Geopolitics: where is Transcaucasia drifting to?

Problem statement.

Thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the geopolitical community of the republics that were once part of the USSR - Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia – began to erode. However, today there are still experts, especially in the West, who continue to consider this space as a post-Soviet one.

But to describe this region and analyse the turbulent events taking place there only as part of the Russian periphery is to risk misinterpreting its main distinctive features. In Transcaucasia, this trend is very noticeable, although today the geopolitical borders between the three states - Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia - and the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Greater Middle East are not just changing, but are beginning to merge in some directions.

Distancing themselves from Russia, they are forced to integrate into a growing network of ties with countries located along their southern, western and eastern perimeters. At the same time, the region remains one of the most explosive regions in both Europe and the Middle East. Recall that during the collapse of the USSR there were 9 armed conflicts, 6 of which occurred in the so-called Greater Caucasus region.

These are the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, the Georgian-Ossetian and Georgian-Abkhaz conflicts, the 1991-1993 civil war in Georgia, and the Ossetian-Ingush and Russian-Chechen conflicts (the latter on the territory of the Russian Federation). And after the second Karabakh war, which was victorious for Azerbaijan, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict remains unresolved; the Georgian-Abkhaz and Georgian-South Ossetian conflicts remain in a more stable, but in a broad sense unresolved state.

Therefore, what is happening now in Transcaucasia can no longer be described only in the usual formats of interethnic, regional or border conflict. This is, first of all, because a careful and objective analysis of the situation shows that there is a close relationship between all these conflicts.

For example, the course of the Ossetian-Ingush conflict over the status of the Prigorodny district of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania was closely influenced by the Georgian-Ossetian confrontation, and the situation in Abkhazia was influenced by the situation in the western part of the Caucasus. Transcaucasia and the North Caucasus have always been closely connected both historically and ethnically. Until the beginning of the 19th century, these territories were part of the Persian and Ottoman empires, then they found themselves being a part of Russia.

After the collapse of the USSR, Russia's position in the region seriously weakened. After a certain chronological backlash associated with unconvincing attempts by the West to integrate the Transcaucasian states into the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO) or the EU, it became obvious that the West intends, at best, to consider this region as a "buffer zone" capable of ensuring regional stability even without direct participation in NATO.

It was at precisely this moment that the historical elements of the Iranian-Russian-Turkish, as well as the Iranian-Turkish competition began to manifest themselves through the desire to create appropriate zones of influence there. It is enough to recall the "one nation - two states” Turkish-Azerbaijani integration project and Tehran's open ambitions if not to return, then at least to restore influence in Transcaucasia in the territories that were once part of the Persian Empire (almost all of Transcaucasia), which, by the way, was openly manifested during the recent aggravation of relations between Iran and Azerbaijan.

At the same time, it is important to note that Ankara and Tehran in these areas do not appeal directly to the United States and the countries of the European Union, but exclusively to Russia. In this regard, it is enough to mention the project of the "pact of six" (Russia, Turkey, Iran, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) updated at the initiative of Turkey to create a regional security system in Transcaucasia without the participation of the United States and the EU.

For comparison, Turkey has repeatedly taken the initiative to create a model of regional security since the 1990s. On January 16, 2000, Turkish President Süleyman Demirel proposed such an idea, but with the participation of the United States. There was also a proposal by the President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan to create a “3+3+2" format: Armenia - Azerbaijan - Georgia - Russia - Turkey - Iran - EU and USA.

But the search for a model of regional security at that time turned out to be fruitless. It was not possible to find a solution that corresponds to the interests of the system (Russia-Turkey-Iran) and the subsystem (Armenia-Azerbaijan-Georgia). But even then, the aspirations of first Turkey, and then Iran, to somehow gain a foothold in Transcaucasia through dialogue with the involvement of Russia to achieve peace and stability in this region were striking.

These are signs of a new "big game" beginning in Transcaucasia. But this is only the first important point. The essence of the second is that the events in Transcaucasia are beginning to merge with what is happening in the neighbouring Middle East, which exacerbates for everyone, first of all, the problem of searching for one’s own identity. At the same time, the growing extrapolation of Middle Eastern contradictions in Transcaucasia looks alarming.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union used Transcaucasia to influence the countries of the Greater Middle East and especially neighbouring Iran and Turkey. Now much is happening in exactly the opposite way, although Russia still strives to preserve the region as part of its zone of predominant influence.

