looks at the increasingly stressful state of U.S.-Russian relations resulting from the prosecution of the war on terrorism, as well as positive and negative effects of the U.S.-Russian rivalry on the leadership in each of the five Central Asian republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. begins by focusing on the key areas of contention between the United States and Russia in Central Asia, including American efforts to enlist help fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, U.S. support for democratization, and attempts by each side to exert control over the region's vast energy reserves. The book then turbans to the republics themselves to show how the Russian-U.S. rivalry is playing out in each one, including Russian diplomatic tactics aimed at protecting its "backyard" against slow but steady U.S. efforts to exert more influence in the region.