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sufficient intellectual and economic potential to quickly reconstruct its post-conflict areas, with active support from the international community, after the achievement of a political agreement on resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh problem. This will make it possible to reintegrate the occupied areas into the legitimate political and economic space, while their economic revival will play a very positive role in improving the well-being of all citizens in the region regardless of their ethnic origin, and also in the overall socioeconomic development of the Central Caucasus.
Kenan ALLAHVERDIEV
Ph.D. (Philos.), associate professor at the Department of Political Science and Political Administration, Academy of State Administration under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan (Baku, Azerbaijan).
HOW THE KARABAKH CONFLICT FITS THE NEW GREAT GAME CONTEXT
Abstract
The author has selected a novel and most promising approach to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the oldest and hard-est-to-resolve of the Caucasian “frozen” conflicts. He has placed it into the New Great Game context, a recent coinage of geopo-
litical parlance. The forces involved in it are seeking effective control over a vast territory stretching from the Middle East to the Central Eurasian fringes by changing the geopolitical balance of forces together with the political and geographic borders of the states inside this vast macroregion.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
The August 2008 war in Georgia, when everyone could see Russian tanks moving across Georgian territory on their TV screens, revived the old fears of the Cold War period and created a wave of interest in all sorts of conceptions and analytical models that systematized in one way or another a new round of geopolitical confrontation involving the global and regional actors.
The academic community has not yet reached an agreement on many related issues: Is the unfolding geopolitical confrontation a new one; which forces are involved in it and what strategic plans are they nurturing and what outcomes are they expecting; how will this affect the Greater Caucasus and the so-called frozen conflicts?
Below is my humble contribution to the academic community’s all-out effort.
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The New Great Game: The 21st Century Scenarios
The Great Game of the 19th century has been and remains one of the pet subjects in the history and theory of geopolitical modeling. The term Rudyard Kipling introduced into circulation in his novel Kim published in 1901 has been used by political1 and historical2 writers to describe the nearly 100-year-long (1813-1907) tug-of-war between the British and Russian empires over domination in Central Asia.
According to Peter Hopkirk, a recognized authority on the subject, the Great Game was kept alive by the fact that “for four centuries the Russian Empire has been steadily expanding at the rate of some 55 square miles a day, or around 20,000 square miles a year. At the beginning of the 19th century, more than 2,000 miles separated the British and Russian empires in Asia. By the end of it this had shrunk to a few hundred and in parts of the Pamir region to less than twenty.”3
Each of the two powers pursued its own geopolitical aims: Russia was seeking access to the warm seas of the South, India, and the Indian Ocean while Britain spared no effort to keep Russia away. The Caucasian wars, the Crimean War, and the wars Russia waged against Turkey and Iran were fought with these geopolitical aims in view.4
The geopolitical landslides of the turn of the century and the crescent which ran across Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Middle East and which continued radiating tension revived an interest in the Great Game in its modified form, viz. the New Great Game.5
In the absence of direct official or expanded statements, we must rely on foreign6 and Russian7 authors whose works supply an idea about the general outline of the notorious New Great Game.
It is wrong, however, to identify the New Great Game with its historical archetype, from which it differs on several key points (see Table 1).
While there were no disagreements over the geographic location of the Great Game of the 19th century, opinions differ about the geographic area of the New Great Game of the 21st century. In fact, there several distinctive approaches:
■ First, the classical approach, according to which the geographical area remained the same, namely, Central Asia, the oil- and gas-rich territory thrown between Russia and China. It is the home of five independent states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) with their particular problems and interests.8 The list of participants has
1 See, for example: Sh. Brysac, K. Meyer, Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Asia, Counterpoint, Washington, D.C., 1999; M. Edwards, “The New Great Game and the New Great Gamers: Disciples of Kipling and Mackinder,” Central Asian Survey, No. 22 (1), March 2003, pp. 83-103; G. Wheatcroft, “After the Great Game,” available at [http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05711/books/after-the-great-game.html?pagewanted=2], 11 May, 2003, and others.
2 See: P. Hopkirk, Bolshaia igra protiv Rossii. Aziatskiy sindrom (The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia), RIPOL KLASSIK, Moscow, 2004; V.V. Degoev, Bolshaia igra an Kavkaze: istoria i sovremennost, 2nd edition, Moscow, 2003.
