Retying the Caucasian knot: Russia’s evolving approach to the South Caucasus
Think tank: RUSI
Author(s): Dr Neil Melvin
November 18, 2024
This report from UK think tank RUSI explores the challenge to Russia’s established position in the South Caucasus as the region undergoes significant change.
This paper explores the challenge to Russia’s established position in the South Caucasus as the region undergoes significant change. Russia and the Euro-Atlantic community now find that their reach exceeds their grasp in terms of their ability to shape the regional order in the South Caucasus. Both remain regionally influential, but their leverage to drive developments is eroding as the South Caucasus is affected by multipolar international politics.
The rise of multipolarity is being promoted by the increasing role of a broad set of external actors – most of all Turkey, Iran and China – engaging in the South Caucasus, and by strengthening links between the region and Asia, the Middle East and Central Asia, links that are supplementing the region’s established ties to the US, Europe and Russia. In this context, there is increased local agency in relation to external partnerships (reinforced by a turn to illiberal domestic politics), and waning attraction both to Russian and Euro-Atlantic integration projects.
As a result of these changes, Russia has lost its position of pre-eminence, which rested primarily on tying together its security interests with the region’s protracted conflicts. Over the past 30 years, Moscow has leveraged these conflicts to give it a central geopolitical role, which it has used to promote a regional status quo to its advantage and to create a Gordian knot of interwoven obstacles and interests to hinder efforts at Euro-Atlantic integration.
The war in Ukraine has played a part in undercutting Moscow’s position in the South Caucasus, but Russia’s long-term relative decline as new actors have entered the region, power shifts within the South Caucasus itself (notably the rise of Azerbaijan), and changing Russian regional interests are the main factors challenging Moscow’s established role.
