Tweet
TITLE: The Critical but Perilous Caucasus
SOURCE: Orbis (Philadelphia, Pa.) 48 no1 105-16 Wint 2004
Kenneth Yalowitz and Svante E. Cornell
The war on terrorism has brought Afghanistan and the Central Asian
states into the spotlight of world politics, but the nearby region of the
Caucasus between the Black and Caspian Seas, made up of Armenia, Azerbaijan,
and Georgia, is less well known. It is by no means less important to U.S.
foreign policy. In the military operations in Afghanistan after 9/11, the
three Caucasian states offered their support to the United States. All U.S.
and coalition aircraft transiting from America and Western Europe to Central
Asia flew in the South Caucasian states' airspace. These two states offered
blanket overflight and basing rights, and their cooperation has been vital
in the war on terror. But the importance of the Caucasus does not stop at
this: the oil resources of the Caspian Sea, especially Azerbaijan and
Kazakstan, are one potential alternative to Middle Eastern oil, and Caspian
natural gas reserves are a possible future source of energy for Western
Europe and Turkey. The Caucasus is again the "Silk Road" linking Central
Asia and Europe. Its location, between Russia, Iran, and Turkey and near
Iraq and the Middle East, gives it great strategic value.
But the South Caucasus is also a troubled region. In the 1990s it was a
hotbed of ethnic conflicts, none of which have been resolved; just over the
Caucasus mountains to the north, Chechnya's war for independence from Russia
rages on. The entire region has become a center for the illegal drug trade,
transnational crime, and trafficking in women and illegal migrants. Concerns
are also rising regarding the availability in the region of fissile
materials and other components useful for making "dirty bombs." All of this
has led to "Caucasus fatigue" in the West--the sense that too much economic
assistance and political support has been tendered with too little to show
for it.
However, the strategic relevance of the Caucasus is growing, since
terrorists could gain serious footholds there unless current political and
economic trends are reversed. This is a situation ripe for cooperation among
the United States, the EU, and Russia to resolve the ethnic conflicts,
promote needed reforms, and protect the sovereignty of the three independent
states.
DEADLOCKED CONFLICTS
In addition to the war in Chechnya that destabilizes the entire region,
three other ethnic conflicts in the Caucasus--Georgia's conflicts with its
South Ossetian and Abkhazian minorities and Armenia's war with Azerbaijan
over the latter's Nagorno-Karabakh region--remain deadlocked. The
Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict is by far the most threatening, since it
involves two independent states and could potentially have larger
humanitarian and regional ramifications.
Close to 1 million Azeris became refugees in 1992-94 as Armenia occupied
Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions of Azerbaijan. The 1994
cease-fire has held, but a decade of negotiations has failed to lead to a
solution, and the refugees remain in refugee camps. The negotiations have
exhausted both Azeris and Armenians, and many in Baku are pressing for a
military solution to restoring Azerbaijan's territorial integrity. As Ilham
Aliyev, who was since elected president of Azerbaijan, noted in an October
2002 speech in Washington, "Azerbaijan's patience is running out."(FN1)
While neither conflict has been resolved, the tensions over South
Ossetia have abated somewhat, whereas Abkhazia is still a major issue in
Georgian politics and a much more unstable situation. Tbilisi lost control
there after a 1992-93 war in which Russia supported Abkhazia. The
consequences of the conflict have been severe in human, material, and
political terms. The 250,000 refugees from the Abkhazia conflict form an
important pressure group. As in Azerbaijan, a cease-fire has been in place
for close to a decade, but negotiations have failed to bring the parties
closer to a solution. There have been returns to warfare in both 1998 and
2001, and low-intensity conflict is a constant in the border areas between
Georgia proper and areas controlled by the self-styled Abkhaz government.
The loss of territory was a major humiliation for the people of both
Azerbaijan and Georgia. At present, neither country has the military
capability to take back the lost lands, yet tensions are increasing in both,
and calls for a military solution are becoming ever more common. A political
solution to either conflict, as discussed below, would require a
substantially higher level of involvement on the part of the international
community. Substantial compromises from both sides will be necessary,
preceded by efforts to prepare public opinion on the respective sides of the
conflict.
The War in Chechnya. Just north of the Caucasus mountains, an estimated
100,000 Chechens--one tenth of the population--have been killed in the
ongoing war in Chechnya, and 300,000 to 400,000 have been forced to flee
their homes. The conflict had already spilled over to the independent
Caucasian states in 1999, when some 7,000 Chechen refugees and several
hundred fighters sought refuge in the Pankisi Gorge in northern Georgia.
This led to Russian threats of intervention against Georgia and Azerbaijan,
where some Chechen networks had also established a presence.
The war has also shifted in character. If the first war, in 1994-96, was
primarily an ethnic-based struggle for independence, many Chechen fighters
now are motivated primarily by their Islamic faith. (Russia itself has
cloaked the war in religious and civilizational terms ever since Chechnya
declared independence in 1991.) While Chechnya's leadership is nationalist
and secular, this religious trend has helped regionalize the conflict and
bring in radical-minded fighters from other parts of the Islamic world, who
challenge the less radical Chechen groups.
Russia is clearly unable to either win the war or resolve the Chechen
problem politically. President Putin staged his 2000 presidential campaign
on restoring law and order there. He has repeatedly asserted that the war is
over: in his state of the union address in May 2003, referring to the war,
he pointedly noted, "All that has finished." Yet this is far from the case.
Chechen fighters have acquired weapons that have enabled them to shoot down
a dozen Russian helicopters since fall 2002, challenging Russia's command of
the skies. Russia has also been unable to prevent high-profile Chechen
terrorist acts, such as the bombing of the Russian central administrative
building in Chechnya in December 2002 and the hostage-taking in a Moscow
theater in October 2002, in which 120 hostages died when Russian special
services stormed the building.
These incidents staged by young Chechens (primarily women) illustrate
the ways the collapse of the social fabric in Chechnya is radicalizing the
country's youth. Growing up with no hope for the future, many young Chechens
are drawn toward radical Islam. The state of war has drawn various radical
Islamic groups to Chechnya, where they propagate extremist ideologies and
jihad. The Middle Eastern funding sources of the radicals provides them with
better weapons than other fighters. That capital, coupled with their high
levels of motivation, enable them to perform daring raids on Russian forces.
This aura of resistance, along with constant Russian abuse of civilians,
pushes young Chechens to extremism.
