The South Caucasus - Security, Energy and Europeanization

Oktay F. Tanrisever, Meliha B. Altunışık

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780367872137
• eBook ISBN: 9781317511144
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política medioambiental y energética

This book explores developments in the countries of the South Caucasus – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia – since the EU included the region in the European Neighbourhood Policy in 2003. It considers issues related to energy, ethnic conflict, steps towards regional integration, and, above all, security – including the involvement of Russia, Iran, Turkey and the United States. It assesses the key importance of energy, argues that the prospects for regional integration are weak, and contends that while the approach of Europe and the United States has been confused and weak, not holding out great hope of EU or NATO membership, Russia's interest and involvement in the region is strong, and growing.

1 Introduction

Meliha B. Altunisik and Oktay F. Tanrisever

Eight years after the Russo-Georgian War, the flare-up in April 2016 of the military standoff between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh once again underlined the continuing challenges to security and stability of the South Caucasus. The three countries in this sub-region of Europe, namely Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, have been growing apart as regional cooperation schemes remained limited. Despite the lack of attention to the region lately, the South Caucasus and its relations with the outside world have also been going through important shifts in the 21st century. These developments require a comprehensive analysis of the underlining trends. As such, the continuities and changes in the security challenges, as well as in the Europeanization agenda of the region, linked with the shifting energy dynamics require revisiting of these dynamics. Currently, as the chapters in the book demonstrate, both the region and its sub-regionalism face challenges, both in the sense of regionalism within the sub-region and in its relations with the outer environment.

The South Caucasus has generally been considered as a European region in general terms. In fact, the South Caucasus has been linked not only to the European geography but also to the European history, culture, economy, politics and international relations, when the term “European” is used in its widest meaning (Light, White and Lowenhardt 2000, pp. 77–88). The narrowly conceived Europe as the European Union (EU) finds it challenging to incorporate the South Caucasus into its conception of regionalism. In this sense, this European sub-region faces considerable dilemmas and challenges in integrating smoothly into the processes initiated by the EU, due to the socio-cultural, political, economic and security complexities in the European neighbourhood (Lynch 2003). These complexities have increasingly become very problematic since the 2000s. Although the realization of new energy projects in the mid-2000s such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (BTE) natural gas pipeline have increased hopes for the greater integration of the South Caucasus into the EU more closely, Russia’s Five-Day War with Georgia in August 2008 undermined regional security as well as the cooperation between the South Caucasian countries and the EU even further (Lynch 2003). Consequently, the growing challenges and dilemmas faced by the South Caucasian countries have resulted in problematic issues in the fields of foreign policy, Europeanization, energy and security.

These dilemmas and challenges of the South Caucasian countries are not identical but take different characteristics at three levels: national, regional and international. Firstly, at the national level, the relations among three South Caucasian nations are characterized by bilateral sources of conflict and cooperation. The security aspect of the Armenian-Azerbaijani relations has been the most problematic of these regional bilateral relations due to the unresolved armed conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh (Cornell 2017). On the other hand, the bilateral relations of both countries with Georgia are driven by the pragmatic concerns of cooperation in the areas of energy and trade (German 2012, pp. 137–151). Overall, all of the South Caucasian nations seek to promote their processes of Europeanization through occasionally conflicting foreign policies.

Secondly, the challenges and dilemmas of the South Caucasus take different character at the regional level too. Paradoxically, regional insecurity in the South Caucasus seems to be both promoting and impeding regional cooperation. Although the unresolved conflicts of Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and the South Ossetia impede the development of regional cooperation in the areas of security, foreign policy and energy, the interdependencies among the regional actors promote a number of direct and indirect as well as formal and informal regional integration processes among the regional actors. For example, the development of regional energy projects among Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey contribute to the regional economic development, which in turn spreads the economic benefits of such regional economic cooperation projects to other neighbouring regional actors such as Armenia through its cooperation with Georgia (Valiyev 2015, pp. 27–44). In other words, the existence of regional interdependencies as well as indirect and informal channels among the regional actors contribute to the promotion of regional cooperation in the South Caucasus considerably.

Last but not least, the South Caucasus has also been characterized by a number of serious dilemmas at the international level too. In a globalizing world, the South Caucasus has also been subject to the pulls and pushes of non-regional international developments. For example, the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States by the Al-Qaida and the subsequent war on terror is an important development for the South Caucasus just like the other parts of the world. The fight against international terrorism created a new issue area for regional cooperation in the South Caucasus (Tanrisever 2004, pp. 127–155; and German 2007, pp. 131–140). Likewise, the global economic crisis, which started in the USA and EU member states in 2008 also affect regional economic developments in the South Caucasus (Sireika 2013). Last but not least, the decline in the energy prices at the global energy markets mainly for oil and natural gas have resulted in dilemmas for the regional actors in the South Caucasus since 2014. Unlike Azerbaijan, which exports its oil and natural gas resources, the net importers of oil and natural gas resources have benefited from this development (Tanrisever 2016, pp. 114–127).

