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71. China’s Activities in the South Caucasus: Issue 3, 24.08.2020 – 20.09.2020

Author:
Medea Ivaniadze
Publication Date:
09-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Georgian Foundation for Strategic International Studies -GFSIS
Abstract:
The digest covers China’s political, diplomatic, economic and other activities in the South Caucasus region and relations between China and the South Caucasus countries. It relies on a wide variety of sources, including the Chinese media. It is worth noting that the Chinese media is controlled by the Communist Party of China (according to the World Press Freedom Index China is nearly at the bottom of the list and ranks 177th out of 180 countries).
Topic:
Diplomacy, Economics, Politics, and Media
Political Geography:
China, Caucasus, Georgia, and South Caucasus

72. China’s Activities in the South Caucasus: Issue 4, 21.09.2020 – 18.10.2020

Author:
Medea Ivaniadze
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Georgian Foundation for Strategic International Studies -GFSIS
Abstract:
The digest covers China’s political, diplomatic, economic and other activities in the South Caucasus region and relations between China and the South Caucasus countries. It relies on a wide variety of sources, including the Chinese media. It is worth noting that the Chinese media is controlled by the Communist Party of China (according to the World Press Freedom Index China is nearly at the bottom of the list and ranks 177th out of 180 countries)
Topic:
Diplomacy, Economics, Politics, and Media
Political Geography:
China, Caucasus, Georgia, and South Caucasus

73. Security Review: Nagorno-Karabakh War Consequences

Author:
David Batashvili, Giorgio Bilanishvili, and Zurab Batiashvili
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Georgian Foundation for Strategic International Studies -GFSIS
Abstract:
The Security Review section of the Rondeli Foundation regularly covers topics analyzing the threats facing Georgia, the changes in Georgia's external security environment and the challenges to Georgia's national security policy. Recently, the developments around Karabakh have seriously changed the previous status quo in our region, precipitating new and very significant circumstances, and have brought about a new reality to the countries of the South Caucasus as well as various important players with an interest in the region. Accordingly, the Rondeli Foundation pays special attention to a complex analysis of the new reality created in the context of Georgia's national security environment. To this end, a discussion series, entitled "New Reality in the South Caucasus," was organized in a webinar format providing the interested public with the opportunity to hear the assessments of experts from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey, Iran and Russia (the discussion series is available on the Rondeli Foundation's YouTube channel and Facebook page. The current issue of the Rondeli Foundation Security Review is also entirely dedicated to the new reality created in our region. It brings together the publications of the Foundation’s researchers that look at and evaluate the current situation from different angles.
Topic:
Security, National Security, War, and Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, Iran, Turkey, Caucasus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, South Caucasus, and Nagorno-Karabakh

74. Russia’s Stony Path in the South Caucasus

Author:
Philip Remler
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
As the battle between Armenia and Azerbaijan heats up, Russia struggles to contend with a vastly more complicated landscape in the South Caucasus. Since shortly after the Soviet Union’s collapse, Russia’s aims and policies in the South Caucasus have been constant, but its capabilities to project power and influence have fluctuated. Russia’s engagement with the entire Caucasus region is best characterized as a tide. Its power and influence began to ebb at the start of the Karabakh conflict—with the February 1988 massacre of Armenians in the Azerbaijani city of Sumqayit being the key galvanizing event.2 After that, the tide receded rapidly, leaving even Russian possessions in the North Caucasus without effective central control. The First Chechen War marked low tide, which only began to rise with the Second Chechen War, beginning in 1999. Until about 2004, Russia was too weak and internally divided to project power and influence in the wider Caucasus region in a meaningful way. To be sure, Russian influence was never gone completely, even during the lowest ebb of the tide. Russia still marshaled greater resources than the new states of the Caucasus could muster, and it threw its weight around. But in the 1990s, Russia did not have a unified governing apparatus, but rather a mass of competing clans among which regional actors could maneuver. For example, after the Soviet collapse, Moscow left the Russian military units in the Caucasus to their own devices. Those units served as mercenaries, arms suppliers, and logistics providers to both sides in the Karabakh conflict. It took a decade for Moscow to reassert its so-called power vertical in the Caucasus, symbolized by President Vladimir Putin’s success in 2004 in finally ousting chief of the general staff Anatoliy Kvashnin.3 Russia’s assertiveness in the region grew steadily thereafter, with sharp upticks after the 2008 war with Georgia and Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, History, Territorial Disputes, Conflict, Elites, and Soviet Union
Political Geography:
Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and South Caucasus