GEOPOLITICS AND STRATEGIC ALIGNMENTS IN THE CAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA

Year 1999, Volume: 4 Issue: 2, 0 - 0, 01.06.1999

Svante E Cornell

Abstract

Georgia’s attempts to secede from the Soviet Union and ensuing refusal to participate in the CIS were countered by relatively overt Russian support for Abkhazian and South Ossetian rebellious minorities, who subsequently succeeded in achieving de facto independence.12 In the Armenian-Azerbaijani case, Russia seems to have followed a policy of weakening both parties by lending them both different degrees of support at different times. The advent to power of the nationalist president, Ebulfez Elçibey, in Baku in the summer of 1992 led to a Russian policy very similar to the one in Georgia. Moscow increasingly supported the Armenian side in the conflict, but kept a low profile by supporting the Armenian state and not the Armenian insurgents in Nagorno-Karabakh directly, unlike in Abkhazia where a direct Russian hand was clearly more tangible. Hence, Armenia appeared as the main, sometimes even sole, intervening party in the conflict. One can, in other words, conclude that even if forces in the Kremlin did not create the Caucasus’s conflicts, though the general feeling in Georgia and Azerbaijan is that this was the case, strong forces were using ethnic divisions, and perhaps even doing their best to deepen them, to prevent the real independence of the Caucasian states. As a result of these developments, a number of agreements tie Armenia to Russia very tightly, despite the fact that many Armenians are suspicious of Russia’s intentions and that Armenia was one of the most intransigent republics to Soviet rule in the late 1980s. Armenia, in its present geopolitical situation, sees no other option but to ally with Russia for its security. Faced with the spectre of the imminent de facto dissolution of the Georgian state in October-November 1993, Georgia was compelled to accept Russian troops on its soil and CIS membership to restore stability. Only Azerbaijan managed to avoid the return of Russian troops on its territory, but was forced to become a member of the CIS