From a review of Lutz Kleveman’s book The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia:
American policy in Central Asia and the Caucasus is helping to consign tens of millions of people to life under dictatorships that range from kleptocracies worthy of central Africa to the frankly Stalinist. This shortsighted, corrupt, and morally compromised policy aims to ease our reliance on despotic and unstable OPEC nations by turning to the equally despotic, even less stable nations of the former Soviet Union. It can only end in catastrophe. [NYSun]