Transcaucasian Boundaries

John Wright, Richard Schofield, Suzanne Goldenberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781135368494
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Transcaucasian boundaries" provides the first insights into the geopolitical dynamics in this ethnically diverse and turbulent region of the former Soviet Union. The interplay between the former controlling powers of Iran, Turkey and Russia is examined, and the conflicts in Nagorno-Karabagh, Ossetia and Abkhazia are subject to expert analysis. The roles of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia are considered in detail, their relative weakness having held back the transition towards democratic free-market entities of pluralist composition. Questions of minority rights, territorial settlement and the inviolability of state borders are central to an understanding of this part of the world; these issues are manifest all too violently when combined with the nationalist forces prevalent throughout Transcaucasia. All students of geopolitics and ethnic issues will find this volume a worthwhile contribution to understanding the complex geopolitical problems of a richly diverse and fascinating region.

CHAPTER ONE
Nationalities and borders in Transcaucasia and the northern Caucasus

GEORGE JOFFÉ

Transcaucasia and the northern Caucasus—the region of the former Soviet Union bounded by the Black Sea and the Azov Sea to the west, the Caspian Sea to the east, international borders with Turkey and Iran to the south, and roughly delimited by a horizontal line drawn between the Don and the Volga rivers to the north—is a region of staggering ethnic and national complexity. There are at least 30 major ethnic groups within it, one of which, the Avars of Daghestan, can be subcategorized further into 12 different groupings. Nor do these 30 odd communities in the Caucasus live in discrete, compact geographic units; in some instances the degree of intermixing is profound.

Some groups, however, such as the Azerbaijanis, the Armenians and the Georgians, have managed to avoid such territorial discontinuity to a marked extent, a factor that has considerable political implications today. They are organized into three of the 15 former Union republics that made up the USSR and which have now become independent states. Nonetheless, all of them had large concentrations of other ethnic groups on their soils, which had received administrative attention in the past, in that they enjoyed special territorial status as autonomous republics or as autonomous provinces within the three republics.¹This was true of the Abkhazian Autonomous Republic and the South Ossetian Autonomous Province in Georgia and of the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic in Azerbaijan, from which it was separated by a strip of Armenian territory.²

The other region that had this status was the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Province in Azerbaijan, with its majority Armenian population (75.9 per cent of the total—123,076 persons—in 1979 and 76.9 per cent of the total in 1989-145, 450 persons—compared with 94.4 per cent in 1921 when its status was first declared).³ Nagorno-Karabakh saw its administrative status altered on 12 January 1989, when the Supreme Soviet decreed that it should in future be directly administered from Moscow, in an attempt to divert the growing clash over its future between Armenia and Azerbaijan. However, by 1992 it had been reoccupied by force by Armenia, and the “Lachin Strip” which separates it from Armenia was also occupied, thus effectively integrating it into Armenian territory. Despite a consequent political crisis in Baku, accompanied by a change in government there, Azerbaijan has found it extremely difficult to reverse this Armenian fait accompli, and the issue has threatened to widen into a generalized ideological and cultural confrontation between the two republics, the one Christian and the other Muslim.

The Nagorno-Karabakh crisis is not the only confrontation that has developed inside the Caucasus and Transcaucasia region since perestroika and the dissolution of the USSR in late 1991. This has been particularly the case in the Republic of Georgia, where, in addition to a struggle for control of the republic itself, there has also been an intensifying crisis in Abkhazia and in South Ossetia, the old South Ossetian Autonomous Province which, in terms of sovereign control, was originally part of Georgia. Independence was declared in September 1990, as part of a process designed to lead to union with North Ossetia, which is part of the Russian Federation. This was rejected by the Georgian Supreme Soviet in December 1990. This, in turn, caused an intervention from Moscow in early 1991 to force out Georgian armed units and irregulars. Conflict continued until the ousting of the former Georgian president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, in January 1992, when fighting died down.⁴ Fighting erupted once again in mid-1992, as Georgian irregulars bombarded the capital, Tskhinvali, despite attempts by the new Georgian government and its president, Eduard Shevardnadze (the former Soviet Foreign Minister) to prevent further conflict.⁵Eventually, Russia and Georgia were able to impose a peace-keeping force on the region, as an interim solution designed to lead to the emergence of Ossetia as a separate political entity. Since then, a far more serious crisis has exploded in Abkhazia, with open fighting between Abkhazian nationalists, backed by a federation of minorities in the northern Caucasus, and the Georgian Government.