3 P. Hopkirk, op. cit., p. 32.
4 See: A. Dugin, “Kavkazskiy vyzov,” available at [http://www.arctogaia.com/public/vtor11.htm].
5 See: P. Hopkirk, op. cit., p. 18.
6 See: D.L. Smith, “Central Asia: A New Great Game?” available at [http://www.milnet.com/pentagon/centasia/ cenasap1.htm], 17 June, 1996; M.D. Nazemroaya, “The ‘Great Game’ Enters the Mediterranean: Gas, Oil, War, and GeoPolitics,” available at [http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6862], 14 October, 2007; Dr. Makni, The New Great Game: Oil and Gas Politics in Central Eurasia, Raider Publishing International, 2008, etc.
7 See: A. Dugin, “Bolshaia igra za Kavkaz,” available at [http://www.centrasia.ru/newsA.php?st=1079420460],
16 March, 2004; M. Leontiev, Bolshaia igra, AST Publishers, Moscow; Aprel-Stb, St. Perersburg, 2008, and others.
8 This approach is detailed in: R. Menon, “The New Great Game in Central Asia,” Survival Global Politics and Strategy, Vol. 45, Issue 2, January 2003, pp. 187-204, available at [http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~
Volume 3 Issue 2-3 2009 THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION 27
Table 1
Great Game New Great Game
| The sides involved |
The Russian and British empires Russia, U.S., Euro-Atlantic bloc ||
| Aims |
Regional domination in Central Asia Global domination in Central Eurasia
| Nature |
Offensive—Russia Defensive—Britain Offensive—U.S., Euro-Atlantic bloc Defensive—Russia
| Discontinued because of |
German threat Chinese threat?
| The events that predated discontinuation |
a) The world economic crisis of 1900-1903 b) The imperialist wars of the turn of the 20th century Hypothetically: a) The global economic crisis of 2008-? b) Chain of local wars (“struggle against international terrorism”)
| The events that postdated the Game |
World War I ??!!
changed: the U.S. replaced the British Empire while a new regional player, China, has moved to the fore.
■ Second, the neo-classical approach that looks at Afghanistan, western China, the Caspian, and the Caucasus as part of Central Asia. Lutz Kleveman, for example, argues that America, China, Russia, and Iran are all involved in the New Great Game for the sake of control over the region and its fabulous oil and gas reserves.9 Iran is seen as an independent actor.
■ Third, the polycentric approach that regards the New Great Game as a multi-board chess game of sorts in Eurasia: Central Asia, the Greater Caucasus, and the Middle East. The recent developments have demonstrated that the “chessboards” (Central Asian, Caucasian, and Middle Eastern) are moving into the international limelight depending on the geopolitical circumstances. Consequently, the number and composition of the sides involved greatly vary. Zbigniew Brzezinski writes about what he calls the Eurasian Balkans, which include
content=a780011883~db=all~order=page]; R. Mullerson, Central Asia: A Chessboard and Player in the New Great Game, Columbia University Press, 2007; “Novaya Bolshaia igra: mezhdunarodnaia borba za vliianie v Tsentralnoy Azii,” available at [http://iimp.kz/default.aspx?article_id=781], and others.
9 See: L. Kleveman, The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia, Grove Press, New York, 2004.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
the Caucasus (Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia) and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan) and, potentially, Turkey and Iran.10
■ Fourth, the potamic approach, based on what Halford Mackinder said about the “marine pentagon” (the space between the Caspian, Black, Mediterranean, and Red seas and the Persian Gulf).11 There is a commonly shared conviction that control over the Land of Five Seas (with its nearly 70 percent of the world’s explored oil reserves and over 40 percent of the world’s natural gas reserves) is “the key for those seeking territorial and economic control over Eurasia” (the Heartland, according to the traditional geopolitical theory) and ensures domination over the entire planet.”12
This classification, while including all the key aspects of the theoretical approaches now in circulation in the political sphere, should be regarded as relative to a certain extent, which is explained not so much by the great variety of research paradigms as by the changing tactics employed to achieve the immutable strategic aim.
