ISSN 2618-9844 (Online version)
ISSN 1810-6374 (Print version)
Four years ago, Armenia’s failure to sign the EU Association Agreement was an early indication of the impending Ukraine crisis.
The summit of the presidents of Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran will undoubtedly adjust the process of reformatting in the Middle East region.
A key continent, Eurasia, could become a continent of cooperation in the 21st century.
On Wednesday, October 11, a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council takes place in Sochi with the participation of the presidents of Eurasian Economic Union countries.
The EU must engage prudently with its Eastern European neighbors to encourage progress toward rules-based democratic governance while supporting their sovereignty in their dealings with Russia.
While only recently the West’s dominance looked absolute, now the roles of the teacher and the student, the leader and the straggler are no longer definitely assigned. Сompetition in interpreting reality, defining meanings, and translating values will increasingly grow.
The oil- and gas-rich states of the Caspian Sea basin—Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan—registered phenomenal growth throughout most of the 2000s. However, the heady days of resource-fueled development now appear to be over, and local governments are suddenly struggling to overcome massive budget deficits, devalued currencies, and overall economic stagnation.
Despite its geographical remoteness from conflicts involving radical Islamists, the Russian Far East is not completely isolated from them. Preventing the growth of extremist threats in the Russian Far East and the Asia-Pacific region as a whole requires joint efforts of all states concerned.
The migration corridor that has formed between the countries of Central Asia and Russia is one of the largest and most stable in Eurasia and the world.
Numerous international competitors see the use of force as a solution to their challenges. In relations between Russia and NATO, China and Japan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, power plays unfold with unpredictable repercussions.
Last year’s incident with the Russian Su-24 jet instantly changed the very nature of Russia-Turkey relations. What used to be viewed by the leaders of the two countries as a strategic partnership was replaced with harsh confrontation.
Due in part to the legacy of the Soviet system, in which the state allocated housing to families and individuals on the basis of non-market principles, and in part to endemic housing shortages in the post-Soviet era, housing concerns are an important potential source of political grievances in post-Soviet states.
Russia’s active involvement in the Syrian conflict and, specifically, employment of its Caspian Flotilla for destroying Islamic State targets, has changed the balance of power in the Caspian region significantly, and highlighted the need to re-examine its legal status and security.
“Urban boosterism” is defined as the active promotion of a city, and it typically involves large-scale urban development schemes, including constructing iconic new buildings, revamping local infrastructure, and creating a new “image” for the city.
Armenia, opting for self-restraint of its own accord, minimized its risks and losses. As to whether the Armenian-style Finlandization can be an example for other former Soviet republics would depend not only on their own choice.
Yerevan would have shown greater interest in the problems of security in Central Asia if it were certain that its Central Asian allies would take symmetrical and proportionate actions in the Karabakh conflict.
Hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan were terminated in 1994, but the sides remain divided over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku argues, with reliance on European practices, that the sole way towards reconciliation between the two neighboring peoples lies in the self-determination of Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan and the highest degree of self-government granted to it.
The main and only goal of conventional deterrence, used by the Armenian parties, and political containment, owed largely to the positions of the international community and influential external actors, is to maintain stability and fragile peace in the zone of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
After gaining independence, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan have been plagued by wars and ethnic conflicts, they have lost transport links, and government agencies have collapsed. Yet the respective political regimes have had diverse fates: although the starting points and international situation were similar when they launched their policies, the outcome is fairly different.
For many centuries, rivalry among Turkey, Iran and Russia determined the geopolitics of the South Caucasus. In the 19th and 20th centuries other actors asserted their presence, too.
Russia has made a concerted effort since the fall of 2010 to break the stalemate in Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region.
Despite eight years of horrific conflict, and over 500,000 thousand deaths, a stable peace in Syria remains elusive.
The presidents of Russia, Turkey and Iran convened for their fourth summit on Syria in Russia’s southern resort city of Sochi on Feb. 14. Earlier leaders of the “guarantor countries” of the Astana process met in November 2017 in Sochi, in April 2018 in Ankara and in September 2018 in Tehran.
Anyone who has at least some idea about the theory of international relations should remember the oft-quoted formula put forward by the father of British geopolitics, Halford Mackinder: “Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world.”
Relations between the US and Russia are at their worst since the end of the Cold War, China and the US have tense relations, India and China are trying to stabilize relations after a period of acrimony. The major powers appear today to be like the unhappy families in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: ‘Each unhappy family (major power in this case) is unhappy in its own way.’
Freedom of movement and freedom to choose a place of residence can be ranked among the category of freedoms which, as part of the Global Commons, have been restricted to varying degrees at the level of communities, states, and international associations.