CC BY
78
Elena PROKOPENKO
Ph.D. (Political Science), Associate Professor at the Chair of Political Science and Sociology, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics (Moscow, Russia).
THE CAUCASUS IN THE CONTEMPORARY GEOPOLITICAL DIMENSION
Abstract
T
his article presents an evaluation of the important features comprising the contemporary geopolitical, socioeco-
nomic, and cultural makeup of the Caucasian region and analyzes the factors that cause regional conflicts.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
In recent years, the geopolitical importance of the Caucasus has perceptibly grown. For many different reasons, the region has found itself in the center of attention not only of its immediate neighbors, Russia, Iran, and Turkey, but also of actors beyond the region, the EU, U.S., Ukraine, Middle East countries, and China. Transportation routes of Caspian energy resources, which not only enjoy high demand in the world economy, but are also a target of geopolitical interests, pass through the Caucasus.
The Caucasus’ Geopolitical Uniqueness
The Caucasian region is a unique geopolitical and ethnopolitical formation. The fact that it has historically consisted of two parts, the North and the South, has determined the way these parts interact both within the region, as well as with external forces.
The main subregions in the Caucasian region are the following: the North Caucasian (which consists of the constituencies of the North Caucasian Federal District established on 19 January, 2010—Daghestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, North Ossetia, Chech-nia, and the Stavropol Territory) and the South Caucasian (which includes the Azerbaijani-Georgian and Armenian territorial segments).
Despite the seeming fragmentation of the Caucasus in terms of ethnoterritorial features, the main power centers in the region are nevertheless interrelated. It is this particular phenomenon that determines the Caucasus’ conflict potential. The contradictions born of ethnoterritorial rivalry have their roots in history. The attempts made during formation of the Soviet Union to create national autonomies merely put the lid on these phenomena for a while.
The most challenging situation is developing in the North Caucasian area. The processes going on there are also determined by the geopolitical situation around the Caucasus. As the events of the last ten years have shown, the geopolitical interests of the so-called Chechen power center are associated with fortification of Turkey’s position. The Russian vector of geopolitical interest is characteristic of the Adighe-Cherkessian-Karachaevo territorial segment. Daghestan’s diverse ethnoterritorial composition (Daghestan being a separate power center in the Northern Caucasus), also determines the specifics of this republic’s geopolitical strivings. The territorial isolation of several ethnic groups of Daghestan who live on both sides of the Russian border with Azerbaijan (Lezghians), of the border between Chechnia and Daghestan (Chechens), and of the border between Russia and Daghestan (Kumyks) is having an impact on the situation inside Daghestan, as well as on the ethnopolitical situation in the territories contiguous to it that belong to neighboring states and Russia. In some ethnoter-ritorial and economically strategic (oil transportation) cases, Russia’s strategic interest, which prevails in Daghestan, contradicts the strategic interests of external forces (Turkey and Iran, as well as certain Middle Eastern states) in this area.
The territory of the Northern and Southern Caucasus is viewed geopolitically from several perspectives.
■ First, it is regarded as a boundary of geopolitical influence and a target for exerting pressure.
■ Second, it is seen as a geostrategic and geopolitical transitional zone between the North and the South.
■ Third, it is considered a potential source of conflicts.
The geopolitical uniqueness of the entire Caucasus is of special significance in regional policy and is influencing certain features of compatibility between this region and others. These features include the ethnocultural, political-ideological, and territorial proximity of the Caucasus or its remote regions to the power centers, the Caucasus’ economic and raw material interconnection with neighboring regions or states, and the unity between geopolitical and defense interests and the ability to form closed systems. Historical traditions determine the specific expression of these phenomena and it is manifest both in the Northern and in the Southern Caucasus. For example, several former autonomous republics that belonged to Georgia are, due to specific conditions, more compatible geopolitically with Russia. At the same time, the North Caucasian republics, as RF constituencies, have great compatibility potential with neighboring, now independent states—former Soviet republics of the Caucasus. A special place belongs to regions of the Russian South, which borders on the Caucasian geopolitical enclave. In some cases, it is their uniqueness that determines the inclination toward the Caucasian zone.
The current situation has shown that geopolitical attraction toward the Caucasian regions can be changed, which is having an impact on the state and political processes there. This is also having a natural influence on ethnic and interstate relations, creating conflict-prone zones in areas where the strategic interests of the existing power centers clash.
The Caucasus as a whole is a region characterized by the intricate intertwining of a multitude of factors that make it difficult to precisely define the boundaries of specific ethnonational communali-ty. This phenomenon is distinguished in particular by the fact that numerous ethnic groups or nationalities that belong to different ethnocultural and linguistic families or groups, as well as different confessions, live together in the same place. So the ethnopolitical space of the Northern Caucasus does not end at the southern state border of the Russian Federation or the northern border of the Caucasian states, but stretches to the territory of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia as well, where the ethnopolitical component is acquiring additional significance with respect to determining the geopolitical situation. These regions have a high level of political and socioeconomic instability, which is causing difficult-to-resolve ethnonational contradictions that have a multitude of aspects—historical, political, religious, cultural, territorial, and socioeconomic. A large number of territories are hotbeds
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
of conflict fraught with latent and open tension in relations among ethnic communities that openly criticize each other. These and many other factors show that the ethnic question is one of the key issues for preserving unity between the Southern and the Northern Caucasus and ensuring social and political stability.
