Stephen Blank, Prof.

Strategic Study Institute

US Army War College 

 

The Russo-Georgian war of August 2008 will have significant repercussions for the entire Caucasus.  Moscow’s objectives are already clear.  It will annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia, thus violating the 1975 Helsinki treaty and ripping apart the post-Cold War settlement based on the indivisibility of European security.  It will deprive Georgia of its economic and self-defense capacity and destroy Georgia’s civilian infrastructure and economy.  Meanwhile its call to indict Georgian President Saakashvili for war crimes and refusal to negotiate with him or adhere to the cease-fire terms strongly suggest that Russia will continue occupying Georgia until he is deposed.  Obviously Moscow intends to create a new Georgia that will be a Russian satellite and renounce its Westernizing ambitions.  

Russia will also seek to deter investors and financiers from supporting the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline and portray it as a bad investment risk.  Should this pipeline plus the Baku-Erzerum pipeline for gas fail, EU hopes for a Nabucco pipeline will wither with them and Russia will then be the exclusive gas supplier from the CIS to Europe.  Then it can monopolize Caspian energy flows to Europe and use that power and those revenues to corrupt and subvert European political institutions peacefully thus establishing its primacy in Europe.  But the implications for Azerbaijan in that case are enormous.  Russia has already begun to claim that the BTC pipeline is a bad risk and has attempted to bomb it, albeit unsuccessfully.  Therefore as a direct result of this war we should expect pressure against Azerbaijan and other CIS governments to subordinate themselves to Moscow’s dictates, cease their flirtations with the West, and let Russia gradually take over their energy and other key economic sectors.  

 

Russia will then become more than just the sole Ordnungsmacht in the Caucasus.  It can then inhibit any moves towards democratization there.  Thus Georgia’s defeat puts the rest of the CIS at risk as well because Georgia is and has been the most prominent example of the West’s project to promote democracy, liberal capitalism, free markets, and security in the Caucasus and the former Soviet Union.  Thus Western success or failure will have definite reverberations throughout the CIS, including Russia.  Georgia’s defeat opens the way to sustained Russian pressure against Baku with reference to its inclinations towards partnership with NATO, the possibility of democratic reforms in Azerbaijan, and its being the exception to Russia’s monopoly of Caspian basin energy pipelines to Europe.

 

Due to Georgia’s defeat in this war Azerbaijan’s effective independence is now menaced by the threat of more direct and stronger Russian pressure in all areas of policy.  Neither can Azerbaijan count on foreign support.  NATO and the EU’s responses to Russia’s aggression (the evidence being overwhelming that the war was a Russian provocation from start to finish) have shown them to be what Jan Techau has called a “coalition of the impotent.”  If this is the case with regard to Georgia which was the symbol of the Western project in the Caucasus, support for Azerbaijan against Russian pressure will probably be considerably less.  Neither can Baku truly count on Ankara.  That government, which has had excellent ties to Georgia and has possessed a long-standing strategic interest in the stability and security of Georgia and Azerbaijan, merely, and somewhat inexplicably, called for a new regional security framework which it could join so that it would not be left out of a new potentially Russian-dominated Caucasus.  That response is clearly a case of too little too late and cannot give anyone a sense of security based on Turkey’s support for it.  

 

Neither can Armenia count on Russia as Russian bombs destroyed the railway to Georgia, Armenia’s sole railway to the outside world.  Likewise, the blockade of Georgian ports and the occupation of Poti impede, if they do not block entirely, Armenia’s maritime trade with the rest of he world.  Beyond that we may safely assume that the CFE treaty is dead, a fact that has profound consequences for the entire Caucasus as nothing now stands in the way of Moscow further militarizing the region to achieve an overwhelming  local superiority with which to overawe local governments.  Similarly in view of the currently blocked status of peace talks regarding Nagorno-Karabakh, we can also postulate that the Minsk process led by Russia, France, and the United States is also dead.  Russo-American cooperation will not occur at least till a new administration takes power in the United States.  And even if it does occur it will not be on this issue given Russia’s record in the Caucasus.

 

These facts suggest as well the danger of not moving forward on Nagorno-Karabakh.  These so called frozen conflicts are actually quite dynamic and could easily spiral out of control as we have now seen.  Moreover, they provide excellent justifications for foreign powers to intervene with deleterious effects in the political life of the smaller and embattled countries.  The crisis and war with Georgia suggests that for both Baku and Yerevan the time has possibly come to resume their bilateral negotiations eliminating all the outside parties, in order to reach an agreement more quickly.  Previous negotiations have clearly led to agreements between both parties on several key points and perhaps the looming common danger to both governments might galvanize them to approach each other again free of outside interference.  In 2005, this author suggested a kind of grand bargain whereby Turkey, in return for EU membership, might open its borders to Armenia and end the blockade that costs Armenia up to 15% of its annual GDP.  In return for this Yerevan could make substantive concessions on the remaining outstanding issues in the negotiations over Nagorno-Karabakh, leading as well to Azerbaijani reciprocity.  Certainly a genuine and workable agreement with Turkish backing, and possibly European support as well, would go far to eliminate the conflict that renders both Armenia and Azerbaijan permanently vulnerable to Russian pressure.  Of course, that pressure will never go away given Russia’s proximity and the imbalance of power between it and the other stats in the Caucasus.  But under the circumstances, a policy that reduces the likelihood of an unending conflict with Armenia that gives Russia ample opportunities for interfering with both states’ politics seems to be the best alternative.  Otherwise Azerbaijan will be left to face Moscow directly without any certainty that wavering and even unreliable partners can help it when its crisis comes.  And if this conflict is left unresolved, one thing we can be sure of is that this crisis will come sooner rather than later.

* The views expressed in this article do not in any way represent those of the US Army, Defense Department, or the US Government.