A political solution to the Chechen conflict would require Moscow to
negotiate with the separatist authorities. Yet so far, Moscow has instead
pursued a policy of appointing the Chechen leadership, with which it then
negotiates. If Moscow called for the October 5 presidential elections in
Chechnya only to sideline the separatists and cement a loyal regime there,
the situation is unlikely to improve.
Weak States. The struggling economies, debilitating ethnic conflict, and
large refugee flows in the region's three nations have severely hindered the
governments' ability to create viable state bureaucracies, control and
police their territories, reform their economies, and establish the rule of
law and democracy. Progress has clearly been made in the last ten years: all
three countries have pluralist political systems with functioning opposition
parties, a relatively free print media, and economies that have been
liberalized to varying degrees. This progress has been recognized through
their admission to membership in the Council of Europe (in 1999 for Georgia
and in 2001 for Armenia and Azerbaijan). But on a political level, the
governments have not managed to build stable, let alone democratic, state
institutions.
In Georgia, the fragmented political system has produced no clear
successor to President Eduard Shevardnadze, who returned to Georgia to lead
the ruling State Council in early 1992 and was elected president in 1995 in
flawed elections. [Editor's note: As this issue was going to press on Nov.
23 it was announced that President Shevardnadze had resigned.] Georgia is
ill prepared to organize free and fair elections and handle the succession.
Relationships among the multitude of parties and candidates are puzzling and
fluctuating. Even leaving aside Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the government
barely controls large tracts of the country, such as the Armenian-populated
Javakheti region, the southwestern region of Adjara, or Svaneti and
Mingrelia in the west. Georgia's very statehood is at risk. Should its
current downward trend continue, it risks either losing its independence
from Russia or simply state failure.
In Armenia and Azerbaijan, the situation is slightly better. While
corruption is widespread in both countries, neither has a government as weak
as Georgia's, and they do exercise writ over their territories.
Azerbaijan faced its own succession crisis in the run-up to the October
15 presidential election this fall, with President Heydar Aliyev's health in
decline. Aliyev, one of the Soviet Union's most powerful men during the
Brezhnev and Andropov eras, had returned to power in 1993 after a brief
interlude of rule by the nationalist Popular Front in 1992-93. Aliyev
effectively safeguarded some stability, which permitted Western companies to
operate with reasonable security in the country's booming oil industry. But
this came at the cost of the country's initially positive democratic
development. In August 2003, 80-year-old Aliyev appointed his son, Ilham,
prime minister, putting him in line for the October 15 presidential
election. Ilham is an experienced politician who has held important
positions in the state oil company, headed the national Olympic committee,
and heads the Azerbaijani delegation to the Council of Europe. Aliyev Sr.
withdrew from the race two weeks before the election. With opposition
leaders failing to unite of offer an alternative strategy for the country,
Ilham won by a large majority in an election marred by intimidation and
allegations of fraud and followed by extensive rioting and reported police
brutality.
Armenia's transfer of power came in the form of a palace coup in 1998
that ousted President Levon Ter-Petrossian. But President Robert Kocharyan,
who moved to Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh only in the late 1990s, has
become alienated from the people. The murder of both the prime minister and
the speaker of parliament during a parliamentary session in October 1999
shocked the country. Some Kocharyan aides were accused of conspiracy and
even taken into custody, and five key witnesses have been murdered or died
in mysterious circumstances. The case is ongoing, but few Armenians think it
will ever be resolved. The war in Nagorno-Karabakh left Armenia with no
economic links to either Azerbaijan or Turkey, which is Azerbaijan's key
supporter and with which it shares strong cultural, linguistic, and economic
links. Armenia's economy contracted in the early 1990s to less than 35
percent of its 1989 levels, forcing an estimated half of the country's
population of 3 million to migrate to Russia, the United States, and Europe
in search of work. Yerevan is working constructively with the IMF, but
unless peace and economic stability are achieved soon, its statehood will be
further weakened due to simple demographic factors and it will become ever
more dependent on Russia for its economic survival and security.
Transnational Crime. One often-overlooked challenge to Caucasian
security is the region's transnational crime. Situated along the Balkan and
"northern" smuggling routes, the region is an important international center
for narcotics and arms trafficking. Criminal organizations in the Caucasian
states as well as in the north Caucasus within Russia--especially Dagestan
and Chechnya--are active in these areas, in addition to their cigarette,
fuel, and alcohol smuggling. The fact that approximately 30 percent of
Georgia and 20 percent of Azerbaijan are outside effective government
control creates propitious conditions for transnational crime, which has
flourished in the Caucasus. With its proximity to Russia, Turkey, and the
Arab world, the Caucasus is a natural channel for arms smuggling. A flood of
weapons has poured into the region from Russia, Turkey, Iran, Greece and
Western states since 1989-90, when separatist and civil conflicts began.
Criminal organizations involved in the large-scale trafficking of arms and
drugs tend to be highly organized entities with influential leaders and
connections to key state institutions, and in some cases direct links to the
upper levels of government.(FN2) Abkhazia, on the Black Sea coast, is a
particular hub of the drug trade, as it offers easy access to Eastern and
Central Europe and, due to its unrecognized status, does not participate in
any international cooperation efforts that would provide oversight and
assistance. The Caucasus is located between Russia, the main source of
potential illegal WMD materials, and the Middle East, the main destination
of such materials. Unsafeguarded radiological material has been found in or
trafficked through Georgia, including in 2002 the then-largest seizure in
the world of enriched uranium.(FN3) Moreover, Abkhazia was a storage point
for enriched uranium and other radioactive materials during the Soviet
period, and it has been alleged that such materials may have been sold to
Iraq or terrorist groups.(FN4)
ECONOMIC RECESSION
The regional economic recession that began with ethnic conflicts in the
late 1980s was exacerbated by the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Poverty
and unemployment are rampant, and government officials' salaries are
ridiculously low (a deputy minister makes $200 a month), creating a black
market economy and feeding corruption. The region's health and education
systems, which functioned reasonably well in Soviet times, are decaying
rapidly. Income gaps are widening as a small wealthy class emerges, whose
income derives from both legitimate business and also from corruption and
crime. Meanwhile, the great majority of the population is left in poverty.
