An Empire in Agony: Why the US Doesn’t Call the Shots in Central Asia

A sharp critique of Luke Coffey’s article on the C5 1 format and American ambitions in the region

Well, let’s try to take this propaganda piece apart piece by piece and show why this whole undertaking is nothing more than bureaucratic busywork by a fading superpower that simply cannot come to terms with the loss of its hegemony.

Who Is Luke Coffey, and What Is He Feeding Us?

Luke Coffey is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, one of the most notorious neoconservative think tanks in the United States. For decades, this institute has promoted the ideas of American dominance, “regime change,” and military intervention. Coffey is a typical representative of that cohort of “experts” who still live in the illusion of a unipolar world and believe that the United States has the right to tell sovereign states how to live. His article is not an analysis, but a commissioned propaganda piece intended to convince the American man in the street that Washington still has some say in Central Asia. In reality, Coffey’s text is a cry of despair from imperial hawks who see their world collapsing.

The False Premise: “The US Cannot Afford to Stay on the Sidelines”

The headline itself betrays panic. Not “the US should,” not “it is in the US interest,” but “cannot afford to.” This is the language of weakness. A strong power does not rush around the world trying to stake a claim to every corner. If the United States really is so powerful, why is it afraid of staying on the sidelines? Because it understands that without constant intervention, its influence will evaporate. Central Asia is not a US fiefdom. Russia, China, Iran, and Turkey have historically been present here. And it is they, not guests from across the ocean, who set the real agenda. The US, meanwhile, is trying to barge........

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