To illustrate the above let me offer you a widely promoted analytical model of the New Middle East supplied by the George W. Bush Administration. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice first used the term in June 2006.13
The idea can be described as liberating the “constructive chaos” forces and changing the state borders across the Greater Middle East—from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria to Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the same year, Lieutenant Colonel of the U.S. Army Ralph Peters presented his ideas about redrawing borders and regime changes across the vast region to the NATO Defense College in the form of a map of the New Middle East.
According to the American lieutenant colonel, the borders of the majority of the Middle Eastern states (Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf countries, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) as well as two Caucasian states (Azerbaijan and Armenia) should be changed. The classical Great Game zone (the postSoviet Central Asian republics) will remain unscathed.
The very idea of border change is presented as a “humanist” and “moral” attempt to serve the interests of the Middle Eastern nations and their neighbors. Ralph Peters has offered the following comment: “International borders are never completely just. But the degree of injustice they inflict upon those whom frontiers force together or separate makes an enormous difference — often the difference between freedom and oppression, tolerance and atrocity, the rule of law and terrorism, or even peace and war.”14 And further: “Accepting that international statecraft has never developed effective tools—short of war—for readjusting faulty borders, a mental effort to grasp the Middle East’s ‘organic’ frontiers nonetheless helps us understand the extent of the difficulties we face and will continue to face. We are dealing with colossal, man-made deformities that will not stop generating hatred and violence until they are corrected.”15
10 See: Z. Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard (American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives), Basic Books, New York, 1997, p. 125.
11 For more detail, see: V. Maximenko, “Central Asia and the Caucasus: Geopolitical Entity Explained,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 3, 2000, available at [http://www.ca-c.org/journal/cac-09-2000/08.Maksimen.shtml].
12 M. Andalasav, “Kavkaz v epokhu globalnykh geopoliticheskikh transformatsiy,” available at [http://www. geopolitics.ru/common/publics/114.htm].
13 Condoleezza Rice: “What we're seeing here, in a sense, is the growing—the birth pangs of a new Middle East and whatever we do we have to be certain that we’re pushing forward to the new Middle East not going back to the old one” (Special Briefing on the Travel to the Middle East and Europe of Secretary Condoleezza Rice, U.S. State Department, Washington, D.C., 21 July, 2006, available at [http://merln.ndu.edu/archivepdf/syria/State/69331.pdf]).
14 Quoted from: M.D. Nazemroaya, “Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a ‘New Middle East’,” available at [www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=NAZ20061116&articleId=3882].
15 Ibidem.
Ralph Peters' Map of the New Middle East16
So far the new American administration has not commented on the New Great Game project: it neither confirmed nor rejected it yet “new constructive solutions” for the Caucasian and Near and Middle Eastern problems are found among the new officially proclaimed foreign policy priorities. Judging by the U.S.-encouraged ongoing Turkish-Armenian political dialog, the course aimed at defrosting the conflicts in the Caucasus, greater U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, and diplomatic involvement around Iran show that these plans might become a reality.
It should be said in all justice that there are those who take the New Great Game for a product of the feverish imagination of certain political scientists: “Although Russia, China, and the United States substantially affect regional security issues, they cannot dictate outcomes the way imperial governments frequently did a century ago. Concerns about a renewed great game are thus exaggerated.”17
The above, however, leaves little space for optimistic statements about the phantom nature of the New Great Game. It seems that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s measured phrase: “Today Russia is a global player” should remove all doubts.18
All of the above is of special importance: the place of the Caucasian region and its sub-regions will depend on the dominant type of real politics within the New Great Game.
16 R. Peters, “Blood Borders: How a Better Middle East Would Look,” Armed Forces Journal (AFJ), June 2006, available at [http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/06/1833899].
17 R. Weitz, “Averting a New Great Game in Central Asia,” The Washington Quarterly, No. 29 (3), Summer 2006, p. 156 (see also: A. Lieven, “The (Not So) Great Game,” The National Interest, No. 22 (58), Winter 1999/2000, pp. 69-80.
18 [http://www.newsru.com/russia/07jun2008/medved.html], 7 June, 2008.
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The New Great Game in the Caucasus: Geopolitical Configuration
Having accepted the fact that the 21st-century New Great Game is unfolding before us, we should identify, with a great degree of accuracy, the Caucasus’ place in it. There are several paradigms to rely upon.
