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THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
Alla YAZKOVA
D.Sc. (Hist.), professor, director of the Mediterranean-Black Sea Center, Institute of Europe, Russian Academy of Sciences
(Moscow, Russia).
RUSSIA AND THE INDEPENDENT CAUCASIAN STATES
Abstract
This article presents the main aspects of Russia’s policy in the Caucasian Region and the country’s relations with Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. It examines the main components of these relations after the collapse of the U.S.S.R., i.e. the energy factor and its influence on the nature of Russia’s regional policy in its relations with the U.S., the European Union, and NATO, and the political-ethnic conflicts which have been and still are the main reasons for the regional instability after the August armed conflict of 2008.
The current geopolitical circumstances of the Caucasian post-Soviet states dictate their multi-vector policy. Finding themselves at the crossroads of the multifaceted contradictions among the world’s large nations, they are forced to retain a balance in their relations with them. Russia needs to overcome the existing contradictions in its relations with the region’s states, on the one hand, and with the international community, on the other, in order to maintain stability on its southern frontiers and fortify the historical foundation of relations with the peoples of the Caucasus.
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I n t r o d u c t i o n
The Caucasian Question, which in the past created the acutest contradictions with the Ottoman Empire and Persia, and later with Great Britain, France, Iran, and Turkey, continues to play a special role in Russian policy. In the 19th century, the Russian Empire waged a long and bloody war that took a high human toll and was accompanied by indiscriminate slaughter of the local population in order to conquer the Northern Caucasus. Nevertheless, it also laid a foundation of relations with the Caucasian peoples and close, although at times contradictory, interaction with them at different stages throughout their common history. The system of relations that developed during the Soviet era between the Union center and the Union republics was to some extent instrumental in bringing the U.S.S.R. to its knees. There were many reasons for the Soviet Union’s downfall, but one of them was its failure to recognize the sovereign rights of the republics that belonged to it, note the authors of an extremely interesting publication of documents on the national policy of the Communist Party and Soviet state.1
The R.S.F.S.R. (after the collapse of the Soviet state it was named the Russian Federation) experienced just as many difficulties at the end of the 1980s as the other regions of the former empire. But the degeneration of the Union center, which was increasingly recognized as “Russia,” put an end to the ideological and political community of the national and Russian elites. This prompted the Transcaucasian republics to be the first to try and free themselves from Moscow’s patronage. The armed repression of the protest demonstrations held under the democratic slogans in Tbilisi (9 April, 1989) and Baku (20 January, 1990) was accompanied by the support of the separatist trends of the autonomies in Georgia and Azerbaijan.
Crossroads of Multifaceted Contradictions
After the collapse of the U.S.S.R., Russia’s political elites, the conservative members of which openly supported separatism, underwent an identity crisis, hence the contradictory nature of Russia’s policy in the Caucasus. And the political elites of the former Union republics themselves were unable to direct their national policy along the lines of the democratic transformations they had declared. This, in turn, promoted an upswing in separatism of the former Soviet autonomies (Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh), which were counting on Russia’s support. The armed clashes at the beginning of the 1990s had already taken a high human toll and led to the deportation of Georgians from Abkhazia and Azeris from Nagorno-Karabakh and the territories contiguous to it.
In the Georgian-Abkhazian war of 1992-1993, the Russian military subdivisions stationed in the Caucasus not only supplied the Abkhazian side with weapons but, along with North Caucasian volunteers, also actively participated in the hostilities.2 At the same time, the political leadership of the Russian Federation exerted efforts to normalize relations with Tbilisi. In February 1994, a Rus-sian-Georgian Treaty on Friendship, Good-Neighborly Relations and Cooperation was signed. However it was not ratified by the State Duma, which did not support its repeated submissions for ratification by the President and RF Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Russian side’s attitude toward the Armenian-Azeri armed conflict of 1992-1994 (in 1994 at the Bishkek CIS summit, Nagorno-Karabakh was also recognized as a warring side) was underpinned by Russia’s attempts to fortify its military presence in Armenia and prevent Turkey and Iran from
1 See: Nesostoiavshiisia iubilei. Pochemu SSSR ne otprazdnoval svoego 70-letiia? Terra, Moscow, 1992, p. 5.
2 See: A. Zverev, “Etnicheskie konflikty na Kavkaze 1988-1994,” in: Spornye granitsy na Kavkaze, Ves mir, Moscow, 1996, pp. 60-61.