The major investments in the region have been in the oil and gas sector, and
then primarily in Azerbaijan; Armenia has been kept going to a large degree
by remittances from the Armenian diaspora in the West and in Russia, and
Georgia mainly by Western (especially American) aid. Oil and gas investments
have helped the macroeconomic stability of Azerbaijan, but this sector is
capital, not labor, intensive. The cease-fire lines of the deadlocked
conflicts keep investors wary and prevent legal trade across these lines,
which only encourages smuggling, especially in South Ossetia and
Abkhazia.(FN5)
RUSSIA AND OTHER REGIONAL PLAYERS
The international environment surrounding the Caucasus has made the
region a focal point for post-Cold War geopolitical rivalry. For much of
their history before Russia's final conquest of the region in the early
nineteenth century, the Caucasian countries formed a zone of competition and
conflict among the Russian, Ottoman, and Persian empires, all of which, in
their modern forms retain important interests in the region today. Turkey is
primarily interested in trade, commerce, Caspian oil and gas, preventing
Nagorno-Karabakh from flaring into a regional war, and ensuring the
sovereignty and independence of Georgia and Azerbaijan, as a barrier to
possible future Russian expansionism in the Caucasus. Iran's focus is
primarily on breaking out of its U.S.-imposed isolation. Not wanting to see
the region become an American bastion, Iran has maintained close ties to
Russia, which shares this concern, to help it promote its own influence
there. Iran, which has a substantial ethnic Azeri population in its north,
sided with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, while Turkey has been Azerbaijan's
strongest supporter. All three powers keep a close watch on the activities
of the others and are keenly interested in the outcome of debates over the
direction of pipelines carrying Caspian energy; market, military, and
security arrangements in the area; and any resolution of the
ethnic-territorial conflicts.
For Russia, the Caucasus carries an especially significant geostrategic
and historical weight. Expanding into the region was the first step in
Russia's efforts to expand its territory and its influence with Iran and
Turkey beginning in the eighteenth century. The region was later seen as a
gateway to the Middle East. Georgia in particular was essential to Russia's
conquest of the North Caucasus in the mid-nineteenth century, since it
formed the link between the North Caucasian peoples and the Islamic world,
especially Turkey. Control over Georgia allowed Moscow to isolate the North
Caucasus from the Islamic world--and Moscow still sees Georgia as crucial to
maintaining control of that restive region. The Caucasus is Russia's soft
underbelly, through which unwelcome influences, ranging from radical Islamic
groups to Turkey or the United States, could make inroads into Russia. As
such, while Russia has accepted the placement of U.S. forces in Georgia in
the struggle against terrorism, for the most part Moscow still views the
Caucasus from the zero-sum game perspective and wishes to minimize U.S.
influence. President Putin has increasingly used economic levers to maintain
influence in the Caucasus. Russia's traditional approach was
divide-and-conquer, exploiting ethnicterritorial conflicts and weak
governments. It still has military bases in Armenia and seeks to keep the
two bases it has left in Georgia until 2013, but Georgia is unwilling for
these to remain for more than three years.(FN6)
The key issue for Russia in the Caucasus (and perhaps in general) is the
war in Chechnya, which has made its already uneasy relations with Azerbaijan
even worse and almost brought it to war with bordering Georgia. The acrimony
began in late 1999, when the Georgians refused Russian requests to use their
bases in Georgia to attack into Chechnya. Russia countered with a harsh
propaganda campaign against Georgia, alleging that Pankisi Gorge (home to
the Kists, Georgians descended from Chechen refugees from earlier wars in
the North Caucasus, and some 7,000 Chechen refugees from the current war)
had become a major rear base of support and training for Chechen rebels.
Russia continually sought but was refused permission to conduct either their
own operations there or joint operations.
After 9/11, Moscow charged that terrorist elements had taken over the
Chechen struggle and that the Pankisi Gorge was the last holdout of the
Chechen fighters, making it the last barrier to a successful conclusion of
the war. The United States later concluded that there were likely some Al
Qaeda elements in Pankisi along with Chechen fighters, and in February 2002
agreed on a two-year program through which U.S. Special Forces would train
and equip the Georgian military in antiterrorism activities. President Putin
voiced no objections, but strong forces in the Russian military were and are
adamantly opposed to the American military presence in the Caucasus.(FN7)
When the United States announced its intentions to bring about regime change
in Iraq, the Russians argued that the Pankisi threat was just as serious a
threat to regional and international security.(FN8) On September 11, 2002,
President Putin said preemptive action in Pankisi would be required if
Georgia could not deal with the situation. When Russia renewed bombings of
Georgian territory, the United States urged it to respect Georgia's borders
and work cooperatively with Georgia in dealing with the problem.(FN9) In
late summer 2002, Tbilisi finally sent security forces into the Gorge to
restore order, with some degree of success. Since then, the Gorge has
receded as an irritant in Georgian-Russian relations, but the concern
remains that a spread of the Chechen war into Georgia could set off a
conflict involving all of the Caucasus.
Russia is clearly a key player in the South Caucasus and has
considerable ability to block or undermine agreements it does not like and
destabilize governments if it chooses. A Russian policy supporting the
sovereignty and territorial integrity of all the Caucasus states and
recognizing the legitimate interests of all regional powers as well as the
United States and EU would be a significant step forward in assuring peace
and stability in this volatile region. Russia can be either part of the
problem or part of the solution in the future.
THE UNITED STATES AND THE EU
The United States and the EU are relatively new actors on the scene,
trying both to deal with the social and political complexities of these new
countries and agree on their place in the Eurasian geopolitical framework.
To date, the aim has mainly been to assure that the South Caucasus does not
become the sphere of influence of a hostile power and to open it to trade
and investment. Accordingly, both have provided significant amounts of
economic, technical, and humanitarian assistance to the Caucasian countries
and sought to promote democratization processes, especially via the Council
of Europe.
EU aid programs have focused on the Caucasus' role as a link between
Central Asia and Europe. The EU has funded transportation infrastructure
improvements such as roads, bridges, and ports to improve the "new Silk
Road." Individual European countries have also focused on economic and
commercial links, but some have special political ties. For example, Berlin
has a special relationship with Tbilisi dating back to when President
Shevardnadze was the Soviet foreign minister during the peaceful
reunification of Germany, and France with Armenia due to the large Armenian
population in France. The EU, however, is constrained in its policy in the
Caucasus by its members' frequent inability to reach consensus, which often
results in the EU's taking no position at all on issues. The EU also tends
to give priority to its relations with Russia, particularly in trade and
energy matters, and to avoid confrontation in an area of Russia's strong
interest.
The United States' initial disposition to the new countries was to defer
to Russia and avoid entering into security arrangements with the new states.