■ First, passive involvement, which says that the Caucasus has no geopolitical activity of its own and can, therefore, be described as a zone of the global thalassic-telluric confrontation. According to The Financial Times analysts, the Caucasus is an area where the next chapter of the Great Game will be enacted.19 Alexander Dugin of Russia is of a similar opinion: “Any discussion of the Caucasian region in the geopolitical system of coordinates presupposes that the highly complex real balance of regional forces can be reduced to global geopolitical dualism and to the clash between the geopolitical interests of Russia and the United States (or the NATO countries), which always and everywhere remain opposite.”20
Frederick Starr and Svante Cornell of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University suggest “conceptualizing the Caucasus in the framework of a greater Black Sea Region:” “Viewing the entire Caucasus within the prism of a greater Black Sea region makes sense politically as well as economically... In this context, the Caucasus is a discernible geographical entity forming an important eastern pillar in the Black Sea region, and hence a gateway to both Central Asia and Iran for the EU.”21
The author of the following seems to be indulging in an extremely chauvinistic form of the passive involvement paradigm: “Never in history did the Southern Caucasus play an independent geopolitical role. Its choice was limited to outside domination. Under the northern power (Russia) the Transcaucasian countries were invariably much better protected against any threats than when depending on other neighbors.”22
■ Second, the active involvement paradigm, according to which the Caucasus possesses geopolitical activity of its own and, together with the Caspian, can be described as an independent entity of world geopolitics.23 In view of the Caucasian-Caspian region’s resource and pipeline potential it can be seen as the central segment on the new Great Game maps.24 Bay Fang from America has written: “Today, there is a new map of Central Asia ... known as ‘hub and spokes.’ The hub is the Caspian Sea and the spokes are the multiple pipelines emanating from it, representing potential export routes for the vast oil and gas resources that lie beneath.”25 It should be said that the geopolitical and geostrategic importance of the Caucasus’ commu-
19 See: I. Gorst, “Foreign Investment: Caucasus is Scene of New Chapter in the Great Game,” The Financial Times,
31 October, 2007.
20 A. Dugin, “Kavkazskiy vyzov.”
21 S.E. Cornell, S.F. Starr, “The Caucasus: A Challenge for Europe,” Silk Road Paper, Washington, D.C., June, 2006, p. 73.
22 “Pokhishchenie Kavkaza,” available at [http://russianews.ru/newspaper/20/15923], 19 June 2008.
23 Substantiation of this can be found in K.S. Hajiev, Geopolitika Kavkaza, Moscow, 2003.
24 See: A. Cohen, “The New ‘Great Game’: Oil Politics in the Caucasus and Central Asia,” available at [http:// www.heritage.org/research/russiaandeurasia/bg1065.cfm], 25 January, 1996; P. Escobar, “Oil Pipelines are the ‘New Great Game’,” available at [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/24/oil-pipelines-are-the-new_n_178715.html], 24 March, 2009.
25 B. Fang, “The Great Energy Game,” available at [http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/060903/ 11game.htm].
nication potential goes far beyond Central Asia and the Caucasus and should be discussed in the broader Eurasian context.26
■ Third, the autonomy paradigm supported by the majority of experts in the Caucasus: its geopolitical importance is evident and autonomous within the New Great Game framework:
> The Caucasus is a complicated system of relations among several states—Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Turkey, Russia, and Iran. For this reason the region can be tentatively described as the Greater Indivisible Caucasus (GIC)27;
> The Caucasus is a subject endowed with a historic mission, therefore “history has now given the countries of the Caucasus a chance to act as a bridge between North and South and as a major transportation and communication link between East and West”28;
> The Caucasus is a geostratum where geopolitical projects are either synchronized or con-fronted29; etc.
In anticipation of great geopolitical shifts in the Caucasus Rashad Rzakuliev put this approach in a nutshell by saying: “Even the most negative of all possible developments will not reduce us to humble bystanders at this geopolitical spectacle.”30
There are three common elements in the paradigms discussed above:
> The central geographic location of the Caucasus (or the Caspian-Caucasian region) in the Great Land of Five Seas (or the Eurasian Balkans, a much more popular geopolitical formula);
> An open and fierce confrontation of the Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian geopolitical strategies: “The Caucasus is developing into a very attractive ‘apple of geopolitical discord’ and a scene of confrontation between the West and Russia. The density of conflict seats and intensity of geopolitical confrontation have already made the Caucasus a zone of the highest
risks”31;
> Multi-variant combinations of interaction among the players in the New Great Game, both old and new.32
The instruments used to achieve the strategic games in the Caucasian states that form part of the New Great Game zone can be divided into three groups:
> Military interference in the domestic affairs of these states realized either as “humanitarian intervention” or “a struggle against international terrorism;”
> Secret scenarios realized to bring about regime change (so-called Color Revolutions);
> The “permanent tension” strategy achieved by “freezing” and “defrosting” ethnopolitical conflicts.