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becoming involved in the conflict.3 In subsequent years, Russia strove to maintain a certain balance in its relations with Azerbaijan and Armenia. The same cannot be said about Russian-Georgian relations, the consistent deterioration of which led to the August armed conflict between Georgia and Russia in August 2008.
Of course it was not only a matter of supporting the separatism of the former Soviet autonomies. The main motives behind Russia’s policy were much broader and consisted of curbing the spread of the West’s influence in the post-Soviet expanse. This became obvious after real prospects appeared in the mid-1990s for making use of the immense oil and gas supplies in the Caspian’s offshore deposits. Experts’ assessments about the volumes of Azerbaijan’s oil and gas supplies fluctuate within a broad range from 1 to 6 billion tons of oil and from 0.5 to 4 tcm of gas.4 The Contract of the Century, which was signed by 12 leading oil companies from 8 countries of the world, was the turning point in the development of the main oil fields (Azeri, Chirag, and Gunashli). In 1996-2007, another 26 international contracts were signed with the participation of approximately 40 companies, including BP, Exxon, and Russia’s LUKoil, which acquired a 10% share in the development of the Shakh Deniz gas condensate project.5
The importance of the oil and gas resources of the Black Sea-Caspian Region grew immensely after 1994 when the international consortium began laying major oil and gas pipelines. This also inspired all three independent Caucasian states to search for their own niche in the international economy and politics, which were becoming increasingly important for them. As E. Ismailov and V. Pa-pava emphasize, their progress, based on the low potential of their economies, depended on the degree of their openness and the rates of their integration into the international economic system.6
The north (Baku-Novorossiisk) and west (Baku-Supsa) routes were initially used to transport oil, and after the main Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, the controlling set of shares (55.1%) of which belonged to the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) and Britain’s BP, was launched in May 2005, the contention over transportation of Caspian oil became even more intense.7
Azerbaijan is also striving to derive as much benefit as possible from the gas export that began in 2007, which later was confirmed by the additional possibilities of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. In addition, it is discussing the possibilities of the Caspian gas pipeline route with access via the Black Sea to Europe proposed by Russia and of the Nabucco route, which is 3,000 km in length and has a capacity of 30 bcm a year, promoted by the European Union and the U.S., via which Europe hopes to receive gas from the countries of Central Asia and the Caspian Region.8 The gas pipeline was to follow an overland route from Azerbaijan through Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Austria. It was supported by the participants in a high-level international conference held at the end of January 2009 in Budapest. However there is no guarantee so far that sufficient volumes of gas can be supplied to fill the pipeline, without which its founders will be unable to receive an EU loan of 8 billion euros.9
According to several experts, the underlying energy motive of the August 2008 armed conflict involving South Ossetia and Abkhazia was also aimed at cutting off the energy resource transit possibilities through Georgia using forceful methods or by demonstrating their potential
3 See: A. Zverev, op. cit., pp. 34-35.
4 See: Iuzhnyi Kavkaz: tendentsii i problemy razvitiia (1992-2008), Krasnaia zvezda, Moscow, 2008, p. 61.
5 See: Ibid., pp. 64-65.
6 See: E. Ismailov, V. Papava, Istoriia, politika, ekonomika, Moscow, 2007, p. 117.
7 See: V. Mishin, “Neft v kontse truby. Lish ispolzovanie Azerbaidzhanom vsekh svoikh transportnykh marshrutov garantiruet stabilnost neftianogo eksporta respubliki,” NG-energiia, 11 December, 2007.
8 See: V. Mishin, “Gaz Azerbaidzhana khochet v ‘Nabucco’. Dlia respubliki vazhny ne stolko energeticheskaia be-zopasnost, skolko prodazhnaia tsena svoego gazoobraznogo topliva,” NG-energiia, 11 March, 2008.
