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31. Multipolarity is key: Assessing Azerbaijan's foreign policy

Author:
Djan Sauerborn, Bastian Matteo Scianna, and Marius Mazziotti
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Economic and Social Development (CESD)
Abstract:
This paper seeks to outline how Azerbaijan should manage the numerous foreign policy challenges it faces due to its strategic location, wealth in resources, neighbors and surrounding conflicts. As a small state, Baku should seek to balance interests and pursue a path of multipolarity, without however forfeiting a strong stance towards governments that threaten its status quo. Russia, Turkey, Iran, Israel and the West all have their interests and Azerbaijan has to become a pawn in the hands of the powerful. The resolution of the “frozen conflict” over Nagorno-Karabakh would mark a great step in the right direction, providing Baku with more leverage. The economic power of Azerbaijan gives the South Caucasian Republic a unique asset and allows Baku to play a balancing role regarding conflict prevention and conflict solution in this region which is often described as a geopolitical chessboard.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, and Multipolarity
Political Geography:
Russia, Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and South Caucasus

32. Security Threats and Risks in South Caucasus: Perceptions From the Western Black Sea

Author:
Plamen Pantev
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
Perception1 of security threats is a dynamic process determined by the outside world and the perceiver’s culture, attitudes, expectations, needs, experience and other attributes. Each interpreter, depending on her or his respective analytic point of view, subjectively defines the facts in the security realm. Values, beliefs and cognitions constitute the bulk of any perception, including about security issues. A value is a preference for one state of reality over another. A belief is a conviction that a description of reality is true, proven or known. And cognition is information derived from the environment that can be substantiated through physical evidence or perceptual observation. Cognitions are key elements in establishing perceptual systems and in changing those systems. The threat perceptual systems of the Western Black Sea countries – Bulgaria and Romania, are strongly influenced by their values, beliefs and cognitions as sovereign nations with specific geopolitical positions and interests. They are also shaped in the context of their membership in NATO, as future EU members and as US allies on whose territories would be stationed American military bases.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Geopolitics, and Risk
Political Geography:
Europe, Eurasia, South Caucasus, and Black Sea