26 See: A. Gut, “Geopoliticheskie realii Yuzhnogo Kavkaza,” available at [http://www.1news.az/analytics/ 20090316114544963.html], 16 March, 2009.
27 See: M. Anadalasav, op. cit.
28 E. Nuriyev, “The Ongoing Geopolitical Game in the Caucasus and the Caspian Basin: Towards War or Peace?” available at [http://cns.miis.edu/cres/nuriyev.htm].
29 See: V. Maisaia, “Kavkazskaia geostrata—sinkhronizatsia ili konfrontatsia geopoliticheskikh proektov: soprikos-novenie teory Attali i Huntingtona?,” available at [http://cge.evrazia.org/geopolitics_10.shtml].
30 [http://www.1news.az/interview/20090428100219252.html], 28 April, 2009.
31 M. Andalasav, op. cit.
32 For more detail, see: E. Ismailov, E. Polukhov, “The ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Players in Caucasian Politics,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 4 (28), 2004, pp. 46-54.
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The above suggests that the New Great Game has reached an active stage in the Caucasus33 in the form of a manageable chaos scenario.
The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict in the Caucasian Geopolitical Landscape
The frozen conflicts have become points where the basic elements described above are applied and where the geopolitical interests of the global and regional centers of power meet. The question is: Can this statement be applied in its entirety to all the conflicts in the Caucasian region?
The answer is negative: in the New Great Game context only the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can be described, with good reason, as a geopolitical crossroads.
■ First, as distinct from the other Caucasian conflicts, this conflict is international:
—Historically, it goes back to the Russian Empire’s geopolitical efforts to assert itself in the Caucasus and the Middle East. On the other hand, it is a fragment of sorts of the Great Game of the 19th century when the great powers made the so-called Armenian Question part of the international agenda to divide the weakened Ottoman Empire;
—In the regional-political context it is a conflict between two entities of international law (Armenia and Azerbaijan);
—In the political and legal context its negotiation format (the U.N. and the OSCE Minsk Group), the number and level of the sides involved, and the attempts to create a special legal case made the conflict international; all attempts to resolve it by means of international law stumble across internally contradictory basic legal principles.
■ Second, the geopolitical interests of the United States, Russia, the European Union, Turkey, and Iran clash there, which makes the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict a special case.
■ Third, the international actors have transformed the conflict into a tool for putting pressure on Azerbaijan and Armenia to acquire economic, political, and military-strategic preferences and to manipulate their foreign policy courses.
■ Fourth, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can potentially trigger dramatic changes on the region’s political map: its defrosting in keeping with a negative scenario will produce a domino effect both inside the region and in the neighboring states. No matter how important, the other Caucasian conflicts will produce local effects which have already been shown by the August 2008 war in Georgia and Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.
The geopolitical context of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is further confirmed by the fact that it has become an “Achilles’ heel” of independent Azerbaijan. In turn, Zbigniew Brzezinski has pointed out: “Azerbaijan’s vulnerability has wider regional implications because the country’s location makes it a geopolitical pivot. It can be described as the vitally important ‘cork’ controlling access to the ‘bottle’ that contains the riches of the Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia.”34
33 In 2005, researchers of the Stratfor Center still asked: The South Caucasus: A New “Great Game” Developing?, available at [http://www.stratfor.com/memberships/65069/south_caucasus_new_great_game_developing], 19 March, 2005. Today, after the events of 2008 and the first half of 2009, this is no longer a question.
