Vassilis K. Fouskas, in Zones of Conflict: US Foreign Policy in the Balkans and the Greater Middle East, delivers an ambitious critique of American foreign policy after the Cold War. With a strong foundation in realist thinking, Fouskas questions the idea that US global leadership is guided by democratic values. Instead, he presents it as a strategy to maintain power, especially across the geopolitically vital region of Eurasia.
Drawing inspiration from Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard, the book sees Eurasia as the main theatre of global power. Fouskas argues that, as a non-Eurasian power, the US has relied heavily on military force, financial leverage and transatlantic alliances such as NATO to maintain its strategic footholds in the region. Unlike Brzezinski, however, Fouskas sees this dominance as unstable, driven by short-term interests, and damaging in the long run.
Each chapter examines a specific case study: the wars in the Balkans, the energy politics of the Caspian Sea, US relations with Turkey, and the unresolved division of Cyprus. Through these examples, Fouskas builds a picture of a foreign policy based more on power plays and energy needs than on diplomacy or shared values.
His analysis of NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999 is a good example of his critical approach. Far from being a humanitarian mission, Fouskas describes the war as a strategic move to expand NATO’s influence, sideline Germany and Russia, and secure energy corridors. He points out that the intervention took place without a UN mandate, and that groups previously labelled as extremist were suddenly treated as partners. For Fouskas, the selective invocation of human rights to justify military action epitomises the contradictions of US-led global governance.
Energy security plays a central role throughout the book. US interest in the Caspian Sea region, for instance, is not just about access to oil and gas, but also about controlling how those resources are transported. By promoting pipeline routes that avoid Russia or Iran, and by supporting governments aligned with the West, US sought to shape the energy map of Eurasia in its favour. At the same time, the author shows how this approach led to tensions with other powers—including France, China and Germany—and deepened instability on the ground.
The European Union, often seen as an economic power without political influence, is presented more critically. Fouskas highlights moments of EU independence, particularly during Cyprus’s accession process. Despite US and Turkish opposition, the EU supported Cyprus’s membership even before a political solution to the island’s division had been reached. According to Fouskas, this demonstrated the EU’s capacity, under certain conditions, to resist American pressure and follow its own geopolitical priorities.
Among the book’s most striking analogies is Fouskas’s comparison between US foreign policy and Scarface’s Tony Montana. He underlines the fact that, like Montana, the United States is portrayed as an empire intoxicated by its own myth—convinced of its moral superiority and using that belief to justify interventions, domination and regime change. The metaphor illustrates the dangerous mix of arrogance and short-sightedness that, according to Fouskas, underpins much of Washington’s post-Cold War behaviour. The more the US believes in its exceptionalism, the more blind it becomes to the destabilising consequences of its actions.
The chapters on Turkey are particularly relevant to today’s international debates. Fouskas presents Turkey as a complex and sometimes unreliable partner for the West—strategically indispensable, yet increasingly difficult to integrate into Western political norms. He shows how the US and EU have often overlooked Turkey’s domestic democratic shortcomings because of its key geographic location. However, he also warns that this relationship is built on fragile foundations, with growing tensions over Cyprus, energy politics and Turkey’s role in NATO. The comparison between Turkey and Germany is central to Fouskas’s overall thesis. If Turkey is often described as a bridge between East and West, the author insists that Germany is the more important long-term partner for the US in Eurasia. With its economic strength and leadership within the EU, Germany offers a more stable platform for shaping the region’s future, even if American strategists have sometimes underestimated its importance.
In his final chapter, Fouskas reflects on the trajectory of American power since the end of the Cold War. Rather than adapting to a multipolar world, he argues, the US has remained locked in a pattern of military assertiveness and economic coercion. This persistence, he warns, has often fuelled the very instability it claims to resolve, entrenching division, provoking backlash, and stretching American influence beyond sustainable limits.
Looking ahead, Fouskas outlines an alternative vision rooted in regional cooperation. He calls for a Eurasian framework that brings together actors like China, Russia, Iran and Germany, not to replace one dominant power with another, but to shift international relations toward genuine multilateralism. In his view, the US also stands to gain from such a reorientation: if it is willing to move beyond its unilateral instincts and invest in diplomacy grounded in mutual respect and shared rules.
Sometimes, the book highlight too much the importance of American action. At the same time, too little attention is given to the internal dynamics of the regions it studies. Local actors, rival ideologies and ascendant political forces are often overshadowed by the emphasis on Washington’s grand strategy.
Although Fouskas adopts a critical realist framework, his analysis is substantiated by compelling empirical illustrations that underscore the strategic, rather than normative, thrust of US foreign policy. His interpretation of NATO’s 1999 intervention in Kosovo, framed not as a humanitarian imperative but as a geopolitical manoeuvre to marginalise Russia and Germany; finds resonance in subsequent scholarship on selective multilateralism. Likewise, his discussion of US-backed pipeline routes in the Caspian region illustrates how energy security consistently eclipsed democratic conditionality. However, the analytical weight given to American grand strategy occasionally sidelines the agency of regional actors, such as the role of local nationalist movements in the Balkans. Despite this, the book’s conceptual linkage between militarised exceptionalism and imperial overstretch, epitomised in the Scarface metaphor, is both provocative and analytically fruitful.
Zones of Conflict is a complete and necessary contribution, unafraid to challenge dominant narratives about Western intervention and global order. In doing so, he challenges us not only to rethink the past, but to imagine a more balanced and inclusive international order.