Attempts to make use of the religious factor, in addition to the ethnic, is a characteristic feature of the policy of several countries competing with Russia for influence on the Caucasus. Here it is important to keep in mind that in the confessional respect, the Caucasus, primarily the national republics of the Northern Caucasus and Azerbaijan, are part of the so-called Muslim North, which is under the strong impact of the Islamic world. In this area, ethnonational and confessional factors are closely connected, supplementing and intensifying each other. In these conditions, stability in the region depends on whether Russia takes these factors into account in its new strategy in the Caucasus.1
The Caucasus through the Prism of Interests of the Regional and World Powers
The interrelations between the Southern and Northern Caucasus make the first a zone of Russia’s vital interests. It is precisely in the Caucasian vector that Russia’s security looks the most vulnerable. The Southern Caucasus is important for Russia because it is a border region that adjoins an ethnopolitically problematic part of the Russian Federation, the Northern Caucasus. Its geographic proximity determines the extremely important role it plays in the Russian economy and politics.
This region is of key importance for Russia with respect to ensuring not only its territorial integrity, but also its presence there. The Annual Foreign Policy Review of the Russian Federation notes that “the situation in the region remains tense, and with respect to Georgia, explosive, while external powers are taking advantage of the frozen conflicts to intensify their influence in the region,”2 which is detrimental to Russia’s position.
The Russian Federation is playing a convoluted role in the Southern Caucasus, trying to preserve its influence in the territories it used to control, on the one hand, and to ensure the stability of its southern borders, on the other.
The Caucasus’ proximity to Iran raises its significance in the eyes of the West, particularly the U.S., for which the confrontation with Iran has become the main issue of its foreign policy strategy. The U.S. and Russia are currently acting as the leading players of Caucasian geopolitics. The U.S.’s strategic initiatives in the Caspian region are aimed at preserving its global leadership, while its European allies in the form of the EU cannot compete on equal terms with Russia in the Caucasus—the leading countries of continental Europe are too dependent on Russian energy deliveries.
In February 2007, in order to elaborate a future vision of the region and its European dimension, a Caucasian-Caspian EU Commission was created. It is made up of political and public figures from Russia, the U.S., Great Britain, Germany, Armenia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Slovenia, Turkey, Azerbai-
1 See: A. Azimov, “Etnonatsionalnyy rakurs vzaimootnoshenii Kavkaza so stranami Blizhnego i Srednego Vos-toka,” Vlast, No. 2, 2009, pp. 83, 84.
2 “MID RF rasstavil aktsenty vo vneshnei politike Rossii,” Rossiiskii mirotvorets, Rossiiskoe informatsionnoe obozrenie, 27 March, 2007, available at [http://www.peacekeeper.ru/?mid=3559], 28 October, 2010.
jan, Georgia, Iran, and other countries. The commission’s priority issues include conflict settlement, energy security, democracy, and regional cooperation.3
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, the republics situated in the southern part of the Caucasus, acquired their independence. And Russia cast no aspersions on the sovereign rights of the people of the new states to independent development. However, this led to Russia losing a large part of the economic and strategic foothold it had acquired over the last three centuries in this region
Nevertheless, the long years these republics existed as part of the Soviet Union cannot be assessed unequivocally. There can be no doubt that they left a positive mark in the development of ethnic and interpersonal relations, not to mention the contacts that developed during that time in education, science, and culture.4
Georgian political scientist A. Rondeli was right when he said that “the collapse of the Soviet Union created a new reality by giving rise to international relations among the former constituencies of the Union. The hierarchy of Soviet ethnic relations has given way to self-affirmation processes, division of territory, revision of rights and obligations, general uncertainty, and fear, tension and aggression.”5
The collapse of the Soviet Union led to a change in the geopolitical situation in the Caucasian republics, as well as to a breakdown in the ties formed within the framework of the united Soviet state. It proved easier for the new state formations to gain independence than to acquire self-sufficiency due to the breakdown in the long-established economic ties with Russia. And Russia’s actions proved inconsistent, devoid of a well-thought-out conception based on adequate perception of the political processes going on in the South Caucasian countries. For quite a long time, one of the priorities of Russian policy was preserving the country’s military presence in this region.