34 Z. Brzezinski, op. cit., p. 129.
The fact that Azerbaijan belongs to the Caspian region adds geopolitical importance to the conflict in the New Great Game context by linking it to such components of global geostrategy as “pipelines, tanker routes, petroleum consortiums, and contracts” as “the prizes of the new Great Game.”35
This became even more important when “the Caspian problem escalated beyond its regional confines to acquire global importance. Today we should work toward preventing a global conflict in the Caspian region which will inevitably suck in the littoral as well as all interested states, America and China among them. The stakes are too high since the Caspian is not merely one of the most promising sources of hydrocarbons—it is much more than that. The Caspian region is a large transportation crossroads of the Eurasian continent.”36 From this it follows that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can be used as a fuse to blast two neighboring regions—the Caucasus and the Caspian. Their role in world politics does not exclude a global conflict.
This means that, the outward complexity of the Caucasian-Caspian landscape notwithstanding, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict should be regarded as one of the tips of the New Great Game Caucasian pyramid (see Fig. 1).
Figure 1
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
Strategic priority of national security of the Azerbaijan Republic
Geopolitical pillar of the Caucasian Region
The key segment of the Caspian Region
U.S. geostrategic interests Europe's interests of energy security Geopolitical and geo-economic interests of the RF Turkey's geopolitical and economic interests Iran's geopolitical and economic interests
o o o
Configuration and Results of the New Great Game in Central Eurasia |
35 Sh. Brysac & K. Meyer, op. cit., p. xxiii.
36 K. Syroezhkin, “Kak budem delit Kaspii?,” available at [http://www.continent.kz/2000/10/16.html].
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
In fact, the pyramid offers a strictly hierarchical cause-and-effect geopolitical chain:
■ The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as Azerbaijan’s “Achilles’ heel;”
■ Azerbaijan as the geopolitical axis of the Caucasian-Caspian region;
■ The current state and dynamics of Azerbaijan’s vulnerabilities and threats will inevitably damage the great and regional powers’ chances to realize their geopolitical interests in the region and affect the New Great Game configuration.
This means that the sum total of the above not only indicates the central role of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict among all other conflicts in the Caucasus but also determines its geopolitical dominance in the New Great Game of the 21st century.
The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict and the Current Regional Geopolitical Trends
Normally when looking at the vectors of geopolitical activity in the region experts in Caucasian studies tend to classify them according to the countries involved: American, Russian, Turkic, Iranian, etc. They hold forth about the vital interests of the geopolitical actors in the region and point to possible political strategies. Today much is being said about America’s geostrategy in the Caucasus,37 the Russian-Turkish gambit,38 Iran’s strategy,39 etc.
Although academically justified this approach is hardly practicable when it come to short-term, to say nothing of long-term, forecasting. This probably explains why the analyst community is repeatedly caught unawares by the “hot” developments in the Caucasus, be it the August 2008 war in Georgia or the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement of 2009.
This is caused, on the one hand, by the analysts’ efforts to visualize the vectors of the actors’ geopolitical activity in the absence of reliable information about their plans. While, on the other hand, they tend to analyze the vectors individually and outside the New Great Game context.
No matter how kaleidoscopic, everything going on in the Caucasus belongs to the New Great Game algorithm and follows “unwritten rules” of sorts:
■ To prevent an alliance among the great powers (the American “nightmare,” according to the Halford Mackinder tradition, is a strategic alliance among the continental powers [Russia-Germany; Russia-China, etc.]), or between a great and regional power;
■ To avoid playing into the hands of actors of “secondary importance;”
■ To let the rival believe that it has scored a victory by giving it a chance to score a series of tactical victories that will inevitably end in a strategic disaster;
■ To keep the smaller regional states away from a stable alliance in order to prevent their transformation from an object of geopolitics into its subject;
37
See: C. Hallinan, “The Great Game in the Caucasus: Bad Moves by Uncle Sam,” available at [http://www. counterpunch.org/hallinan10072008.html]; “Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia: Security Issues and Implications for U.S. Interests,” 14 January, 2009, available at [http://opencrs.com/document/RL30679/2009-01-14].
38 See: M. Aydyn, “New Geopolitics of Central Asia and the Caucasus: Causes of Instability and Predicament,” available at [http://www.sam.gov.tr/perceptions/sampapers/NewGeopoliticsofCentralAsiaandtheCaucasus]; F.W. Engdahl, “The Geopolitical Great Game: Turkey and Russia Moving Closer,” available at [http://www.globalresearch.ca/ index.php?context=va&aid=12466].