The remaining minorities in the northern Caucasus are all within the Russian Federation, which now shares a common border with Azerbaijan and Georgia. However, the ethnic complexity of this region long ago per suaded the Soviet authorities that a degree of delegation of administrative responsibility would be necessary. As a result, a series of seven autonomous republics and provinces was created in the northern Caucasus: the Kalmyk, the Chechen-Ingush, the Kabardino-Balkar, the North Ossetian and the Daghestan autonomous republics, and the Adyghei and Karachai-Cherkess autonomous provinces. In virtually all of them, secessionist and independence movements have now appeared, often accompanied by violence. Even though the northern Caucasian federation of minority groups was formed in November 1991, it was quite unable to influence these potential conflicts in the short term, although its longer-term prospects might well be more encouraging.⁶

Against this complex ethnic, administrative and political background, the issue of identifying those factors that would facilitate a pacific redefinition of the future political structures for the region seems impossibly difficult. As one commentator has pointed out, there are four main influences at play: nationalism and tribalism, territorial claims, Islam and anti-Russian sentiment.⁷ Two of these factors—Islam and anti-Russian sentiment could have a partially unifying effect. However, the other two will continue to be profoundly divisive and will tax negotiators in trying to formulate some underlying set of principles around which stable political structures could be created. Amongst the independent republics, indeed, new alignments have already begun to develop, with Muslim Azerbaijan turning against Moscow and towards Turkey and Iran, whereas Christian Armenia now sees the Russian Federation as its major foreign protector, as does Georgia, in an interesting realignment of pre-Soviet cultural identities, with new alliance patterns developing along the lines of religious identity.

This process of political reconstruction will be rendered far more difficult by the fact of economic interdependence between all parts of the former USSR This will continue into the foreseeable future, whatever political arrangements are made. Detailed statistics are available only for the new republics, but there can be little doubt that the situation for autonomous republics and provinces would demonstrate an even greater dependence on the federation, despite the generalized sentiment of hostility towards Moscow that is evident in public opinion and popular attitudes in virtually all of them. All the new republics depend on Russia for more than 50 per cent of their trade and on the other former Union republics for more than 80 per cent. Indeed, factors such as growth of national debt and consumer price inflation in all three republics have tracked similar growth patterns in Russia, even if domestic credit growth has been more restrained in Georgia and Armenia, largely because of this trade dependence. All have economies that are still heavily dependent on agriculture and in which the industrial sector is still underdeveloped. Only Armenia has an economic structure similar to that of the Russian Federation and even that is still, by Western standards, profoundly distorted towards agriculture. All of the new republics, too, have living standards significantly below that of the Russian Federation.

The simple fact is that the Russian Federation is and will continue to be dominant in the external economies of all the entities involved, whatever their final form. Also, there are, of course, potential future links with surrounding states, such as Turkey and Iran. Indeed, in early February 1992, Turkey proposed the formation of a Black Sea Council, designed to foster a free trade zone among states around the Black Sea littoral, which would include all three of the Caucasian republics, as well as the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania and Bulgaria, with the eventual objective of bringing in Greece and some, at least, of the former Yugoslav republics as well. The more immediate purpose of the proposal was to lower barriers to trade and to foster joint projects in the fields of transport, tourism and the environment, with Turkey being in a position to take the leading role and thus becoming a new regional power. Ankara has also proposed the creation of a development bank, to be capitalized at $10 million, as part of the joint venture proposals. However, Turkey’s ambitions range further afield as well and, in mid-1992, Ankara proposed aid worth $1.2 billion to Central Asia, aid that would also benefit Azerbaijan, if the plans come to fruition.⁸ However, Turkish political leaders are cautiously realistic about the very limited potential for rapid economic change in the region and clearly look to more immediate diplomatic and political, rather than economic, benefits from this proposal.

At about the same time as Turkey was proposing a Black Sea Council, Iran proposed a plan for the integration of the six new Muslim republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus into the virtually defunct Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) it shared with Turkey and Pakistan.⁹ The ultimate objective was to create a customs union or free trade zone within the ECO, as an apparent counterweight to Turkey’s Black Sea Council proposal. Indeed, Iran, despite its own serious economic plight, was the prime mover in this new plan, offering to construct infrastructure links between Central Asia and the Gulf, in the form of a new railway, in order to speed economic integration. It remains to be seen to what extent such promises will be honoured, given the parlous state of the Iranian economy. In any case, such initiatives take time to evolve and, furthermore, none of the three original member states has the economic resources or capacity that would make any or all of them a genuine alternative market or supplier to the Russian Federation. This fact alone is bound to have a profound influence on the political debate over new political structures that will eventually develop.