The USA and Europe, of course, are still important actors in the region, but their influence, especially in Armenia and Azerbaijan, is noticeably weakening, but the competition of various integration projects, not only European and Eurasian, does not weaken. Each of the three states of the region is somehow facing a difficult choice – which force to join.

The problem is also that Western analysts consider a possible repetition of the "Arab Spring" scenario in Turkey to be among the risks in the region. There is also a factor of the uncertain future of Iran, which, after the lifting of Western sanctions, can dramatically strengthen its regional influence, launch energy transportation routes to Europe and become a key player in South Caucasian politics, or vice versa, become a victim of political “perestroika" and explode from within, unable to withstand a sharp change in ideological course."

Assessment of the situation.

Experts dealing with the problems of Transcaucasia are well aware that various geopolitical parties have always been played out in Transcaucasia from time to time and continue to be played out, when some actors activate their presence, while others go into the shadows. And a new configuration is always being built in the relations of the three Transcaucasian countries - Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan - and all external actors - Russia, Turkey, Iran, England and France, and now the so-called collective West represented by the United States and the EU.

Much, if not all, in this region of the world is conditioned by history. In the 20th century, events in Transcaucasia were directly related to two geopolitical factors – the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 and the collapse of the USSR in 1991. For the peoples and states of the region, this was connected with the completion of one common task: the formation of ideas about "their land", "their borders" and forms of statehood. It's a surprising thing.

Present-day Transcaucasian experts, describing the general problems of Transcaucasia, draw a "picture" that in many ways resembles the one that many experts (and not only Russian and Transcaucasian, but also many Western ones) depicted in their publications in the media during the 1919-1920's. We consider this to be a remarkable phenomenon, since in modern Transcaucasian historical science and political journalism this problem is covered exclusively in the context of the national aspirations of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia.

But there are also variants of other opinions of experts who are trying to consider the problems of Transcaucasia in the format of a single geopolitical space.

"Today's problems of Transcaucasia are largely due to the disintegration trends in the region," writes, for example, expert Mamikon Babayan. “Its ethnic diversity determines the richness of cultural diversity, and it would seem that regional policy should be based on maintaining respect between national communities.

This is especially important given that there are still pockets of separatism in the region and the risk of xenophobia is high. Today, Transcaucasia, divided by interethnic contradictions, has become favourable ground for destructive forces."

The stated political diagnosis, in principle, is shared by Azerbaijani analyst Huseynbala Salimov. However, he "suggests" a way out:

"In fact, why not do the same in the Caucasus, which we are all individually looking for in the plane of EU–Caucasian countries? Why don't we work together on an agreement like the "Caucasian Schengen"? After all, all this is real and even in demand – having done all this, it is possible to turn the little Caucasus into a real mini-Europe, in which the interests of all peoples and nationalities of the region will be taken into account.

To make state borders more transparent, to expand, strengthen and ensure the rule of human rights, to make the principle of subsidiarity (all issues that can be solved locally are transferred to the jurisdiction of local governments) the main principle of governance.

Believe me, in this case there will be no need to revise the borders, and separatist tendencies will not find support among small nations and nationalities, unless, of course, they are heated and supported by large states, as happens in the case of conflicts in the post-Soviet space."

So, we smelled the era of the 1919-1920s, well described in the printed publications of various political trends in Transcaucasia and Soviet Russia of that period. Therefore, there is a steady feeling that the events of the region, like grains, continue to be ground only by the millstones of the "big geopolitical mill" standing in one place.

Recall that by the time of the collapse of the Russian Empire, the only national Transcaucasian party, the Armenian Dashnaktsutyun, had developed its own project for the construction of a national state, which was to include Turkish (Western) Armenia with the subsequent annexation of the so-called "Russian Armenia".

The Azerbaijani Musavat party advocated the preservation of Azerbaijan as part of Russia "on the basis of national-territorial autonomy”. The territory and borders of this autonomy were not designated at that time. As for the Georgian Mensheviks, who were part of the All-Russian Menshevik Party until the end of 1918, they only put forward the project of "ideal Georgia" - "the medieval Abkhazian-Georgian kingdom of the period of its maximum heyday" somewhere in early 1919.

This was opposed by Georgian social federalists, who in 1915 published in Vienna in Russian a development on the future administrative-territorial arrangement of Transcaucasia, proposing to carry out cantonisation of the region following the example of Switzerland.

The authors of this document predicted that "the formation of national-type states in the province will lead to endless wars and clashes between them due to an unclear historical past and an even less obvious future”. That is why the Provisional Government in St. Petersburg supported the Special Transcaucasian Committee (OZAKOM) formed from members of the 4th State Duma — the body for the management of the entire Transcaucasia, referring to the territory of the former Caucasian viceroyalty.