In the mid-1990s, as American firms' interest in Caspian energy supplies and
U.S. concerns about Russia's intentions in the Caucasus grew, Washington
began to play a more active role. Following its policy of containing Iran,
it sought from the very independence of the CIS in 1991 to prevent Iran from
making inroads for radical Islam in Central Asia and the Caucasus. By 1998,
the United States was endorsing a multiple pipeline strategy to carry
Caspian energy to markets, focusing on the planned Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil
pipeline, which would bypass Russia and Iran. Security arrangements were
initiated, mainly with Georgia, to build up the states' border guard
capability and promote military modernization and downsizing. Georgia's
military, like others in the region, was modeled on the manpower-heavy
Soviet model and therefore ill-suited to the military realities of small
nations like the Caucasian states.
Most recently, the United States has come to see the South Caucasus as
part of a larger strategic effort to create a zone of stability stretching
from the Balkans to Central Asia and buttressing NATO's expansion into
Central and Eastern Europe. U.S. aid levels to Armenia and Georgia have been
among the highest per capita in the world, thanks in part to the efforts of
the influential Armenian lobby in Washington. The Bush administration
supports constructing east-west pipelines to carry Caspian oil and gas to
Turkey;(FN10) and since 9/11 has entered into potentially significant
security cooperation programs with all three Caucasus countries aimed at
antiterrorism and building up border guard capabilities. The latter was made
possible by the waiving of legislation prohibiting the provision of other
than humanitarian aid to Azerbaijan and the enactment of legislation
enabling increased security cooperation with Armenia. The key element of aid
to the Caucasus is the two-year antiterrorism train-and-equip program in
Georgia. It is not yet known what the longer term U.S. military presence in
the region will be.
With its global view and international responsibilities, especially in
Iraq, the United States' interest and focus could easily be diverted from
the Caucasus to other regional hotspots. U.S. efforts on conflict resolution
in the Caucasus have historically been episodic and lacked continuing
high-level attention, and Western attention is questionable now given other
priorities.
U.S.-EU COOPERATION
The United States and the EU share virtually identical goals and
objectives in the Caucasus. With the many other issues threatening to weaken
U.S.-European ties, cooperation between the two in the Caucasus could
demonstrate the considerable scope for positive engagement as well. This
cooperation could be built around four elements: more fully involving the
Caucasus countries in the war on terror, given their location and
Azerbaijan's being a moderate, secular Islamic country; encouraging the
development and export of Azerbaijani oil and gas to improve world energy
supplies; resolving deadlocked conflicts; and helping improve governance and
development of the rule of law.
The United States and EU should be holding regular high-level meetings,
in addition to the current discussions at the deputy assistant secretary
level. They should agree to use the opportunities presented by America's new
dialogue with Russia and the war on terror to firm up a common interest and
approach to promote peace and stability in the Caucasus and respect for the
independence and territorial integrity of each of the three southern states.
This must include a significantly enhanced effort to look afresh at the
unresolved conflicts in Georgia and Nagorno-Karabakh. The two could also
agree to joint measures to help fight the corruption that saps popular
confidence in governments and deters new investment in the Caucasus. Work
needs to be done to ensure that revenues from new east-west pipelines are
used in Georgia and Azerbaijan for the public good and not the corrupt few.
And priority should be given to building legitimate state institutions and
ensuring free and fair elections.
The EU and United States could jointly study what economic assistance to
the Caucasus has worked and what constrains other efforts. Is more
assistance justified, and if so, how much and where? This would avoid
duplication of effort and the development of competing approaches for the
same project, which often becomes an excuse for the aid recipient to do
nothing.
Security cooperation in the Caucasus is problematic. Georgia and
Azerbaijan aspire to NATO membership, but this is not on the immediate
horizon given the current status of their militaries, as well as their
incomplete democratic institutions. Membership for these countries is
unlikely in the next five years, although this does not exclude bilateral
security arrangements short of membership. Armenia, on the other hand, has a
close military and security relationship with Russia. Russian efforts to
expand military cooperation within the CIS have foundered, in part due to
opposition from Georgia and Azerbaijan, which fear CIS cooperation as a
Russian tool to regain control over the former Soviet Union. Proposals by
Turkey and others for regional stability pacts can go nowhere as long as
Armenia and Azerbaijan are deadlocked over Nagorno-Karabakh. Nonetheless,
the United States and EU should also pursue a dialogue on security
cooperation in the Caucasus, although a continued deadlock on
Nagorno-Karabakh would make such steps harder. These could include building
up border guard forces, as is already being done in Georgia and currently in
Azerbaijan; assisting in antiterrorist training for the new pipelines;
encouraging greater participation in NATO Partnership for Peace activities;
and helping the militaries in all three countries with downsizing and
modernization.
Russia's involvement, or at least its tacit approval, will be crucial.
This will not be easily won, given its historical proprietary views of the
Caucasus, but there is no more propitious time than now to try to achieve
it, in light of the common goals of fighting terrorism and providing
stability. Russia's actions and attitudes in the South Caucasus will provide
a good measure of the depth of its commitment to closer integration with the
West. This dialogue with Russia could also become a vehicle for helping it
reach a political settlement of the Chechen war. By the same token, a
U.S.-EU dialogue with Turkey on the Caucasus aimed at enlisting Ankara in
the same set of initiatives would underscore that the region must be open to
all with legitimate interests and peaceful intentions. This could also have
the collateral effect of improving the Turkey-EU relationship.
The year 2004 will be a turning point for this region. If the region is
to be stabilized after the successions of 2003, the United States needs to
take the lead in an effort to resolve the conflicts of the region, beginning
with the most important one, which has the gravest potential regional
implications: the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. In the past, direct
American involvement has brought the conflict close to a solution on two
occasions. This effort should be coordinated with the EU and also with the
Russian Federation to the extent possible. The South Caucasus constitutes a
region where American and European interests converge and where some success
is likely to come from a joint initiative.
ADDED MATERIAL
Kenneth Yalowitz served as U.S. ambassador to Georgia from 1998-2001 and
to Belarus from 1994-97. He is presently the Director of the Dickey Center
for International Understanding at Dartmouth College, and also teaches the
Caucasus at the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University. Svante
E. Cornell ([email protected]) is deputy director of the Central
Asia-Caucasus Institute, Johns Hopkins University-SAIS, editor of the
Central Asia Caucasus Analyst, and Research Director of the Silk Road
Studies Program at Uppsala University.