9 See: E. Grigoriev, “Truba proidet v obkhod Rossii. Evropeitsy vyskazalis v polzu iuzhnogo gazovogo marshruta ‘Nabucco,’” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 29 January, 2009.
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use.10 As we know, essentially all the energy and supply line routes passing through Georgian territory ceased to function during the military operations in the conflict zone. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipelines came to a standstill, oil was not transported via the Baku-Batumi railroad, and Kazakhstan decided not to build a refinery in the region of Batumi.
At the same time, new alternative proposals appeared. Referring to several Turkish experts and politicians, Sergey Minasian, an employee of the Caucasian Institute of the Mass Media, believes that in the current conditions Armenia “could become an alternative to the gas pipeline going to the West from the Caspian Sea through Georgian territory, which has become unreliable in the aftermath of the Russian intervention.” He added that Turkish President Abdullah Gul’s visit to Erevan “created a framework for a dramatically new political and communication situation throughout the entire South Caucasian region.”11
The diametrically opposed positions of Armenia and Azerbaijan regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict still present an insurmountable obstacle in reforming the relations in the Caucasian triangle. However Azerbaijan said it was willing to render Georgia economic and humanitarian aid, which, according to Azerbaijan’s leadership, “is more important than political declarations.” In particular, SOCAR signed a contract in December 2008 on the delivery of natural gas to Georgia at discount prices, as well as on investments in several branches of the Georgian economy.12
In addition to this, Azerbaijan and Georgia, along with Turkey, continued to build the Baku-Akhalkalaki-Kars railroad designed to link the transportation systems of the three countries. In order to implement this project, Azerbaijan issued Georgia a loan of 300 million dollars with a warranty of 25 years at a symbolic interest rate of 1%.1
13
The U.S., European Union, and NATO in the Spotlight of Caucasian Policy
For the past two decades, the leading world nations and their centers—the U.S. and the European Union—have had their attention focused on the Caucasus. The U.S.’s intervention became obvious as early as the second half of the 1990s-beginning of the 2000s, whereby American interests and goals are undoubtedly of a long-term nature. As was repeatedly noted in American publications, the solving of strategic tasks in this region requires “deterring Russia,” but in so doing the dynamism of the corresponding American campaigns depends directly on the state of Russian-American relations and the nature of Russia’s policy in this region at the particular moment. This also applies to regulating the numerous ethnopolitical conflicts and combating cross-border organized crime. According to the leading American expert organizations, these problems pose a direct threat to the interests of American oil monopolies, so the U.S. will continue in the future to control the situation in the instable regions, cooperating with Russia whenever possible.
As however the experience of the Russian-Georgian armed conflict showed, the Georgian side clearly overestimated how much real support it would receive from the U.S. and placed too much hope on the promises President Bush gave during his visit to Georgia in May 2005. According to
10 See, for example: A.D. Khaitun, Energeticheskaia politika Rossii na evropeiskom kontinente, Moscow, 2008,
p. 175.
11 S. Minasian, “Kavkaz posle piatidnevnoi voiny,” available at [http://www.newsarmenia.ru/analitics/], 29 September, 2008.
12 See: F. Ismailzade, “Baku Emphasizes Economic and Humanitarian Assistance to Georgia,” Eurasia Daily Monitor, Vol. 5, Issue 238, 15 December, 2008.
13 See: Ibidem.
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Anatol Lieven, the author of an article in The Financial Times, a professor at the department of war studies at London’s King’s College, and senior researcher fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington DC, “it was not wholly unreasonable of Mr Saakashvili to assume that if he started a war with Russia and was defeated, the U.S. would come to his aid.”14 But, as it subsequently became clear, according to the same The Financial Times, the question of a military confrontation with Russia was not even discussed, either by the U.S. or by its NATO allies.15 All the same, the August events became a starting point for several American politicians and experts in drawing up plans and formulas for opposing Russia’s global expansion.