39 See: K. Sadegh-Zadeh, “Iran’s Strategy in the South Caucasus,” Caucasian Review of International Affairs, Vol. 2 (1), Winter 2008.
■ To set the region’s parts against one another and draw them into opposing alliances;
■ To pursue active militarization of the region’s countries which, together with the contested ethnopolitical and state borders, creates a set of tools to be used by the key actors for their own geopolitical purposes;
■ To haggle behind closed doors while leaving the smaller countries (which have become pawns in the New Great Game) out in the cold. In fact, nothing much has changed since the Munich Deal of 1938 except the forms and geography of exchange;
■ To be actively involved in the so-called peace process in the form of:
— Blocking the rival’s geopolitical strategy;
—Weakening/dividing the local states by insisting on all sorts of projects (“a common state,” “peace for territories,” “partnership” programs, etc.), which perpetuates these countries’ dependency, indispensable for geopolitical redrawing of the region’s borders.
To clarify the New Great Game’s rules (I have enumerated the most obvious ones which, however, might be interpreted differently), let me remind you that in the last decade we have seen numerous initiatives with high-sounding titles which mentioned “security,” “stability,” and “cooperation,” namely numerous regional security models such as “3 + 3”; “3 + 3 + 2”; and the latest Turkish initiative “The Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform.”
They all failed not because the Caucasian peoples do not want peace and prosperity but because all of them were intended to promote the strategic interests of some of the actors (or their alliances) of the New Great Game in the Caucasus and were successfully blocked by their opponents. Frederick Starr, director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University (the U.S.), has offered an interesting and balanced opinion: “I am inclined to regard Turkey’s Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform as a good yet extremely naive initiative.
Everyone can see that it is seeking greater influence in the region. It wants to divide the Caucasus with Russia. On the other hand, if its initiative is realized Europe and America will be pushed out of the region, which is obviously impossible.”40
One wonders whether the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can be settled in this fairly crowded geopolitical situation better described as a no-win situation. Until the balance of power is changed or starts changing discussions of all sorts of options—the use of force, compromises, interim, package, stage-by-stage, etc.—will never be crowned with practical results.
It should be said that another regional center of power might come to the fore; for obvious reasons, Georgian, Azeri, and Armenian political analysts expect their countries to fill the niche.
This was upturned in April 2009 when the United States, Turkey, and Armenia got together to create a road map that would exclude Azerbaijan from regional affairs. This was a moment of truth of sorts: Azerbaijan came forward as an independent regional actor to demonstrate that:
■ The thesis of its inability to ensure its interests and its security has become outdated;
■ The Azeri leaders and the public have no illusions about the true intentions of those involved in the New Great Game. They are no longer duped either by the talks about “strategic partnership” coming from the U.S. and Russia, or by the vows of “friendship” coming from Turkey and Iran, or by any other fine diplomatic wording.
■ Acting in the Real Politics style the country is actively using oil- and gas-pipeline diplomacy to promote its national interests; it selects its own partners and has been successfully preventing all the attempts of the Great Game actors to conspire behind its back. President of the
40 See: F. Starr, “Khrupkaia bezopasnost,” available at [http://www.regionplus.az/ru/articles/view/97], Issue No. 70.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
Azerbaijan Republic Ilham Aliev acted wisely when he declined the repeated invitations to meet U.S. President Obama and President of Turkey Erdogan in Ankara (extended by Gul and Hilary Clinton) to pay a short visit to Moscow.
It seems that a new—Azeri—geopolitical vector is developing before our very eyes which “is adding an edge to the game in the Southern Caucasus.”41 It is still too early to predict whether this trend will continue, whether it will upset the balance of power in the Caucasus, and how it will affect the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement. It is abundantly clear today that the emerging vector has already forced the “old actors” to revise their plans and reduced the usefulness of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as an instrument of pressure.