FOOTNOTES
SOURCE: Orbis (Philadelphia, Pa.) 48 no1 105-16 Wint 2004
Kenneth Yalowitz and Svante E. Cornell
The war on terrorism has brought Afghanistan and the Central Asian
states into the spotlight of world politics, but the nearby region of the
Caucasus between the Black and Caspian Seas, made up of Armenia, Azerbaijan,
and Georgia, is less well known. It is by no means less important to U.S.
foreign policy. In the military operations in Afghanistan after 9/11, the
three Caucasian states offered their support to the United States. All U.S.
and coalition aircraft transiting from America and Western Europe to Central
Asia flew in the South Caucasian states' airspace. These two states offered
blanket overflight and basing rights, and their cooperation has been vital
in the war on terror. But the importance of the Caucasus does not stop at
this: the oil resources of the Caspian Sea, especially Azerbaijan and
Kazakstan, are one potential alternative to Middle Eastern oil, and Caspian
natural gas reserves are a possible future source of energy for Western
Europe and Turkey. The Caucasus is again the "Silk Road" linking Central
Asia and Europe. Its location, between Russia, Iran, and Turkey and near
Iraq and the Middle East, gives it great strategic value.
But the South Caucasus is also a troubled region. In the 1990s it was a
hotbed of ethnic conflicts, none of which have been resolved; just over the
Caucasus mountains to the north, Chechnya's war for independence from Russia
rages on. The entire region has become a center for the illegal drug trade,
transnational crime, and trafficking in women and illegal migrants. Concerns
are also rising regarding the availability in the region of fissile
materials and other components useful for making "dirty bombs." All of this
has led to "Caucasus fatigue" in the West--the sense that too much economic
assistance and political support has been tendered with too little to show
for it.
However, the strategic relevance of the Caucasus is growing, since
terrorists could gain serious footholds there unless current political and
economic trends are reversed. This is a situation ripe for cooperation among
the United States, the EU, and Russia to resolve the ethnic conflicts,
promote needed reforms, and protect the sovereignty of the three independent
states.
DEADLOCKED CONFLICTS
In addition to the war in Chechnya that destabilizes the entire region,
three other ethnic conflicts in the Caucasus--Georgia's conflicts with its
South Ossetian and Abkhazian minorities and Armenia's war with Azerbaijan
over the latter's Nagorno-Karabakh region--remain deadlocked. The
Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict is by far the most threatening, since it
involves two independent states and could potentially have larger
humanitarian and regional ramifications.
Close to 1 million Azeris became refugees in 1992-94 as Armenia occupied
Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions of Azerbaijan. The 1994
cease-fire has held, but a decade of negotiations has failed to lead to a
solution, and the refugees remain in refugee camps. The negotiations have
exhausted both Azeris and Armenians, and many in Baku are pressing for a
military solution to restoring Azerbaijan's territorial integrity. As Ilham
Aliyev, who was since elected president of Azerbaijan, noted in an October
2002 speech in Washington, "Azerbaijan's patience is running out."(FN1)
While neither conflict has been resolved, the tensions over South
Ossetia have abated somewhat, whereas Abkhazia is still a major issue in
Georgian politics and a much more unstable situation. Tbilisi lost control
there after a 1992-93 war in which Russia supported Abkhazia. The
consequences of the conflict have been severe in human, material, and
political terms. The 250,000 refugees from the Abkhazia conflict form an
important pressure group. As in Azerbaijan, a cease-fire has been in place
for close to a decade, but negotiations have failed to bring the parties
closer to a solution. There have been returns to warfare in both 1998 and
2001, and low-intensity conflict is a constant in the border areas between
Georgia proper and areas controlled by the self-styled Abkhaz government.
The loss of territory was a major humiliation for the people of both
Azerbaijan and Georgia. At present, neither country has the military
capability to take back the lost lands, yet tensions are increasing in both,
and calls for a military solution are becoming ever more common. A political
solution to either conflict, as discussed below, would require a
substantially higher level of involvement on the part of the international
community. Substantial compromises from both sides will be necessary,
preceded by efforts to prepare public opinion on the respective sides of the
conflict.
The War in Chechnya. Just north of the Caucasus mountains, an estimated
100,000 Chechens--one tenth of the population--have been killed in the
ongoing war in Chechnya, and 300,000 to 400,000 have been forced to flee
their homes. The conflict had already spilled over to the independent
Caucasian states in 1999, when some 7,000 Chechen refugees and several
hundred fighters sought refuge in the Pankisi Gorge in northern Georgia.
This led to Russian threats of intervention against Georgia and Azerbaijan,
where some Chechen networks had also established a presence.
The war has also shifted in character. If the first war, in 1994-96, was
primarily an ethnic-based struggle for independence, many Chechen fighters
now are motivated primarily by their Islamic faith. (Russia itself has
cloaked the war in religious and civilizational terms ever since Chechnya
declared independence in 1991.) While Chechnya's leadership is nationalist
and secular, this religious trend has helped regionalize the conflict and
bring in radical-minded fighters from other parts of the Islamic world, who
challenge the less radical Chechen groups.
Russia is clearly unable to either win the war or resolve the Chechen
problem politically. President Putin staged his 2000 presidential campaign
on restoring law and order there. He has repeatedly asserted that the war is
over: in his state of the union address in May 2003, referring to the war,
he pointedly noted, "All that has finished." Yet this is far from the case.
Chechen fighters have acquired weapons that have enabled them to shoot down
a dozen Russian helicopters since fall 2002, challenging Russia's command of
the skies. Russia has also been unable to prevent high-profile Chechen
terrorist acts, such as the bombing of the Russian central administrative
building in Chechnya in December 2002 and the hostage-taking in a Moscow
theater in October 2002, in which 120 hostages died when Russian special
services stormed the building.
These incidents staged by young Chechens (primarily women) illustrate
the ways the collapse of the social fabric in Chechnya is radicalizing the
country's youth. Growing up with no hope for the future, many young Chechens
are drawn toward radical Islam. The state of war has drawn various radical
Islamic groups to Chechnya, where they propagate extremist ideologies and
jihad. The Middle Eastern funding sources of the radicals provides them with
better weapons than other fighters. That capital, coupled with their high
levels of motivation, enable them to perform daring raids on Russian forces.
This aura of resistance, along with constant Russian abuse of civilians,
pushes young Chechens to extremism.
