Updated: Dr. Cooley was interviewed about this article on Foreign Affairs Focus; the video is available on Foreign Affairs' YouTube Channel.

Saltzman Member and Chair of the Barnard Political Science Department Alexander Cooley has recently published an article in Foreign Affairs. The article, entitled "The New Great Game in Central Asia," discusses the recent increase in competition between China, Russia, and the US for influence in Central Asia. Dr. Cooley, who has recently written a book on the subject, Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest for Central Asia (Oxford University Press: 2012), argues that China has gained the upper hand in this struggle by offering assistance to regimes that the West finds unsavory without conditionality or criticism. Nevertheless, says Dr. Cooley, "engagement on values is the very thing that has distinguished the Western-led international order" and abandoning these efforts would "signal Brussels and Washington's taming by the post-Western world, not [their] successful engagement with it."

The article is available on Foreign Affairs' website.

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