As of today, the Caucasus can rightly be considered one of the most problematic and unstable regions of the world. Four of the eight armed conflicts in the post-Soviet expanse have unfolded in the Southern Caucasus (the Armenian-Azerbaijani, the Georgian-Abkhazian, the Georgian-Ossetian, and the Georgian civil war). Peacekeeping projects aimed at decentralization and federalization that are carried out in Europe but do not suit the Caucasian conditions are not enough to lower the level of ethnic conflict potential in the region. Special approaches are needed to determine the reasons for the widespread ethnic conflicts.
First, when analyzing the situation in the Caucasus, traditionalism and modernization, nationalism and kinship (clan) relations, the Soviet heritage and fight for independence, and national sovereignty, democracy, and authoritarian relations should not be juxtaposed against each other. All of this coexists in the region. Moreover, the Caucasus is a region through which the border between the Christian and Islamic worlds passes and where the Western and Eastern civilizations meet and interact.
The current geopolitical and economic significance of the Southern Caucasus is mainly related to the fact that it is a very important transportation corridor and also a gateway to the abundant natural resources of the Caspian. In this respect, achieving stability in the South of the Caucasus is an important task for all the participants in international politics. However, the U.S., Russia, Turkey, Iran, and European Union countries understand this task in different ways. This also explains the competition among the various projects aimed at stabilizing the situation in the Southern Caucasus.
In contrast to the U.S., the European Union is placing the emphasis in its Caucasian policy on the socioeconomic, rather than on the military-political sphere. The EU’s main thrust is ensuring stability in the region, as well as observing European standards in human rights and democratic
3 See: “Kavkazsko-Kaspiiskaia komissiia vystupaet za sokhranenie formata Minskoi gruppy OBSE,” HAYINFO DASPORA RU. News Reel. Information and Analytical Portal, 25 March, 2008, available at [http://www.hayinfo.ru/ru/ news/polici/10620.html], 28 October, 2010.
4 See: A. Iazkova, “Iuzhnyy Kavkaz i Rossiia: uravnenie so mnogimi neizvestnymi,” Vestnik Evropy, Nos. 19-20,
2007.
5 A. Rondeli, “Iuzhnyy Kavkaz i Rossiia,” Vestnik Evropy, No. 7-8, 2002, p. 35.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
freedoms. But, unfortunately, by declaring its adherence to European democratic values, the EU is not ready to take into account the ethnocultural features and traditions of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.
Today, the Southern Caucasus is a transforming region in search of its self-identification (national-state, sociocultural, and geopolitical). It is unlikely that anyone can predict at present when the Caucasus will complete its transition to consolidated democracy and a market economy. There will most likely be no assimilation with the West in the Caucasus no matter what Georgian politicians are saying today about “Georgia’s return to Europe.” Despite all the advances by the U.S., EU, OSCE, and NATO, the states and societies of the Southern Caucasus will not be able to Europeanize at a fast pace or “escape from their geography and history.”6
The U.S. has declared the Caucasus a zone of its strategic interests and has also begun to carry out a corresponding policy in the southern part of this region. The U.S.’s current geopolitics in the Caucasus is economically substantiated. It is based on the Caspian energy project, that is, plans for bringing the oil and gas lying in the subsurface of the Caspian region to the world energy market. Its implementation is aggravating regional contradictions, which are frequently turning into coercive conflicts, right down to combat action. The U.S. participated in laying the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which creates routes for exporting the energy resources of the Caucasian region to the world markets that bypass Russia, and also limits Russia’s geopolitical influence in the southern vector.
The Northern Caucasus has closer historical, economic, political, and cultural relations with Russia than with the West. Foreign geopolitical scenarios of Caucasian development ignore this fact, failing to take enough account of the historical context and the region’s consequent pull toward Russia. On the other hand, Russian geopolitics in the Northern Caucasus is not very active, while the U.S., NATO, and the European Union are purposefully advancing their political interests there. The Northern Caucasus is territorially heterogeneous, so the tasks of state geopolitics in its segments have their own special features.
In Lieu of a Conclusion
When evaluating the interests of the South Caucasian states with respect to the impact of global factors on the region, it is thought that an acceptable practical solution would be to form a regional system within the framework of the Greater Caucasus that is open to interaction with neighboring and other interested countries. Keeping in mind all the difficult economic, political, and military-strategic problems there, Russia is interested in creating such a system, since it is anxious to ensure security of its southern borders, and, moreover, its shipping possibilities on the Black Sea and land access to the Middle East have significantly shrunk. As for Russia’s policy in the North Caucasian region, it could reinforce the law-enforcement structures that are engaged in intercepting the activity of subversive terrorist groups which are destabilizing the political and ethnic situation in the region.
The peoples of the Caucasian geopolitical expanse must find the correct approach to the ethno-political challenges. Here it is worth noting that regional political integration is one of the most effective ways to settle disputes, since it decreases ethnic hostility and also helps to overcome economic and social difficulties.
6 S. Markedonov, “Postsovetskiy Iuzhnyy Kavkaz: traditsionalizm plius modernizatsiia,” Prognozis, No. 1, 2007,