After the Bolsheviks came to power in St. Petersburg, OZAKOM transformed into the Transcaucasian Sejm, which in April 1918 proclaimed the independence of the Transcaucasian Republic, and at the end of May it split into three national states - Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Until the very last moment, it was not clear whether Armenia would be able to act as an independent state or would be completely absorbed by Turkey. But in the battles near Sardarabad (modern Hoktemberyan) in the suburbs of Yerevan and Karakilis (modern Vanadzor), the Armenians managed to stop the Turkish offensive, which made it possible to proclaim the independence of the state. In general, this period is characterised by active armed intervention in the region by the Turks, Germans, and then the British, who stayed there until the spring-summer of 1919.

The documents published now show that initially the British mission in the Caucasus tried to settle local conflicts and create buffer zones or demarcation lines. But only until the moment when British experts, based on a fairly thorough analysis of the ethno-religious, political and geopolitical contradictions tearing the region apart, did not come up with a project to create a Transcaucasian confederation and refused to assist in the state-building of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia.

After the Sovietisation of the Transcaucasian republics, the Bolsheviks used this project, forming in March 1922 the Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (TSFSR), which existed until the end of 1936. The party documents indicated that the main task was to solve the acute national issue in the region on the basis of not only a single ideology, but also the unification of the economic efforts of the republics.

Nevertheless, many interethnic problems in Transcaucasia were not solved either then or later. They were driven into the plane of a latent state, which immediately made itself felt on the eve and after the collapse of the USSR, when "old sores" began to come out, accompanied by the growth of ethnic and interethnic nationalism.

Hence the armed conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Plus, the appearance of an external force factor in the face of the Americans, Europeans and Turks, however, unlike in the 1918-1920s, there was no presence of foreign armies on the territory of Transcaucasia (we do not take into account Russia's military presence in Armenia).

Yes, there is something in common with 1919. The United States and the European Union, like the British in 1919, did not designate their exclusively Azerbaijani, Georgian or Armenian policies. Moscow behaved in the same way before the August 2008 war, which isolated its Georgian direction.

But with regard to Baku and Yerevan, even despite the latter's membership in the CSTO and the Eurasian Economic Union, Russia behaves equidistant, leaving Azerbaijan and Armenia to look for ways to break with the Soviet past themselves.

On August 30, 1991, the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan adopted a Declaration on Secession from the USSR and Independence of the republic. With this, it proclaimed the "restoration" of independence, emphasising the continuity with the first Azerbaijani state - the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (1918-1920).

In practice, it turned out that relying on the historical model of nation-building aggravated, rather than solved, the Karabakh problem. The same thing happened with Georgia, which lost control over Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

In the 1920s, the Bolsheviks, proposing their project, considered the geopolitical state of the region to be anomalous. And what to expect now? Is a scenario of the cyclical development of regional geopolitics possible? Azerbaijan has identified a set of its important issues: oil pipelines, Nagorno-Karabakh, possibly South Azerbaijan. And Georgia – relations with Russia, problems with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, transit potential, directions of foreign policy orientation.

Armenia, as a member of the CSTO and the EAEU, is shielded from serious dangerous external challenges, if we talk about strategy. As for tactics, with the coming to power of Nikol Pashinyan, there is a lot that is still unclear. There are no serious contradictions threatening cooperation between Yerevan and Tbilisi. But Georgia is still positioning itself as pro-Western, while Yerevan adheres to a generally pro-Russian foreign policy.

Baku verbally declares a non-aligned policy, although in fact it conducts a pro-Western foreign policy, orientating towards Turkey, with which Russia is in an alliance. Who is ready to offer Transcaucasia something special so as not to re-introduce the region into the era of armed conflicts? Who can correlate mutually acceptable goals and their practical implementation?

There is no answer yet, although new geopolitical projects are being tested and modelled in Western analytical centres. Let's denote their general meaning after 30 years of independent existence of the Transcaucasian states.

As in the 1919-1920s, the entire policy of the West in this region is focused on the withdrawal of the states located there from the influence of Russia. To some extent, it managed to achieve this, but the three Transcaucasian countries, as before, view their political preferences in different ways: Georgia with NATO and the EU, Azerbaijan as a strategic partner of Turkey, which was a member of NATO, Armenia is a close ally of Russia.