Frederick Starr has the following to say on this score: “America has recognized that this instrument applied to compete with Russia proved useless. Russia is still relying on it to preserve its influence in the region, yet in the long-term perspective neither Russia nor any other state will profit from it. Nobody should exploit problems of others to secure their own aims. As for Europe, it has been tied down for a long time, together with Russia and the United States, in meaningless and useless talks on Karabakh.”42
The new “Azeri” vector in the New Great Game has led to the regrouping of forces and has changed the geopolitical configuration in the region. This has been amply shown by:
■ Stratfor, a private American intelligence center, which says that the threat of re-channeling Azeri fuel resources designed for Europe across Russia instead of Turkey has forced all actors, big and small, to revise their regional interests43;
■ The panicking and despondent Turkish analytical community, which is indulging in fantastic surmises and has even hypothesized that Azerbaijan is inciting Russia against another power44;
■ The refusal, to the great amazement of the expert community, of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan to sign the Nabucco declaration put on the table at the Southern Corridor-New Silk Road Summit held in Prague on 8 May, 2009, thus greatly undermining its realization;
■ The statement issued by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Matthew Bryza to the effect that Washington would never allow “Russia to dominate in the energy projects of the Southern Caucasus and the adjacent territories,”45 which showed America’s concern and irritation.
This changed the way the Karabakh conflict and its place in world politics were presented to the public: “Strange as it may seem, the future of Europe will not be sealed in Paris, Berlin, London, or Brussels but in the Southern Caucasus, a tiny territory crossed by several strategically important oil and gas pipelines, the only power outlets to Europe outside Russia’s control. Meanwhile those who control the energy supplies to Europe control the continent.”46
One feels that Sergey Markedonov of Russia was quite right when he wrote: “Whether or not the Caucasian front will be closed depends on the ability of the main actors of the Great Game in the Cau-
41 M. Chelikpala, “Igra v regione Yuzhnogo Kavkaza stanovitsia vse bolee intriguiushchey,” available at [http:// www.1news.az/politics/20090508025030136.html], 8 May, 2009.
42 F. Starr, op. cit.
43 [http://www.1news.az/analytics/20090508051554145.html].
44 See: S. Lachiner, “Rossia zamanivaet Azerbaidzhan v lovushku?,” available at [http://www.inosmi.ru/translation/ 248721.html], 25 April, 2009.
45 “SShA ne dopustiat ‘dominorovania’ Rossii v energeticheskikh proektakh v Zakavkazie,” available at [http:// lenta.ru/news/2009/05/11/domination], 11 May, 2009.
46 “Aliev i Sarkisian o chem.-to dogovorilis,” available at [http://www.zerkalo.az./rubric.php?id=41692], 8 May,
2009.
casus to agree among themselves on the key security issues. Will they be able to stop throwing stones at each another in their glass houses? If not, the Caucasus will change Eurasia rather than vice versa.”47
C o n c l u s i o n
The academic community has accumulated a vast body of scholarly studies on the Caucasian conflicts; some of them are objective, other are biased; there are theoretical and applied studies, etc. Most of them look at the conflicts as either ethnopolitical (while ignoring their geopolitical context) or as produced by the clashing interests of the mighty of the earth.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is no exception. I have already written48 that it is rooted in the zigzags of the 19th-century geopolitical confrontation. Today, nearly two centuries later, the geopolitical pincers of the New Great Game keep the conflict in the confines of the “new world order” seen differently by different actors. This is a vicious circle of even fiercer conflicts, wars, and a struggle for re-division of the world.
Prof. Porter of London University, who said that the Great Game would never end and was still going on, was quite right.49 Rudyard Kipling, who put the term into circulation in his novel Kim, was of the same opinion: “When everyone is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before.”
47 S. Markedonov, “Yuzhny Kavkaz: mnogougolnik interesov,” available at [http://www.apn.ru/publications/ article1406.htm], 23 May, 2005.
48 See: K. Allahverdiev, “The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict in the Context of Retrospective Ethno-Geopolitics,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 1 (55), 2009, pp. 63-74.
49 Quoted from: M. Leontiev, op. cit., p. 14.
Rustem DJANGUZHIN (ZHANGOZHA)
D.Sc. (Political Science), leading research fellow at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
(Kiev, Ukraine).
CENTRAL ASIA-NEW GEOPOLITICAL ARCHITECTURE
Abstract
The author looks at the processes underway in Central Asia (a region at the stage of political, socioeconomic, and civilizational transformations) to identify the
synergetic mechanisms that might awaken the local societies and their elites with a view of regional integration as a necessary condition for region’s cultural-historical identity.
