The West is Failing in the South Caucasus
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 unsettled the international order considerably by chilling the world economy and disrupting trends in European politics. The internal dynamics fostered by this created political rifts that threaten current governments throughout the world, and prompted some leaders to take advantage of the instability to act increasingly hostile, threatening democracy and international stability.
No region has felt this instability more than the South Caucasus, a small region to the southeast of the Black Sea containing Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Though these countries are relatively small in size and population and have lived generally on the periphery of geopolitics, Russia’s attack on Ukraine has amplified internal political issues in the region and jeopardized security. Moreover, it has made these small countries far more geopolitically relevant, especially in terms of their importance to Europe and the U.S.
Of these three countries, Georgia and Armenia are both nascent democracies, and each faces internal dilemmas of with whom to align. Oil-rich Azerbaijan consistently ranks among the least-free states in the world, but maintains close ties with Europe because of fuel exports, and has especially close ties with Turkey, a member of NATO. Azerbaijan and Armenia have been involved in an off-and-on conflict since 1988 over the region of Nagorno Karabakh, also known as Artsakh. At issue are the self-determination rights of the ethnic-Armenian majority, which had been controlled by Azerbaijan as part of the Soviet empire. During the Soviet breakup, disputes over the enclave, which is roughly the size of Rhode Island, built and exploded in a savage war, which ended in Armenian victory and the de facto independence of Nagorno Karabakh. After decades of intermittent border clashes, another conflagration flared in 2020, in which Azerbaijan, having grown much stronger than Armenia since 1988, made up for territorial losses, expanding its territory and grip over the autonomous region.
Despite Russia’s promises to maintain peace and secure borders, during the winter of 2023, Azerbaijan blockaded the only road connecting Armenia to Nagorno Karabakh, attempting to leverage the small region into renouncing its claims to self-determination. The road, known as the Lachin Corridor, was supposed to be under the protection of the Russian peacekeeping force. Azerbaijani state vehicles and humanitarian aid can pass through, but Azerbaijan has also been intermittently shutting down electricity and gas during the winter months in an effort to harass the Armenians.
While Armenia is not without some share of blame, the aggressor, at least in the past three years, has been Azerbaijan. Russia has pledged to maintain peace in the region, but has failed on multiple occasions to do so. Armenia is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) alongside Russia, so Azerbaijani leaders often decry Armenia as a Russian puppet state. This argument has been echoed in American politics as well, though many Armenians feel abandoned by Russia, with whom they aligned on the presumption of security.
While being critical of Armenia’s ties to Moscow, Azerbaijan, ironically, is also very close with the Kremlin leadership. Though it does not have a military alliance, Azerbaijanis see themselves as a close partner and ally of the Russians.
Some analysts theorize that Russia has allowed Azerbaijan to escalate the conflict in response to Armenia’s overtures towards the West, as most of the recent aggressions have come in the aftermath of Armenia’s change in government. In 2018, Armenia had a democratic revolution that overthrew quasi-strongman Serzh Sargsyan and instilled longtime opposition member and activist Nikol Pashinyan as Prime Minister. Under Sargsyan’s leadership, there had been regular border clashes with Azerbaijan, but the 2020 war, which led to thousands of casualties on each side, was unprecedented. Within the Armenian government, Pashinyan has remained at odds with Sargsyan and his followers, with the debates largely being over peace talks with Azerbaijan. Since 2020, it has not been uncommon to see protests and calls for Pashinyan’s resignation over what the Armenian population saw as his timid handling of the conflict.
If Pashinyan were to be ousted, Armenian politics would likely revert to a situation like that of before the revolution, where Armenia could fall back into Russia’s sphere, while democratic freedoms, such as the free press, are attacked. As such, larger states with interests in the region, such as the European Union (led in this issue by France) and the United States, are stakeholders in Armenian democracy through their role in peace efforts as chairs of the OSCE Minsk group, the leading intergovernmental body in the peace process. However, their inability to properly address the conflict head-on for economic and political reasons has led to imbalanced peace negotiations that are skewed in Azerbaijan’s favor.
Azerbaijan’s relationship to the EU has improved since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as Europe has needed to find alternative suppliers of oil and gas, of which Azerbaijan is a significant exporter. This dilemma faced by the EU is one that has led to much debate, and their decision was not easy, but faced with the sudden boycott on Russian fossil fuels, Europe has made the expedient choice to support Azerbaijan’s belligerent dictatorship at the expense of Armenia’s young democracy with European ambitions. This runs the risk of setting a dangerous precedent for other young democracies who wish to work with the EU. The EU has made it clear that they prioritize democracy as a value, but leniency with member countries such as Hungary and neighbors like Turkey, as well as their inability to protect democracy in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. If promoting and protecting democracy were truly important, the EU has not done enough to protect it, and the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict proves this. To make matters worse, there are concerns that Azerbaijan is being used by Russia to circumvent the sanctions it faces for its attack on Ukraine. Azerbaijan is a large importer of Russian gas, and has increased its imports since the start of the war in an effort to meet growing European needs. The EU has called on Armenia and Azerbaijan to resolve the conflict and have sent delegates to assist, but their refusal to identify an aggressor and rather engage in false balances of the two states has certainly reduced the chance for fair and honest peace negotiations.