For example, the main message of the extensive report published in January 2009 by the American Heritage Foundation16 boils down to the fact that until the onset of the global financial crisis the high prices for oil, natural gas, and metals, as well as arms trade, made it possible for Russia “to restore its standing as a major player in the world arena ... and to counter the West’s economic and military strength.” The authors maintain that the war with Georgia was meant “to reassert economic domination of the Caucasus by force and prevent additional oil and gas pipelines from being built outside Russian control.” So, according to the report’s authors, the policy of Barack Obama’s administration should be focused primarily on preventing Russia from “questionable activities.”
As the so far few documents of the new American administration show, the U.S. is not planning to directly stir up relations with Russia in the Black Sea-Caspian Region, however it could become more insistent in its support of the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and democratic freedoms in the Caucasian countries. According to a statement by U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, Russia’s military response to Georgia’s action “was disproportionate and illegal,” as was the decision to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The U.S. might support the territorial integrity of Georgia, its economic restoration, and democratic development while at the same time working with Russia on issues of common strategic interest and maintaining the democratic principles of international relations in counterbalance to the outmoded doctrines of dividing spheres of influence.17
Along with its political course, the U.S. is forming a strategy aimed at gradually incorporating NATO into the Caucasian Region, which is aimed precisely at maintaining stability along the oil and gas pipelines. A special sitting of the NATO Council convened in Tbilisi after the August armed conflict did not mention any specific deadlines for presenting Georgia with the Membership Action Plan (MAP) due to the disagreements on this issue between the U.S. and the key European countries. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer also noted that the Russian factor cannot be ignored when discussing Georgia’s problems and the prospects for resolving them.18
After August 2008, U.S. and NATO policy in the Caucasus focused on the longer term, which was reflected in the signing of a document in Tbilisi on the creation of a Georgia-NATO commission (similar to the Russia-NATO and Ukraine-NATO councils), as well as the Charter of Strategic Partnership between the U.S. and Georgia that was in place before the new American administration arrived on the scene. It is worth noting that after calling the signed document a symbolic road map, International Herald Tribune nevertheless doubted whether newly elected president Barack Obama would support the Georgian leadership with the same enthusiasm as the Bush Ad-ministration.19
A. Lieven, “The West Shares the Blame for Georgia,” The Financial Times, 13 August, 2008.
14
15 See: The Financial Times, 10 August, 2008.
16 A. Cohen, L.F. Scaszdi, “Russia’s Drive for Global Economic Power: A Challenge for the Obama Administration,” Backgrounder, No. 2235, 30 January, 2009.
17 See: Questions for the Record. Senator John Kerry. Nomination of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Department of State, Secretary of State, Washington, January 2009, Items 78-79.
18 See: Kommersant, 17 September, 2008.
19 See: International Herald Tribune, 10 January, 2009.
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The EU’s policy in the Caucasus has essentially been pragmatic from the beginning. The European Union was one of the main initiators and investors of the Eurasian Transportation Corridor (TRACECA), which was designed to link Europe to the countries of Central Asia, the Middle East, China, and Japan and provide the shortest routes for delivering Caspian energy resources to Europe. In July 2003, the post of Special Representative for the South Caucasus, similar to the one the EU has for Russia and the Ukraine, was instituted on Greece’s initiative.20 And in 2004 a decision was made to include the Caucasian states in the New European Neighborhood program, which is a kind of alternative to incorporating the states of this region, as well as Ukraine and Moldova, into the European integration processes.