The current characteristics of the South Caucasus are rooted in the historical evolution of this region throughout the centuries. The very long and rich history of the South Caucasus provide the diverse peoples of the South Caucasus with the reasons for conflict and cooperation. In particular, autochthonic nations of the South Caucasus tend to write historical narratives emphasizing their ancient roots in this region in order to justify their ‘rooted and native’ character as opposed to the ‘latecomer and outsider’ character of other nations. The lack of consensus on the historical narratives of the aforementioned autochthonic nations contributes to the divides among themselves too.

The long history of the South Caucasus has witnessed the rise and fall of major classical empires of the world. The Greek colonization of the northern parts of the South Caucasus and the persistent Persian influence in the mainly southern parts of the South Caucasus ended with the expansion of the Roman and Byzantine Empires in this region (Forsyth 2015). Starting from the 10th century, the Turkic and Islamic dynasties established their rule in the region. The Ottoman and Safavid Empires ruled the most parts of this region until the rise of the Russian rule in the early 19th century (King 2008, pp. 20–141). The Russian conquest of the South Caucasus took place with a mixed use of the military and diplomatic methods. The collapse of the Russian Empire during the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 paved the way to the Soviet experiment in the South Caucasus (de Waal 2010, pp. 37–70).

The Soviet period in the South Caucasus has been characterized by Stalinist un-making and remaking of the nations through Soviet federalism. Joseph Stalin, an ethnic Georgian, used the Soviet federalism in order to foster matrioshka nationalisms in the South Caucasus as in the other parts of the Soviet Union. By creating hierarchies of Union Republics, Autonomous Republics and Autonomous Oblasts, Stalin sought to counterbalance the potential anti-Soviet nationalist and separatist tendencies in the Union Republics. However, it was this system of ethnic federalism which promoted Union Republics to exercise their self-determination right and Autonomous Republics as well as Autonomous Oblasts to upgrade their status during the Soviet collapse in the early 1990s (Coppieters 2001). In other words, post-Soviet problems of the South Caucasus are rooted in the design and evolution of Soviet federalism in the South Caucasus.

The formation of the post-Soviet states in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse presented the leaders and ordinary citizens of these states with major challenges from the huge task of state building to the even bigger challenge of war-making for the control of ethno-territorial units within their territories (Cornell 2005). The problems associated with transition from command economy to free market economy as well as the disruption of economic networks also posed considerable problems for the peoples of the South Caucasus (Wooden and Stefes 2009). The development of the region’s rich energy resources and their transportation to the international markets resulted in equally important economic and geopolitics problems (Roberts 1996). Last but not least, the international orientation of the South Caucasian states and pressures of competing regional integration projects in the neighbourhood of the South Caucasus have intensified the already difficult problems of the South Caucasus even further (Malfliet, Verpoest and Vinokurov 2007).

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of independent states in the post-Soviet space, most of the studies concentrated on the post-communist development in these countries. This literature focused on the issues of state formation with particular emphasis on the impact of the Soviet era in this process either in comparative or individual case studies. It is within this context that the foreign relations of the regional countries were cast and the emphasis was put on topics like increasing U.S. involvement in the region and competition between Iran and Turkey in regional politics (Tanrisever 2015, pp. 226–243). These studies generally considered Central Asia and the Caucasus as one geopolitical unit and as such did not differentiate the South Caucasus as a separate region. As a whole this region, in fact, was seen as a continuation of the Middle East due to its large Muslim population.

A significant part of the developing literature focused on several issues related to the Caucasus, including the South Caucasus. These issue-oriented studies were based on geopolitics, frozen conflicts, and pipeline diplomacy. Studies adopting a geopolitical perspective mainly focused on the geopolitical competition over this region by regional powers as well as extra-regional ones. Most of the literature, therefore, focused on rising Iranian and Turkish influence in the newly independent states (Bradshaw 1997; Herzig 1995; Aydin 2004). In terms of the relations of the region with global powers, especially in the 1990s there emerged a literature that focused on the U.S. role in the region, as well as the integration of the regional countries into the new institutional frameworks that were created in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), particularly multilateral North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) and bilateral Partnership for Peace (PfP). Soon, however, parallel to Russia’s coming back to the region due to its ‘near abroad policy’, especially the Western literature began to focus on the emergence of a ‘New Great Game’ in the region.

A significant literature has also emerged on the conflicts in the region, particularly the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the conflict over Abkhazia and South Ossetia (Zürcher 2007). In the 1990s, these conflicts were referred to as ‘frozen conflicts’. More recent studies focused on local, regional and global implications of the Five-Day War between Georgia and Russia in 2008. The potential for conflicts and threat perceptions of the regional actors became the subject of inquiry (Asmus 2010; De Waal 2010). Finally, there have been several studies focusing on pipeline politics, namely the intense competition among the different actors related to the export of hydrocarbon resources of the Caspian region to the world markets (Karasac 2002).