The United States, like the EU, has, through failure to acknowledge an aggressor, shown to be unwilling to take sides in the conflict, though the reasoning is due less to economic necessity so much as alignment issues. The complicated network of alliances that surround the two caucasian countries has led to significant lobbying in Washington in favor of Azerbaijani alignment. Particularly, Armenia’s alliances with neighboring Iran and Russia have made some policymakers and lobbyists look very myopically at the region, usually through the cold-war lens of unidirectional alignment. The reality is that international ties are far more nuanced outside of Western Europe, as states do not simply position themselves with one power, but with several. Armenia and Azerbaijan both have strong ties with Russia and Europe, and while Armenia has allied themselves with Iran in a bid to maintain security, Azerbaijan has close ties with Israel, Turkey, and Pakistan. If one looks at the conflict through the lens of power politics exclusively, the United States’ priorities of supporting democracies while also competing with Iran and Russia seem at odds with taking a side.
Under the Biden administration, the United States has become much more supportive of the Armenian cause, including Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Yerevan in September of 2022. Similarly, Senate hearings in 2022 questioned the United States’ role in arming Azerbaijan, and Senator Bob Menendez, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been very active in criticizing US-Azerbaijani cooperation. To many, this is seen as a very positive shift, but the Nagorno Karabakh is not likely to get resolved by the United States shifting their political rhetoric, but rather by functional progress towards meaningful conflict resolution. Peace likely will not be achieved in the region without proper guarantees of self-determination in Nagorno-Karabakh, which would require a complete overhaul of the peacekeeping and conflict resolution institutions currently active in the process. This means a more hands-on approach might be necessary, which would not only be a logistical challenge, but would also require confrontation with the Russian-led peace efforts that are currently in place.
Georgia, once a promising young democracy with European aspirations, is now making concerning moves towards authoritarianism and Russian alignment. Led by Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili and the Georgian Dream party, the parliament’s recent proposal to mimic Russia’s ‘foreign agent’ laws gives authorities more freedom to prosecute suspected foreign operatives. It also functionally limits press freedom and the activities democratic institutions. This has been met with large protests throughout the country, which has prompted a strong government crackdown, leading to arrests and violent suppression from the police. The parliament has since said they would strike the proposal down, but the experience has left many Georgian citizens wary of their representatives’ intentions. Former President and advocate for western ties Mikheil Saakashvili is currently being held in prison, despite possibly needing to be relocated for medical attention. The current administration is engaging in the suppression of Georgian opposition, a worrisome trend that bodes poorly for the EU and United States’ involvement in the region.
In an era in which western democracy is considered by many to be at risk, one can look at the South Caucasus and argue that the policy-makers who are concerned about democratic backsliding are not doing enough to stop it from happening. Armenia and Georgia are two of Europe’s youngest democracies, but both are facing crises that threaten their democratic institutions. In the case of Armenia, by chairing the OSCE Minsk group, France and the United States are stakeholders in the fate of the country, and their refusal to properly address the issue in Nogoro Karavat threatens their chances of maintaining a democratic ally in the region. As current peacekeeping efforts led by Russia are failing, with a blockade and increasingly common ceasefire violations threatening the self-determination rights of Armenian citizens of Nagorno Karabakh, the western powers have an opportunity to rewrite their role in the region. Both the United States and France have been increasing their cooperation with Armenia, but action and rhetoric are different, and the proper course of action to create fair peace processes that protects democracy and self-determination rights is a much larger undertaking. Azerbaijan has and will continue to act as the aggressor should they face no consequences, and the economic leverage they hold has prevented any recent peace talk from being fair. Affording the Republic of Artsakh a seat at the peace table is also a necessity, as it is their self determination over which everything has been fought.
Georgian democracy also remains under threat, and its bid for membership in the EU, once considered inevitable, now appears to be slipping away, due to the unpopular actions of elected officials. The West has failed to protect democracy in the South Caucasus, an area of growing geopolitical importance, and must make sacrifices in the forms of hands-on involvement in peace talks and more economic assistance to the region in order to maintain the democracy and sovereignty of two young states.