SOUTH CAUCASUS STATES DISPLAY DISOBEDIENCE TO THEIR MENTORS: INTERNATIONAL EXPERT
20:14 | 2012-09-24 | Interview & Panels | Interviews |
Continuing its series of interviews with leading international experts
on the South Caucasus “First News and Analyses” interviewed George
Khelashvili, a keynote speaker at the leading U.S.-based think tank
/CSIS (Center for Strategic & International Studies)/ -organized
panel discussion titled “The Caucasus: A Changing Security Landscape”.
We asked Dr. Khelashvili for an interview to cover South Caucasian
security setting with the “big regional players” involvement in it.
Covering the issue at the panel Dr. Khelashvili had earlier noted that:
“To look back 20 years in the 1990s the general policy towards the
region was that strengthening of the states in the Caucasus was
a remedy for regional instability and lack of security because the
states were incapable of providing services to their populations and
therefore we got the situation which was characterized with strife,
conflicts, new security challenges, & general de-stabilization. By
the 2000s the situation changed and how the foreign outside powers
acted was that they targeted the states to somehow improve the
situation. In the 2000s state capacity in the South Caucasus` all
three cases, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia improved greatly and
also what happened was the outside powers continued their efforts
directed at strengthening the states again and also at the same time
what happened was a certain pairing of regional and outside powers
in this process of increasing state capacity”
Dr. Khelashvili, in your talk at CSIS you mentioned that in 2000s
foreign players targeted state strength in the region (South Caucasus),
could you detail this idea of “strength aid” further in terms of
Russia-Armenia, U.S.-Georgia, Turkey-Azerbaijan relations?
Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, foreign powers, most
importantly the United States and the large European countries
tried to strengthen the statehood of the post-Soviet nations of the
Caucasus. This policy had a persuasive rationale – the governments
should have had enough power to control all existing armed units and
external borders in order to prevent potential threats to regional and
international security, such as terrorism, organized crime, illegal
drug trade and international trafficking. However, over time, certain
foreign states started to ‘specialize’ on specific countries with
respect to provision of external aid. Thus, the United States extended
substantial help to Georgia, Turkey provided military and economic
aid to Azerbaijan, and Armenia too received assistance from Russia.
How would you comment on the same-period relations between
U.S.-Armenia, U.S.-Azerbaijan and Russia-Azerbaijan, was there any
target in these relations and if yes, what did the foreign players
target?
In case of the United States, aid and political assistance was
distributed according to the degree of collaboration that Baku and
Yerevan were ready to reciprocate to Washington. These relations were
not particularly problematic but not especially cordial either.
Likewise, Russian relations with Azerbaijan were quite collaborative
and constructive, though deprived of any damaging intent.
Do you think there have been changes in the “target setting” since
2008 in terms of foreign player (U.S., Russia and Turkey) priorities
connected with each of the states in the region?
One of interesting consequence of the August 2008 war between Russia
and Georgia was that it changed little in the regional distribution
of power or amity/enmity patterns. Even though all great power players
involved (US, Russia, Turkey and the EU) admitted there was a systemic
failure of regional security in the Caucasus in August 2008, nobody
even attempted to create any kind of safety net in the region. As
far as I can tell, there is still minimal coordination of the great
powers’ external involvement in the Caucasus.
How do you evaluate EU presence in the region, what role does it play
and what does it target in the region?
The European Union’s involvement in the Caucasus is rather
uncoordinated and lacks the ‘grand strategy’ behind it. This may not
necessarily be a bad thing as the other great players’ involvement
is often perceived in geopolitical terms by other players and by
regional states as well. The European Union’s low-key approach to the
region contributed substantially to improving social and economic
conditions in the region and, thus, positively affected regional
security environment. However, there is little to say about the EU’s
role in constructing any semblance of regional security architecture
in the Caucasus.
Touching upon the post-2010 period, Dr. Khelashvili had noted that :
…Now in 2010s what happens is that as a consequence of the
strengthened state capacity the three states local regional states
gained a great deal of self-confidence in their domestic affairs
as well as external relations and they are increasingly displaying
certain independently-minded behavior on security and foreign policy
So I think what a crucial new variable here is not so much increase
of material power & resource base of the three states but that they
gained independence & confidence which very often is displayed in
disobedience to their respective mentors in terms of foreign policy
matters & this is happening in the background of a weaker or at least
not strengthened security architecture in the Caucasus.
Note: Dr. Khelashvili is a leading expert at Georgian Center for
Social Sciences: he holds a Dphil in international relations from
University of Oxford and currently serves as OSF HESP funded project
Graduate Programs at the Faculty of Social and Political Studies at
Iv. Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University.
From: A. Papazian
http://1in.am/eng/interviewandpanel_interviews_2722.html