Azerbaijan was extraordinarily successful in its foreign relations last year, and many have suggested that there is every reason for it to be even more so in 2008. While that is possible, both the successes it had in 2007 and the specific features of the international landscape of the coming year mean that Baku now faces far greater challenges ahead than it did in the past, challenges that if met will boost Azerbaijan into a new and higher place among the countries of the world but if not recognized and acted upon could easily call into question much of what it has achieved. ...

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Azerbaijan had a distinct advantage compared to most of the other “new” states when it came to developing its foreign policies. It could look back to the first Azerbaijan republic of 1918-1920 for a model of how they should proceed, something many of its leaders and people did because to an uncanny degree, post-Soviet Azerbaijan faced many of the same challenges and opportunities that republic faced during its brief existence more than 70 years earlier. Indeed, Azerbaijan’s post-Soviet leaders have been explicit about the impa...

Ever since Azerbaijan regained its independence in 1991, there has been an intense debate among scholars, officials and ordinary Azerbaijanis over how the country should define itself.  And while such discussions are taking place in other former Soviet republics, those in Azerbaijan have been particularly intense, especially because there is a widespread consensus in Baku that how Azerbaijan defines itself will determine what kind of a foreign policy it pursues.   Consequently, a brief review of the current state of this debate is important both intellectually and politically. ...