The European Union began to exert its influence in the Caucasus by trying to have a say in the settlement of the frozen conflicts in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh. According to the official opinion announced by Special Representative for the South Caucasus Peter Semneby, the EU is definitely interested in stability in this region, the listed conflicts cannot be settled by military means, so they must be resolved by means of talks between the conflicting sides, with Russia’s mandatory participation.21
Despite the attempts made within the European Union and OSCE to resolve the frozen conflicts, nothing has been accomplished so far. This is largely due to the economic interests of the different groups of elites in the conflict regions and beyond them, as well as to the opposition between the conservative and democratic forces that developed when the Soviet Union collapsed and has still not been overcome in the post-Soviet expanse. In addition, the international mediators, including Russia, each proceeding from their own interests, have been supporting one of the conflicting sides and in so doing preventing settlement of the conflict. The contradictions among the global economic interests of the international groups striving for control over the production and transportation of energy sources, Black Sea ports, Transcaucasian routes, Eurasian commodity flows, sales markets, and investments are also playing an extremely significant role.22
Immediately after the Russian-Georgian armed conflict began, EU Chairman Nicolas Sarkozy, along with RF President Dmitri Medvedev and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, signed a plan on 12 August for immediate cessation of the hostilities and withdrawal of the troops to their initial positions. The Extraordinary European Council convened on 1 September in Brussels adopted a special document on “the open conflict launched by Georgia,” which led to “violence and an illegitimate reaction by Russia.” The document criticized “Russia’s unilateral decision to recognize Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s independence” and also expressed confidence that Russia would make its fundamental choice in favor of mutual understanding and cooperation.23 The heads of states and governments of the 27 EU countries that gathered especially after this in Brussels (they had only gathered in this configuration one time before—in 2003 with respect to the war that began on Iraq) again criticized “the disproportional use of force against Georgia” and unilateral recognition of Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s independence.
So the Caucasian crisis and then the gas war with Ukraine undermined the trust between Russia and the EU and placed the focus on reducing energy dependency on Russia in the European Union’s further actions, despite the disagreements among its members.24 This prompted the initiative put forward in May 2008 by Poland and Sweden on creating a new regional organization called Eastern
1 See: “The South Caucasus: A Challenge for the EU,” Chaillot Papers, December 2003, p. 159.
20
21 See: Ponedelnik (Tbilisi), weekly publication of the South Caucasian Institute of Regional Security, No. 36, September 2006, p. 1.
22 See: P. Leiashvili, “Post-Soviet Ethnic Conflicts: The Economic Aspects Require an In-Depth Study,” The Caucasus & Globalization, Vol. 1 (2), 2007, p. 36.
23 See: Council of the European Union. Brussels, No. 1254/08, 1 September, 2008.
24 See: A. Mineev, “Stoit li torzhestvovat Rossii posle spetsialnogo sammita ES po Gruzii?” Novaia gazeta, 4-7 September, 2008.
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Partnership with the participation of several countries of the Caspian-Black Sea Region. This new geopolitical structure has no real content yet, but it could become another attempt to intercept Russia’s leadership in the post-Soviet expanse and is already being incorporated into the overall context of the EU’s Eastern policy.
Along with the countries of the Euro-Atlantic world, regional states—Turkey and Iran—are also showing a growing interest in the Caucasian countries. However their initiatives are secondary in nature and depend on support from the leading players, as well as on how successfully they can overcome the existing contradictions and smooth out the intransigent attitudes of the region’s countries. For example, the suggestion by Turkish President Abdullah Gul to institute a Caucasus Cooperation and Stability Platform (August 2008) was not further advanced due to the intensified disagreements between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh and Georgia’s refusal to discuss this project along with Russia. This and other projects are being blocked by the numerous contradictions existing in the region. Nevertheless, Turkey, as custodian of the Black Sea Straits regime, is playing a perceptible role in maintaining the balance of forces in the Black Sea region.
The Prospects for Russia’s Caucasian Policy
Saakashvili’s impulsive policy gave the Russian leadership the opportunity not only to “put the Georgian president in his place,” but also to show that Russia does not intend to tolerate the “invasion of foreign forces into its sphere of interests” and will continue to be guided by the West-initiated precedent in Kosovo. This decision became obvious right after the April (2008) NATO summit, where Georgia and Ukraine, although they did not receive the promised Membership Action Plan (MAP), were essentially assured the prospect of their future membership in NATO. It is worth noting that soon thereafter, during his visit to Moscow, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s attention was drawn to the fact that the “Kosovo precedent has had an adverse effect on the atmosphere in relations between Georgia and Abkhazia.”25 This was followed by Moscow’s demonstrative steps to establish closer relations with the Georgian autonomies and its lack of desire to hold talks on these issues with the Georgian leader, which discredited his image as a “consolidator of Georgian territories.”