A political solution to the Chechen conflict would require Moscow to
negotiate with the separatist authorities. Yet so far, Moscow has instead
pursued a policy of appointing the Chechen leadership, with which it then
negotiates. If Moscow called for the October 5 presidential elections in
Chechnya only to sideline the separatists and cement a loyal regime there,
the situation is unlikely to improve.
Weak States. The struggling economies, debilitating ethnic conflict, and
large refugee flows in the region's three nations have severely hindered the
governments' ability to create viable state bureaucracies, control and
police their territories, reform their economies, and establish the rule of
law and democracy. Progress has clearly been made in the last ten years: all
three countries have pluralist political systems with functioning opposition
parties, a relatively free print media, and economies that have been
liberalized to varying degrees. This progress has been recognized through
their admission to membership in the Council of Europe (in 1999 for Georgia
and in 2001 for Armenia and Azerbaijan). But on a political level, the
governments have not managed to build stable, let alone democratic, state
institutions.
In Georgia, the fragmented political system has produced no clear
successor to President Eduard Shevardnadze, who returned to Georgia to lead
the ruling State Council in early 1992 and was elected president in 1995 in
flawed elections. [Editor's note: As this issue was going to press on Nov.
23 it was announced that President Shevardnadze had resigned.] Georgia is
ill prepared to organize free and fair elections and handle the succession.
Relationships among the multitude of parties and candidates are puzzling and
fluctuating. Even leaving aside Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the government
barely controls large tracts of the country, such as the Armenian-populated
Javakheti region, the southwestern region of Adjara, or Svaneti and
Mingrelia in the west. Georgia's very statehood is at risk. Should its
current downward trend continue, it risks either losing its independence
from Russia or simply state failure.
In Armenia and Azerbaijan, the situation is slightly better. While
corruption is widespread in both countries, neither has a government as weak
as Georgia's, and they do exercise writ over their territories.
Azerbaijan faced its own succession crisis in the run-up to the October
15 presidential election this fall, with President Heydar Aliyev's health in
decline. Aliyev, one of the Soviet Union's most powerful men during the
Brezhnev and Andropov eras, had returned to power in 1993 after a brief
interlude of rule by the nationalist Popular Front in 1992-93. Aliyev
effectively safeguarded some stability, which permitted Western companies to
operate with reasonable security in the country's booming oil industry. But
this came at the cost of the country's initially positive democratic
development. In August 2003, 80-year-old Aliyev appointed his son, Ilham,
prime minister, putting him in line for the October 15 presidential
election. Ilham is an experienced politician who has held important
positions in the state oil company, headed the national Olympic committee,
and heads the Azerbaijani delegation to the Council of Europe. Aliyev Sr.
withdrew from the race two weeks before the election. With opposition
leaders failing to unite of offer an alternative strategy for the country,
Ilham won by a large majority in an election marred by intimidation and
allegations of fraud and followed by extensive rioting and reported police
brutality.
Armenia's transfer of power came in the form of a palace coup in 1998
that ousted President Levon Ter-Petrossian. But President Robert Kocharyan,
who moved to Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh only in the late 1990s, has
become alienated from the people. The murder of both the prime minister and
the speaker of parliament during a parliamentary session in October 1999
shocked the country. Some Kocharyan aides were accused of conspiracy and
even taken into custody, and five key witnesses have been murdered or died
in mysterious circumstances. The case is ongoing, but few Armenians think it
will ever be resolved. The war in Nagorno-Karabakh left Armenia with no
economic links to either Azerbaijan or Turkey, which is Azerbaijan's key
supporter and with which it shares strong cultural, linguistic, and economic
links. Armenia's economy contracted in the early 1990s to less than 35
percent of its 1989 levels, forcing an estimated half of the country's
population of 3 million to migrate to Russia, the United States, and Europe
in search of work. Yerevan is working constructively with the IMF, but
unless peace and economic stability are achieved soon, its statehood will be
further weakened due to simple demographic factors and it will become ever
more dependent on Russia for its economic survival and security.
Transnational Crime. One often-overlooked challenge to Caucasian
security is the region's transnational crime. Situated along the Balkan and
"northern" smuggling routes, the region is an important international center
for narcotics and arms trafficking. Criminal organizations in the Caucasian
states as well as in the north Caucasus within Russia--especially Dagestan
and Chechnya--are active in these areas, in addition to their cigarette,
fuel, and alcohol smuggling. The fact that approximately 30 percent of
Georgia and 20 percent of Azerbaijan are outside effective government
control creates propitious conditions for transnational crime, which has
flourished in the Caucasus. With its proximity to Russia, Turkey, and the
Arab world, the Caucasus is a natural channel for arms smuggling. A flood of
weapons has poured into the region from Russia, Turkey, Iran, Greece and
Western states since 1989-90, when separatist and civil conflicts began.
Criminal organizations involved in the large-scale trafficking of arms and
drugs tend to be highly organized entities with influential leaders and
connections to key state institutions, and in some cases direct links to the
upper levels of government.(FN2) Abkhazia, on the Black Sea coast, is a
particular hub of the drug trade, as it offers easy access to Eastern and
Central Europe and, due to its unrecognized status, does not participate in
any international cooperation efforts that would provide oversight and
assistance. The Caucasus is located between Russia, the main source of
potential illegal WMD materials, and the Middle East, the main destination
of such materials. Unsafeguarded radiological material has been found in or
trafficked through Georgia, including in 2002 the then-largest seizure in
the world of enriched uranium.(FN3) Moreover, Abkhazia was a storage point
for enriched uranium and other radioactive materials during the Soviet
period, and it has been alleged that such materials may have been sold to
Iraq or terrorist groups.(FN4)
ECONOMIC RECESSION
The regional economic recession that began with ethnic conflicts in the
late 1980s was exacerbated by the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Poverty
and unemployment are rampant, and government officials' salaries are
ridiculously low (a deputy minister makes $200 a month), creating a black
market economy and feeding corruption. The region's health and education
systems, which functioned reasonably well in Soviet times, are decaying
rapidly. Income gaps are widening as a small wealthy class emerges, whose
income derives from both legitimate business and also from corruption and
crime. Meanwhile, the great majority of the population is left in poverty.