Nationalism and the state

The problem is that, quite apart from these practical difficulties, there are very few appropriate theoretical guidelines available to suggest how these structures should evolve. The usual political paradigm is the nation-state, the archetypal independent political structure that developed in Europe and that has since become the preferred model for the international political system. However, the nation-state concept seems quite inappropriate for a region such as the Caucasus, yet the paradox is that the populations and ethnic groups articulate their demands as if no other viable political framework is available, and in this they may well be correct, even though it is most unlikely to provide the political stability they seek.

Even the traditional view of the state is replete with problems as far as the Caucasus is concerned, whether it is defined in Weberian, Hegelian or legal terms. In international law, the state is the primordial legal personality: an entity with a defined territory, a permanent population, under the control of a government and with the capacity to engage in formal relations with other entities.¹⁰ Over its territory, a state exercises territorial sovereignty—”the exclusive right to display the activities of a state”.¹¹

Implicit in these definitions are certain basic factors relating to the legal nature of the state. First, the international legal definition of the state is concerned with the legitimate exercise of power and thus approximates to the Weberian definition of the state as an entity that monopolizes the use of legitimate violence throughout the territory concerned.¹² Secondly, the territory in question has precise limits: internationally accepted boundaries, in other words. Thus, for example, the governments of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia, as successor governments to those of the Union republics that preceded them, legitimately exercise their authority within the administrative bounds established by the former government of the USSR. They acquired their state title and their defined territorial extent through the principle of uti possidetis,¹³ whereby successor states acquire innate legitimate title to the territories administered by their predecessors.

That these states legitimately exercise their power is also implicit in the fact that their governments have been recognized, de jure or de facto, as the governments of independent states by most other governments worldwide.¹⁴They have also been able to join international organizations, such as the Conference on Co-operation and Security in Europe (CSCE), now the Organisation on Co-operation and Security in Europe (OCSE), and the United Nations, and they have begun to enter into international agreements with other states, such as Iran and Turkey. However, there is a difficulty in that governmental power in the new republics—except, perhaps, for Armenia—is not recognized as legitimate by substantial minorities of their populations. This is not a problem as far as recognition in international law is concerned, since there is a general presumption against supporting secessionist movements against accepted governments. Furthermore, there is also a general predisposition, under the Stimpson Doctrine, to reject forcible attempts to alter the existing boundaries of a state, particularly if this is done at the behest of another state, as is the case in Nagorno-Karabakh. In any case, many governments, such as the British government, accept the Estrada Doctrine and claim to recognize states, rather than governments, so the question of popular acceptance of government is irrelevant, provided it remains in control.¹⁵

To the political scientist, however, these legal niceties are not particularly helpful. Governments facing widespread popular opposition, for whatever reason, lack political legitimacy and cannot ensure stability. In some cases this is simply a consequence of the fact that the governments themselves do not correspond to the popular vision of what they should represent and they lack the commitment to be able to impose themselves or to amass sufficient popular support to legitimize themselves. They and the states they control are then inherently defective and will survive only through repression, as is the case throughout the Middle East and North Africa.¹⁶

However, political legitimacy is usually a far more profound factor, related in large measure to the sovereign exercise of power in which sovereignty is construed to be far wider than the conventional post-Westphalian view of territorial sovereignty.¹⁷ The most extreme expression of this view is contained in current views of popular sovereignty, whereby sovereignty is no longer the property of a state but of a people, in the sense in which the term is used in the United Nations Charter. Governments, then, only have sovereign power if they are legitimized through popular support, not, as...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Nationalities and borders in Transcaucasia and the northern Caucasus
• Chapter Two: Russia and Transcaucasia
• Chapter Three: Turkey, the Black Sea and Transcaucasia
• Chapter Four: Condemned to react, unable to influence: Iran and Transcaucasia
• Chapter Five: The Armenian presence in mountainous Karabakh
• Chapter Six: The republic of Azerbaijan: notes on the state borders in the past and the present
• Chapter Seven: The geopolitics of Georgia
• Chapter Eight: The Georgian/South Ossetian territorial and boundary dispute
• Chapter Nine: Abkhazia: a problem of identity and ownership