According to several American politicians and analysts, security problems in the Caucasus became more urgent after the August events of 2008, and the region itself has turned into one of the most controversial in Russian-American relations. Understanding that, on the whole, American policy in the Caucasus has been unsuccessful and even failed, Obama’s administration will most likely concentrate its efforts on looking for ways to resolve specific disputes with Russia rather than on confrontation. As for Georgia’s integration into NATO, the entire series ofjointly adopted documents does not overestimate the strategic value of MAP, rather the accent is shifted to practical cooperation. The newly created NATO-Georgia Commission should promote this.26
In the broader context of its policy in the Caucasus, the U.S. plans to step up its efforts to unfreeze the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, as well as involve NATO more actively, possibly by means of cooperation with the European Union, in ensuring security of the energy infrastructure.27 This will
25 See: “Press Release. Visit to Russia of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. Information and Press Department, No. 483, 14 April, 2008. Ban Ki-moon visited Russia soon after Kosovo’s independence was declared.
26 See: “The Russian-Georgian War: Political and Military Implications for U.S. Policy,” Prepared by Jon E. Chicky, Policy Paper, February 2009, p. 9.
27 Ibidem.
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also involve the Russian side in multilateral plans aimed at forming a strategy in this extremely important region. When looking at the prospects of Russia’s relations with the Caucasian states, Russian political scientist L. Shevtsova justifiably indicates that the military conflict in the Caucasus, which brought Russia to a standoff with the Western world, and the financial crisis that coincided with this are forcing us to think about Russia’s further development and how it will meet the challenges it is
facing.28
The past few years have been marked by primarily negative dynamics in Russia’s economic relations with the Caucasian states. Armenia’s export volume to Russia dropped between 2000 and 2005 from 15 to 10%, whereas for Azerbaijan these figures are still insignificant—4 and 7%, and for Georgia they were slightly higher, but they dropped significantly after August 2008. Import from Russia to Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia (prior to the August conflict) amounted to 13, 12, and 15%, respectively. The structure of Russia’s foreign trade circulation with the Caucasian countries remained unchanged: deliveries of energy resources accounted for more than half of Russia’s export, while foodstuffs accounted for almost one quarter of import.
As for military-political cooperation with Russia, only Armenia, as a member of the CSTO, participated in it. At the same time, Azerbaijan and Georgia are members of the Organization for Democracy and Economic Development—GUAM, which is authorized at the international level and recognized by the U.N. Russia does not have a high opinion of the nature and activity of this organization, but we cannot ignore that it has been recognized by the international community.
The conflict with Georgia has cast aspersions on alliance relations within the CIS, and not one of Russia’s official allies has supported its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which is understandable. Moscow’s refusal to observe the principle of territorial integrity created a dangerous precedent for several of its neighbors. As a result of the conflict Georgia lost Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but Russia has also lost Georgia, relations with which the Russian Empire established over many centuries, for a long time to come. Nor should we forget that alliance relations with Georgia have always been a guarantee of security on Russia’s southern frontiers: the length of the Russian-Georgian border along the “hottest” stretch in the Northern Caucasus is almost 1,000 km.
C o n c l u s i o n
When talking at the 45th Munich Security Conference, U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden “urged Russia to relaunch ... relations with NATO. It was time to work together in many areas and whenever possible.”29 Russian Vice Premier Sergey Ivanov also essentially agreed with this, primarily meaning cooperation in ABM defense and reduction of strategic arms.30 In this respect, we should not forget that the Caspian-Black Sea Region is still a zone of dangerous engagement and confrontation of the multilateral interests of Russia, the independent states of the Caucasus, and the leading world nations. Russia needs to overcome the existing contradictions in its relations with the region’s states, on the one hand, and establish cooperation in this region with international community, on the other, in order to maintain stability on its southern frontiers and fortify the historical foundation of relations with the peoples of the Caucasus.
28 See: L. Shevtsova, “Konets epokhi: vpered v proshloe,” Mirperemen, No. 4, 2008.
29 [http://www.securityconference.de/konferenzen/2009/biden.php?sprache=en&}.
30 See: Nezavisimaia gazeta, 9 February, 2009.