The major investments in the region have been in the oil and gas sector, and
then primarily in Azerbaijan; Armenia has been kept going to a large degree
by remittances from the Armenian diaspora in the West and in Russia, and
Georgia mainly by Western (especially American) aid. Oil and gas investments
have helped the macroeconomic stability of Azerbaijan, but this sector is
capital, not labor, intensive. The cease-fire lines of the deadlocked
conflicts keep investors wary and prevent legal trade across these lines,
which only encourages smuggling, especially in South Ossetia and
Abkhazia.(FN5)
RUSSIA AND OTHER REGIONAL PLAYERS
The international environment surrounding the Caucasus has made the
region a focal point for post-Cold War geopolitical rivalry. For much of
their history before Russia's final conquest of the region in the early
nineteenth century, the Caucasian countries formed a zone of competition and
conflict among the Russian, Ottoman, and Persian empires, all of which, in
their modern forms retain important interests in the region today. Turkey is
primarily interested in trade, commerce, Caspian oil and gas, preventing
Nagorno-Karabakh from flaring into a regional war, and ensuring the
sovereignty and independence of Georgia and Azerbaijan, as a barrier to
possible future Russian expansionism in the Caucasus. Iran's focus is
primarily on breaking out of its U.S.-imposed isolation. Not wanting to see
the region become an American bastion, Iran has maintained close ties to
Russia, which shares this concern, to help it promote its own influence
there. Iran, which has a substantial ethnic Azeri population in its north,
sided with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, while Turkey has been Azerbaijan's
strongest supporter. All three powers keep a close watch on the activities
of the others and are keenly interested in the outcome of debates over the
direction of pipelines carrying Caspian energy; market, military, and
security arrangements in the area; and any resolution of the
ethnic-territorial conflicts.
For Russia, the Caucasus carries an especially significant geostrategic
and historical weight. Expanding into the region was the first step in
Russia's efforts to expand its territory and its influence with Iran and
Turkey beginning in the eighteenth century. The region was later seen as a
gateway to the Middle East. Georgia in particular was essential to Russia's
conquest of the North Caucasus in the mid-nineteenth century, since it
formed the link between the North Caucasian peoples and the Islamic world,
especially Turkey. Control over Georgia allowed Moscow to isolate the North
Caucasus from the Islamic world--and Moscow still sees Georgia as crucial to
maintaining control of that restive region. The Caucasus is Russia's soft
underbelly, through which unwelcome influences, ranging from radical Islamic
groups to Turkey or the United States, could make inroads into Russia. As
such, while Russia has accepted the placement of U.S. forces in Georgia in
the struggle against terrorism, for the most part Moscow still views the
Caucasus from the zero-sum game perspective and wishes to minimize U.S.
influence. President Putin has increasingly used economic levers to maintain
influence in the Caucasus. Russia's traditional approach was
divide-and-conquer, exploiting ethnicterritorial conflicts and weak
governments. It still has military bases in Armenia and seeks to keep the
two bases it has left in Georgia until 2013, but Georgia is unwilling for
these to remain for more than three years.(FN6)
The key issue for Russia in the Caucasus (and perhaps in general) is the
war in Chechnya, which has made its already uneasy relations with Azerbaijan
even worse and almost brought it to war with bordering Georgia. The acrimony
began in late 1999, when the Georgians refused Russian requests to use their
bases in Georgia to attack into Chechnya. Russia countered with a harsh
propaganda campaign against Georgia, alleging that Pankisi Gorge (home to
the Kists, Georgians descended from Chechen refugees from earlier wars in
the North Caucasus, and some 7,000 Chechen refugees from the current war)
had become a major rear base of support and training for Chechen rebels.
Russia continually sought but was refused permission to conduct either their
own operations there or joint operations.
After 9/11, Moscow charged that terrorist elements had taken over the
Chechen struggle and that the Pankisi Gorge was the last holdout of the
Chechen fighters, making it the last barrier to a successful conclusion of
the war. The United States later concluded that there were likely some Al
Qaeda elements in Pankisi along with Chechen fighters, and in February 2002
agreed on a two-year program through which U.S. Special Forces would train
and equip the Georgian military in antiterrorism activities. President Putin
voiced no objections, but strong forces in the Russian military were and are
adamantly opposed to the American military presence in the Caucasus.(FN7)
When the United States announced its intentions to bring about regime change
in Iraq, the Russians argued that the Pankisi threat was just as serious a
threat to regional and international security.(FN8) On September 11, 2002,
President Putin said preemptive action in Pankisi would be required if
Georgia could not deal with the situation. When Russia renewed bombings of
Georgian territory, the United States urged it to respect Georgia's borders
and work cooperatively with Georgia in dealing with the problem.(FN9) In
late summer 2002, Tbilisi finally sent security forces into the Gorge to
restore order, with some degree of success. Since then, the Gorge has
receded as an irritant in Georgian-Russian relations, but the concern
remains that a spread of the Chechen war into Georgia could set off a
conflict involving all of the Caucasus.
Russia is clearly a key player in the South Caucasus and has
considerable ability to block or undermine agreements it does not like and
destabilize governments if it chooses. A Russian policy supporting the
sovereignty and territorial integrity of all the Caucasus states and
recognizing the legitimate interests of all regional powers as well as the
United States and EU would be a significant step forward in assuring peace
and stability in this volatile region. Russia can be either part of the
problem or part of the solution in the future.
THE UNITED STATES AND THE EU
The United States and the EU are relatively new actors on the scene,
trying both to deal with the social and political complexities of these new
countries and agree on their place in the Eurasian geopolitical framework.
To date, the aim has mainly been to assure that the South Caucasus does not
become the sphere of influence of a hostile power and to open it to trade
and investment. Accordingly, both have provided significant amounts of
economic, technical, and humanitarian assistance to the Caucasian countries
and sought to promote democratization processes, especially via the Council
of Europe.
EU aid programs have focused on the Caucasus' role as a link between
Central Asia and Europe. The EU has funded transportation infrastructure
improvements such as roads, bridges, and ports to improve the "new Silk
Road." Individual European countries have also focused on economic and
commercial links, but some have special political ties. For example, Berlin
has a special relationship with Tbilisi dating back to when President
Shevardnadze was the Soviet foreign minister during the peaceful
reunification of Germany, and France with Armenia due to the large Armenian
population in France. The EU, however, is constrained in its policy in the
Caucasus by its members' frequent inability to reach consensus, which often
results in the EU's taking no position at all on issues. The EU also tends
to give priority to its relations with Russia, particularly in trade and
energy matters, and to avoid confrontation in an area of Russia's strong
interest.
The United States' initial disposition to the new countries was to defer
to Russia and avoid entering into security arrangements with the new states.