In the late 1990s in particular, a new literature began to emerge that focus on the construction of new regions that include the South Caucasus countries as well. As mentioned earlier, some of this literature referred to the wider Caucasus, examining the interlinkages between the Caucasus and Central Asia. Similarly, the Black Sea also emerged as a region of interest. The security issues as well as institutionalization in this region, particularly the establishment of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization (BSEC) led to several studies focusing on the Black Sea as an emerging region (Maior and Mihaela 2005; Cornell et al, 2006). Finally, the Caspian region also emerged as a new region where the main interest was centred on the hydrocarbon issues ( Jaffe and Olcott 2000). In recent years, however, the South Caucasus emerged as a unit of analysis although its regionness has continued to be questioned. The complex and historical enmities have presented as significant obstacles in the creation of “regional cohesion and awareness” (German 2012).

EU foreign policy towards the region has also been an important topic of study (Delcour 2011). Especially after the initiation of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) the studies focusing on EU policy towards the region as well as the responses of regional countries, including the issue of Europeanization have been studied. There has been a special emphasis on EU’s role in conflict resolution in the South Caucasus, where it is generally argued to play quite limited role (German 2007; Tocci 2007).

This edited volume intends to make a modest contribution to the academic literature on the South Caucasus by exploring the significance of regional developments in three areas for the study of regions and regionalisms in Europe. Firstly, this edited volume explores the South Caucasus in terms of its internal diversity, complexity and dilemmas. These are striking characteristics of the South Caucasus region since unlike most of the other sub-regions of the Wider Europe, the South Caucasus is the smallest sub-region with such big internal diversities, complexities and dilemmas

Another important characteristic of the South Caucasus stems from the place of this region in Europe. Although the European character of the region is not disputed, the process of Europeanization is highly contested in the realm of politics and the academic literature. The study of the Europeanization process in the South Caucasus could contribute to the literature in a modest way.

Last but not least, the character of the South Caucasus as a region which is more connected with non-European regions, such as the Middle East and Central Asia than any other sub-region of Europe could provide us with original research agendas for the study of the interactions between Europe and its neighbours in its East and South.

Overview of the chapters

This volume contains four parts. In the first part the issue of South Caucasus as a region is analysed from the perspective of the EU and the region itself. In Chapter 2, Meliha B. Altunisik discusses the evolution of the EU’s perspective on the region through the concept of region building. Although the EU had a limited interest in the region in the early post-Soviet era and focused mainly on hydrocarbon resources, in the 2000s its interests increased and diversified. As the EU developed its policy of the eastern neighbourhood, it engaged in region building in the South Caucasus in the 2000s, treating the three countries as a unit in its initiatives. Such a construction has faced several challenges from the beginning as it ignores the low level of regionness in the South Caucasus as well as previous and developing ties between these countries and other regions. Moreover, the EU’s focus on in its own internal challenges as well as Russia’s increasing activism in the region provided further limitations. EU’s response to these challenges crystallized in the Riga Summit where the EU decided to actively pursue further relations only with Georgia, a development which, Altunisik argues, point to an ‘un-making’ of the region.

In Chapter 3, Oktay F. Tanrisever examines the regionness of the South Caucasus region through the competing forms of regionalism in the South Caucasus by focusing on the dynamics and patterns of cooperation and conflict at the regional level. Tanrisever conceptualizes the South Caucasus as a ‘cusp region’ defined as ‘a region that finds itself on the edge of macro-regions’ in Wider Europe in an unstable manner. Tanrisever applies the concept of ‘cuspness’ to the study of the South Caucasus as a region for the first time. In this chapter, Tanrisever argues that the South Caucasus constitutes a “weak cusp borderland region” which is vulnerable to the pressures of core Europe or the EU as well as the Russia-led, and the Black Sea–led processes of integrative regionalisms in Wider Europe. The pulls and pushes from the competing dynamics of integrative regionalisms identified as the EU-led, Russia-led, and the Black Sea–led integrative regionalisms, undermine the capacities of regional actors in their attempts at coping with the challenges of “regional cuspness” in the South Caucasus region.

This edited volume explores the four major challenges facing the regional actors in the issue-areas of foreign policy, Europeanization, energy and security. These issues have increasingly become very problematic in recent years. On the one hand, some of the foreign policy developments in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan partially contribute to the process of Europeanization as well as regional cooperation in the areas of energy and security. On the one hand, the increasing differences in the foreign policy orientations of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan impede not only the process of Europeanization but also the realization of regional energy projects and the ensuring of regional security in the South Caucasus considerably. The edited volume explores these challenges by bringing together the contributions of well-known regional and international experts.

The second part of the book focuses on the foreign policies of three South Caucasus states. The evolution of Georgia’s foreign policy in recent years is towards more integration with the EU. Kornely Kakachia in Chapter 4 argues that post-independence foreign policy of Georgia has been characterized by instability, inexperience and lack of vision. Yet in recent years, particularly after the war in 2008 integration with the EU has emerged as the most important guiding principle of foreign policy. As such, the Association Agreement (AA) signed with the EU marked an important crossroads in the country’s emerging foreign and security policy. Looking at the debates and also public opinion polls in Georgia, Kakachia argues for a largely identity-driven foreign policy in Georgia where relations with the EU goes ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributing authors
• List of tables
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• Part I The South Caucasus as a region
• Part II Foreign Policy
• Part III Europeanization
• Part IV Energy
• Part V Security
• Index