Dictators Without Borders
Power and Money in Central Asia
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
A penetrating look into the unrecognized and unregulated links between autocratic regimes in Central Asia and centers of power and wealth throughout the West
Weak, corrupt, and politically unstable, the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are dismissed as isolated and irrelevant to the outside world. But are they? This hard-hitting book argues that Central Asia is in reality a globalization leader with extensive involvement in economics, politics and security dynamics beyond its borders. Yet Central Asia’s international activities are mostly hidden from view, with disturbing implications for world security.
Based on years of research and involvement in the region, Alexander Cooley and John Heathershaw reveal how business networks, elite bank accounts, overseas courts, third-party brokers, and Western lawyers connect Central Asia’s supposedly isolated leaders with global power centers. The authors also uncover widespread Western participation in money laundering, bribery, foreign lobbying by autocratic governments, and the exploiting of legal loopholes within Central Asia. Riveting and important, this book exposes the global connections of a troubled region that must no longer be ignored.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this timely analysis of the unexpected global dimensions of Central Asian politics, Cooley and Heathershaw, Central Asia experts at Columbia University and the University of Exeter, respectively, pull back the curtain on a region too often dismissed by Westerners as isolated and slumbering. The key to understanding the region, the authors argue, is not examining the internal dynamics of the authoritarian Central Asian states, but exploring the embedding of Central Asian elites in a vast transnational network of financial and legal creations including offshore bank accounts, foreign arbitration, and tax havens that are upheld by complicit Western institutions and mobilized toward ensuring the continued survival of those authoritarian regimes. "At the heart of this story is a failure in the international financial system to effectively identify money laundering when it occurs," the authors note. But the story they tell is about much more than corruption. They adroitly tie together topics as far-flung as the effects of piecemeal economic liberalization in the former Soviet Union, the rise of a cosmopolitan Central Asian elite, and the sordid underbelly of Western-style globalization. This is a lucid, iconoclastic primer on the region that demolishes the artificial distinction between domestic and international politics in Central Asia once and for all.
Customer Reviews
I can’t sleep at night LOL
Good book scary tho