In such a situation, one can only theoretically speculate about the general geopolitical purpose of Transcaucasia in a situation when, unlike in the 1919-1920s, the complete displacement of Russia from the region did not take place, including the space of the Black and Caspian Seas, or rather, the use of the region to block Moscow's advance in the strategic southern direction.

The task of constructing latitudinal communications, mainly of an energy nature, was important. It seems to have been successfully completed when the withdrawal of Azerbaijani oil bypassing Russia to the shores of the Black and Mediterranean Seas took place. But the global energy situation soon changed, and the significance of these communications is no longer of serious political interest.

The West tried to take advantage of Georgia's ethno-political problems, but the Georgian elite failed to properly become a conductor of Western policy and lost prospects for the return of the territory of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. At the same time, the West has started to consider these problems not as overly important and declares the possibility of Georgia's integration into NATO as the main stake in the future of this country.

In the West, they write and talk more about new projects for the region. But the matter is dragging on and there are grounds to assume the rejection of a number of geopolitical ideas with the understanding that it is impossible to bring Transcaucasia into a state of absorption without deploying a broad strategy that will cover not only the Caucasus, but also the zone from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea.

But Russia is not the only target in relation to Transcaucasia. Iran is gaining an important place, although the place and role of Iran has changed markedly, both in the world and in this region. Previously, it was meant to form a "big diagonal" from Iran to Europe, which would run through Transcaucasia.

But such an idea to create communication opportunities in the Black Sea, using the Black Sea coast of Georgia, exists so far only on paper. This is because the deterioration of relations with Iran leads to new problems and it is possible that after some time there will be a change in relations between the United States and Iran, when the United States will begin to block any communications that are designed to link Russia with the Persian Gulf.

Moreover, the United States and NATO are interested in forming communications linking China with Europe, as this will lead to the excommunication of Transcaucasia from Russia. But the problem of communications does not solve the international function of this region at all.

There is also a platform for rapprochement between Russia and Turkey, which already have a fairly high level of mutual trust, which was emphasised by the presidents of both countries. Closer cooperation can lay the foundation for the formation of a new regional centre of power, a kind of support pillar of a multipolar world, which directly corresponds to Russian interests.

The main task of Europe is to create a buffer zone of Europe, separating Europe from the Middle East and other Asian regions. It is unlikely that Azerbaijan will participate in this function. Azerbaijan is rather regarded as a Central Asian country. And Armenia faces the threat of also being considered as a Central Asian country.

The West understands that Georgia is not able to perform the functions of a regional buffer on its own. Georgia needs Armenia, and this has already become part of its policy. A partnership with NATO has not become extremely important in determining the place and role of the Transcaucasian countries, which is not conditioned and has not been achieved in semantic terms.

The meaning of the geopolitical orientation of Transcaucasia lies not only in the political relation, but also in the civilisational one. The region has never been united, despite the commonality of cultures and customs. Nevertheless, a geopolitical game begins in the region, in which not all the goals of its participants are clear. These factors indicate that the conflict situation will continue for many years and will remain the main destabilising factor in Transcaucasia.

Conclusions.

Russia has always traditionally played a big role in the political situation in Transcaucasia, where six armed conflicts have occurred there during this time. Against this background, the competition between two integration projects, European and Eurasian, has intensified in the region.

Each of the three states is somehow facing a difficult choice – which force to join. Experts advise to implement any integration project in the Caucasus with special attention – a slight change in the status quo "is fraught with either new conflicts or escalation of ‘frozen’ conflicts”.

Russia's security frontier in the Caucasus region runs along the southern borders of Russia itself and the borders of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Russian 102nd base in Armenia is extended far to the south, access to it is possible only through the territories or air spaces of states whose friendliness towards Russia is either completely absent (Georgia) or conditional (Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iran).

Russia's military and political presence in Armenia can bring certain benefits to Russia by stabilising the situation in the region. For Armenia, this presence is a guarantee of the external borders of the state. Moreover, after the second Karabakh war, Armenia turned into the rear base of the Russian peacekeeping operation in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The very same Russian military peacemaking in the region allows Moscow to control a dangerous hotbed of an unsettled conflict. Under certain conditions, the position in Armenia may become a base for Russia for anti-terrorist operations in the Middle East region.

Thus, Russia's military presence in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, that is, on the territory of Azerbaijan, is essential for Russia's security in the Caucasus. Moscow's foreign policy is based, of course, not on emotions and historical memories, but on the basic values of the state and specific national interests. Being pragmatic at the tactical level, it is designed to maintain a strategic balance between its numerous country directions.