The Critical but Perilous Caucasus

Deadlocked Conflicts

In addition to the war in Chechnya that destabilizes the entire region, three other ethnic conflicts in the Caucasus—Georgia’s conflicts with its South Ossetian and Abkhazian minorities and Armenia’s war with Azerbaijan over the latter’s Nagorno-Karabakh region—remain deadlocked. The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict is by far the most threatening, since it involves two independent states and could potentially have larger humanitarian and regional ramifications.

Close to 1 million Azeris became

Economic Recession

The regional economic recession that began with ethnic conflicts in the late 1980s was exacerbated by the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Poverty and unemployment are rampant, and government officials’ salaries are ridiculously low (a deputy minister makes $200 a month), creating a black market economy and feeding corruption. The region’s health and education systems, which functioned reasonably well in Soviet times, are decaying rapidly. Income gaps are widening as a small wealthy class

Russia and Other Regional Players

The international environment surrounding the Caucasus has made the region a focal point for post–Cold War geopolitical rivalry. For much of their history before Russia’s final conquest of the region in the early nineteenth century, the Caucasian countries formed a zone of competition and conflict among the Russian, Ottoman, and Persian empires, all of which, in their modern forms retain important interests in the region today. Turkey is primarily interested in trade, commerce, Caspian oil and

The United States and the eu

The United States and the eu are relatively new actors on the scene, trying both to deal with the social and political complexities of these new countries and agree on their place in the Eurasian geopolitical framework. To date, the aim has mainly been to assure that the South Caucasus does not become the sphere of influence of a hostile power and to open it to trade and investment. Accordingly, both have provided significant amounts of economic, technical, and humanitarian assistance to the

U.S.-eu Cooperation

The United States and the eu share virtually identical goals and objectives in the Caucasus. With the many other issues threatening to weaken U.S.-European ties, cooperation between the two in the Caucasus could demonstrate the considerable scope for positive engagement as well. This cooperation could be built around four elements: more fully involving the Caucasus countries in the war on terror, given their location and Azerbaijan’s being a moderate, secular Islamic country; encouraging the