Editor's Note

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Caucasus has emerged as one of the most strategically important, yet unstable, regions of the world. The area is riven with unresolved ethno-territorial conflicts, many having the potential to suck in other countries. It is home to one of the great remaining energy sources in the form of Caspian oil, and is traversed by economically vital—and politically contentious—pipelines that serve to get this and other fuels to external markets. Finally, it is a zone of intense competition between bordering and extra-regional powers, a jockeying for influence and control that poses the threat of open war or a renewal of international tensions thought to have been buried with the Iron Curtain. All of these factors converge to give the Caucasus its current geopolitical significance, and they are the focus of this issue of Global Dialogue.

If the Caucasus today commands international attention and concern, a key reason is the growing rivalry in the region between the United States and Russia. The two powers, nominally allies in the “global war on terror”, have conflicting interests in the Caucasus. And, as our opening article explains, the Bush administration’s new emphasis on exporting democracy finds a receptive audience among Caucasian peoples and threatens to drive a wedge between Moscow and Washington. Ian Bremmer of the World Policy Institute in New York reviews a number of potential flashpoints in the Caucasus where the United States and Russia could find themselves on opposite sides of locally inspired armed conflicts.

The United States’ strategic goals in the Caucasus, and their likely impact on Russia, are examined by Mohammad Soltanifar, managing director of the English-language daily, Iran News. Describing US governmental and non-governmental involvement in the various “colour revolutions” in Georgia, Ukraine and other post-Soviet states, he relates the suspicions of some observers that Washington might try to foment a regime change by similar methods even in Russia itself. Should that be attempted, he warns, the result could be a revival of the confrontations and hostilities of the Cold War.

Russia is not the only regional neighbour to view with unease the growing US presence in the Caucasus; another is Iran. As Hooman Peimani of the University of Bradford explains in the course of a wide-ranging survey of Iran’s dealings with the Caucasus, Washington’s drive to develop military ties with a number of Caucasian countries via arms sales, training programmes and basing rights has intensified fears in the Islamic Republic of hostile encirclement by allies or clients of the United States.

An account of how the US–Russian rivalry is playing out in one key Caucasian country is provided by Cory Welt of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Describing Georgia’s conflicts with its breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, he argues that the United States and the European Union should meet Tbilisi’s request to increase their involvement in efforts to resolve the disputes. A stepped-up Western role, he believes, is necessary to counterbalance the Russian support that allows the separatist regions to feel secure against needing to make the concessions that peace requires.

Events in Georgia are examined further by George Tarkhan-Mouravi of the Institute for Policy Studies in Tbilisi. He reflects on why so many hopes, local and international, are still invested in the “Rose Revolution” that brought Mikheil Saakashvili to power in 2003. Discussing the exploitation by elites throughout the Caucasus of ethnic grievances and nationalist sentiment for the purposes of political mobilisation and state-building, he contends that Georgia’s new administration has not made a sharp enough break from these retrograde practices.

The epicentre of instability in the Caucasus is the war in Chechnya, one of the bloodiest of recent conflicts. Svante E. Cornell of the Central Asia–Caucasus Institute, Johns Hopkins University-SAIS, examines Russia’s “counter-terrorist” measures to defeat the Chechen insurgency. He concludes that they are self-defeating, creating extremism and sowing the seeds of terrorism and violent unrest throughout the North Caucasus.

The turbulence radiating out of Chechnya has had a profound political impact on Russia, providing the cause or pretext for what is widely perceived to be a slide away from democratisation towards authoritarianism under President Vladimir Putin. The succeeding articles look at the interplay between events in various Caucasian countries and Russia’s domestic and foreign policies.

Matthew Evangelista of Cornell University considers Putin’s imposition of a “power vertical”—the abolition of regional autonomy and the centralisation of political control in the Kremlin—via the prism of Ingushetia. Developments in the North Caucasus republic cause him to doubt whether Russians have successfully traded liberty for security and unity.

A similar conclusion is reached by Robert Bruce Ware of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville after a review of affairs in Chechyna, Ingushetia, and Dagestan. The last-named republic, he argues, provided a potential model, in its democratic and egalitarian tradition of the jamaat, for the benign transformation of the politics of the northern Caucasus. But Putin’s tightening of Moscow’s grip has unwisely undermined this system of local accountability and access, and is likely further to radicalise and destabilise the region.

Pavel K. Baev of the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) argues that Putin has exploited the war in Chechnya for both domestic and foreign-policy purposes. Domestically, he has sought to use the issue of counter-terrorism to consolidate his regime and transform Russia’s military structures. Externally, he has aligned Russia with Washington’s “global war on terror” in the hope of reaping benefits such as extending Moscow’s influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia. But internal contradictions render Putin’s counter-terrorism ploy a strategic dead-end.

Russia’s closest ally in the Caucasus is Armenia. Robert O. Krikorian of George Washington University provides a historical perspective on Armenia’s emergence as an independent state, and describes its relations with neighbouring countries and the wider world. Key to understanding Armenia, he stresses, is its geographical isolation, which has profoundly influenced the security perceptions of the Armenian people and its leadership.

The overriding issue in Armenian politics is of course the conflict with Azerbaijan over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. But, as political analyst Fariz Ismailzade explains, the two Caucasian countries are not the only players with a stake in the territorial dispute. He identifies seven other major participants in the geopolitical game over Nagorno-Karabakh. Analysing their motives and interests in the quarrel, he indicates why it is so intractable.

One of those players is Turkey. Bulent Aras of Fatih University, Istanbul, looks at the concerns, material and ideological, that have shaped Ankara’s policy in the Caucasus. The collapse of the Soviet Union inspired hopes among some Turkish politicians of a united bloc of Turkic states embracing Azerbaijan and the Central Asian countries. Aras describes the various private and official initiatives by which Turkey has attempted to expand its presence in the former Soviet space. He also assesses the influence of the Caucasian Muslim diaspora in Turkey.

Our concluding article is a topical comment that takes us away from the Caucasus to explore the vexed question of relations between Islam and the West. Asma Afsaruddin of the University of Notre Dame discusses how Islam has been portrayed and “scripted” in the United States after the events of 11 September 2001. Via an examination of the meanings of jihad and of Islamic thought on war and peace, he weighs the implications of these portrayals for Muslims and non-Muslims in their dialectical engagements with one another.

Paul Theodoulou
Summer/Autumn 2005