The article discusses the challenges posed by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), an alliance of six Central Asian nations, to the democratic reform initiative of U.S. President George W. Bush among the area's authoritarian states. According to Stephen Blank, a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Army War College, the SCO has been viewed as a way for countering U.S. influence in the region. The alliance has demanded a timetable for U.S. troops to pull out of strategic military bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan that were established to support the 2001 to 2002 war in Afghanistan.