In the mid-1990s, as American firms' interest in Caspian energy supplies and
U.S. concerns about Russia's intentions in the Caucasus grew, Washington
began to play a more active role. Following its policy of containing Iran,
it sought from the very independence of the CIS in 1991 to prevent Iran from
making inroads for radical Islam in Central Asia and the Caucasus. By 1998,
the United States was endorsing a multiple pipeline strategy to carry
Caspian energy to markets, focusing on the planned Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil
pipeline, which would bypass Russia and Iran. Security arrangements were
initiated, mainly with Georgia, to build up the states' border guard
capability and promote military modernization and downsizing. Georgia's
military, like others in the region, was modeled on the manpower-heavy
Soviet model and therefore ill-suited to the military realities of small
nations like the Caucasian states.
Most recently, the United States has come to see the South Caucasus as
part of a larger strategic effort to create a zone of stability stretching
from the Balkans to Central Asia and buttressing NATO's expansion into
Central and Eastern Europe. U.S. aid levels to Armenia and Georgia have been
among the highest per capita in the world, thanks in part to the efforts of
the influential Armenian lobby in Washington. The Bush administration
supports constructing east-west pipelines to carry Caspian oil and gas to
Turkey;(FN10) and since 9/11 has entered into potentially significant
security cooperation programs with all three Caucasus countries aimed at
antiterrorism and building up border guard capabilities. The latter was made
possible by the waiving of legislation prohibiting the provision of other
than humanitarian aid to Azerbaijan and the enactment of legislation
enabling increased security cooperation with Armenia. The key element of aid
to the Caucasus is the two-year antiterrorism train-and-equip program in
Georgia. It is not yet known what the longer term U.S. military presence in
the region will be.
With its global view and international responsibilities, especially in
Iraq, the United States' interest and focus could easily be diverted from
the Caucasus to other regional hotspots. U.S. efforts on conflict resolution
in the Caucasus have historically been episodic and lacked continuing
high-level attention, and Western attention is questionable now given other
priorities.
U.S.-EU COOPERATION
The United States and the EU share virtually identical goals and
objectives in the Caucasus. With the many other issues threatening to weaken
U.S.-European ties, cooperation between the two in the Caucasus could
demonstrate the considerable scope for positive engagement as well. This
cooperation could be built around four elements: more fully involving the
Caucasus countries in the war on terror, given their location and
Azerbaijan's being a moderate, secular Islamic country; encouraging the
development and export of Azerbaijani oil and gas to improve world energy
supplies; resolving deadlocked conflicts; and helping improve governance and
development of the rule of law.
The United States and EU should be holding regular high-level meetings,
in addition to the current discussions at the deputy assistant secretary
level. They should agree to use the opportunities presented by America's new
dialogue with Russia and the war on terror to firm up a common interest and
approach to promote peace and stability in the Caucasus and respect for the
independence and territorial integrity of each of the three southern states.
This must include a significantly enhanced effort to look afresh at the
unresolved conflicts in Georgia and Nagorno-Karabakh. The two could also
agree to joint measures to help fight the corruption that saps popular
confidence in governments and deters new investment in the Caucasus. Work
needs to be done to ensure that revenues from new east-west pipelines are
used in Georgia and Azerbaijan for the public good and not the corrupt few.
And priority should be given to building legitimate state institutions and
ensuring free and fair elections.
The EU and United States could jointly study what economic assistance to
the Caucasus has worked and what constrains other efforts. Is more
assistance justified, and if so, how much and where? This would avoid
duplication of effort and the development of competing approaches for the
same project, which often becomes an excuse for the aid recipient to do
nothing.
Security cooperation in the Caucasus is problematic. Georgia and
Azerbaijan aspire to NATO membership, but this is not on the immediate
horizon given the current status of their militaries, as well as their
incomplete democratic institutions. Membership for these countries is
unlikely in the next five years, although this does not exclude bilateral
security arrangements short of membership. Armenia, on the other hand, has a
close military and security relationship with Russia. Russian efforts to
expand military cooperation within the CIS have foundered, in part due to
opposition from Georgia and Azerbaijan, which fear CIS cooperation as a
Russian tool to regain control over the former Soviet Union. Proposals by
Turkey and others for regional stability pacts can go nowhere as long as
Armenia and Azerbaijan are deadlocked over Nagorno-Karabakh. Nonetheless,
the United States and EU should also pursue a dialogue on security
cooperation in the Caucasus, although a continued deadlock on
Nagorno-Karabakh would make such steps harder. These could include building
up border guard forces, as is already being done in Georgia and currently in
Azerbaijan; assisting in antiterrorist training for the new pipelines;
encouraging greater participation in NATO Partnership for Peace activities;
and helping the militaries in all three countries with downsizing and
modernization.
Russia's involvement, or at least its tacit approval, will be crucial.
This will not be easily won, given its historical proprietary views of the
Caucasus, but there is no more propitious time than now to try to achieve
it, in light of the common goals of fighting terrorism and providing
stability. Russia's actions and attitudes in the South Caucasus will provide
a good measure of the depth of its commitment to closer integration with the
West. This dialogue with Russia could also become a vehicle for helping it
reach a political settlement of the Chechen war. By the same token, a
U.S.-EU dialogue with Turkey on the Caucasus aimed at enlisting Ankara in
the same set of initiatives would underscore that the region must be open to
all with legitimate interests and peaceful intentions. This could also have
the collateral effect of improving the Turkey-EU relationship.
The year 2004 will be a turning point for this region. If the region is
to be stabilized after the successions of 2003, the United States needs to
take the lead in an effort to resolve the conflicts of the region, beginning
with the most important one, which has the gravest potential regional
implications: the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. In the past, direct
American involvement has brought the conflict close to a solution on two
occasions. This effort should be coordinated with the EU and also with the
Russian Federation to the extent possible. The South Caucasus constitutes a
region where American and European interests converge and where some success
is likely to come from a joint initiative.
ADDED MATERIAL
Kenneth Yalowitz served as U.S. ambassador to Georgia from 1998-2001 and
to Belarus from 1994-97. He is presently the Director of the Dickey Center
for International Understanding at Dartmouth College, and also teaches the
Caucasus at the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University. Svante
E. Cornell ([email protected]) is deputy director of the Central
Asia-Caucasus Institute, Johns Hopkins University-SAIS, editor of the
Central Asia Caucasus Analyst, and Research Director of the Silk Road
Studies Program at Uppsala University.
FOOTNOTES