In his book, Matthew Crosston lays out an interesting and worthwhile argument: that by focusing on short-term security assistance and long-term democracy building in authoritarian regimes, the United States is unwittingly creating conditions for extremism and anti-American sentiments throughout the world. His case study is the region of Central Asia—one that had largely been ignored by policymakers until the need for non-OPEC energy that increased in the 1990s and the military actions in Afghanistan that began in October 2001. According to Crosston, given the newfound strategic importance of Central Asia in its “global war on terrorism,” the U.S. government has all but abandoned the notion of advocating democracy in the region. He emphatically states, “There has been no real oversight to gauge whether vibrant democracies are being established [in Central Asia]. And there has certainly not been a process where regimes have been singled out and denounced for the fact that they have consistently denied their citizens the right to chose their leaders and engage their governments in peaceful opposition and open debate” (p. 18). This particular theme runs throughout the book under the moniker “Wonka Vision of Democracy”—a reference to the children's tale of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory—which suggests that U.S. policymakers ignore the “reality of democracy” while professing “admiration for the fantasy democracy supposedly emerging.” Crosston quotes excerpts from various public statements of U.S. government officials in a variety of settings to show that this is a “bipartisan effort” to avoid the difficult challenges raised by providing assistance to authoritarian regimes.
After an initial chapter outlining the threat of terrorism and emerging extremism in Central Asia, the author examines what he sees as the fundamental contradiction in U.S. policy: “how foreign policy is professed philosophically and how foreign policy is implemented financially” (p. 14). His case study is the region of the Ferghana Valley, which, he notes, is an ideal test case as it presents itself as a highly contentious piece of territory. Moreover, it is a region that has repeatedly been considered a hotbed of Islamic extremism. This is a concern raised by the respective national governments of the Ferghana Valley, as well as analysts and officials from outside of the region. Three subsequent chapters focus on the countries that possess part of the valley—Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. In each of these, Crosston highlights examples where he believes that the United States has purposefully, or unknowingly, overlooked the lack of democratization efforts by the governments in an effort to curry favor and remain engaged in Central Asia. He follows this set of studies with a brief chapter on Hizb ut-Tahrir and concluding remarks on how shortsighted U.S. policies in the region exude a sense of “double-standards” that will only make the populations in the respective countries skeptical of U.S. intentions.
In short, this book makes no apologies for its harsh criticism of U.S. policy toward Central Asia, and the author states that he hopes to have brought “light to the manner in which the United States provided aid to the region and how such manners compromise our security in the more important long term. While the local regimes increased their repression we looked duplicitous and self-serving” (p. 163). Legislation exists (for example, Section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961) that should limit such partnering with authoritarian regimes, but in actuality, policymakers prefer to overlook these principled measures for short-term gains. This theme is repeated throughout the book, indicating that the author had a clear conclusion drawn at the beginning of the text. Not surprisingly, discussions throughout the ensuing chapters serve to support this claim, giving the book more of a feel that it is ultimately polemical in nature, rather than a social science exercise. Part of this can be explained by the fact that Crosston attempts to examine a range of issues in very little space, and so one has to accept the fact that this is not a thorough historical examination of the forces at play in the region.
The style and focus of the book highlight other methodological concerns. First of all, there is an odd absence of interviews with U.S. government officials or others who might be engaged in security assistance, democracy assistance, U.S. policy in Central Asia, or even nongovernmental organizations that are recipients of U.S. assistance. Without question, the speeches and official documents quoted in the chapters are worth noting, but it would have been a more powerful argument had the “official position” been given a chance to explain, defend, or even refute some of these earlier statements. Not surprisingly, as in any organization, there are a variety of views within the U.S. government, including those who question the extent to which one should associate with authoritarian regimes. Authors such as Thomas Carothers have shown that the internal process of foreign assistance is complex and does reflect a competition of views within the policy community.
This brings up a second important methodological question: What are the perspectives of people from the region? Are the programs and propaganda of groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir or Al Qaeda resonating in Central Asia? In the Ferghana Valley, in particular? Before absolutist comments can be made, is there an effort to see the range of views in the region and the perceptions of U.S. programming? This can be done, as Zeyno Baran proved in her 2004 study of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Central Asia. Ultimately, such data challenges any work that tries to create direct causal relationships between policies and regional outcomes.
Finally, an examination of the endnotes suggests that the majority of the citations were from Internet sources, with a small group being the core citations. Not that searching for electronic sources is inherently wrong or unscholarly itself, but it ought to be complemented with other source materials and some element of fieldwork to at least verify or refute the secondary sources used. There has been quite a prolific body of literature on 1) Central Asian politics, 2) terrorism in Central Asia, and 3) U.S. assistance programs toward the region, including security assistance. It is a shame that the author overlooked these critical and important works that attempt to wrestle with similar themes. A 2006 study by the RAND Corporation entitled Securing Tyrants or Fostering Reform?: U.S. Internal Security Assistance to Repressive and Transitioning Regimes is a case in point—and a work that employed painstaking efforts in interviewing official and nongovernmental actors in the assistance arena.
Overall, this is an interesting exercise in polemics that crafts an argument worth presenting. The author should be commended for his desire to take such a principled and philosophically logical position. However, the work itself would have been enhanced with greater rigor in approaching the subject and an appreciation for the domestic situation within each of the noted countries, as well as the realities of U.S. policymaking. Obviously, such a work would require more extensive depth and regional knowledge—a worthy topic for a political scientist interested in the impact of policy programs on foreign states.
