Western interests out of what is now a sovereign and economically strong Caucasus and Central Asia. from a region that is increasingly important to the global economy.

Szabolcs Veres is a researcher at the Eurasia Center