Armenia and Security Issues in the South Caucasus

Abstract

South Caucasus, or Transcaucasia, is a region noted for its instability, in both strategic and ethno-political as well as cultural aspects. Security issues in the region are cross-sectional, not only for the three primary states in the South Caucasus—Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia—but also involve the interests of adjacent countries: Russia on the north; Iran on the south; Turkey, Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Greece on the west; the Central Asian states Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan on the east. Added to this mix are the interests of the U.S. and the European Union, as well as, of course, China. As a result, the South Caucasus has been rather vulnerable to destabilizing effects from the outside. A characteristic feature of the entire region is the diversity of ethnicities, cultural traditions, and confessional identities of the population, which can at any time spark conflicts with the potential for developing into larger problems. It is to be noted, however, that the atrophy of the ideal of cultural pluralism in the South Caucasus is mainly traceable to those in political circles who are interested (for various reasons) in destabilizing the regional situation. The putative state of constant conflict in the South Caucasus is actually a rather illusory phenomenon. Despite the many cultural, ethnic, religious, linguistic, and other cleavages in the region, the South Caucasus has become home to a relatively solid community, integrating the whole variety of regional ethnic groups, both with regard to outlook and psyche as well as to many social categories, such as common social preferences, moral and behavioral standards, etc. What we see here is the establishment of the so-called “Caucasian mentality.” Therefore, no underscoring or exaggeration of the things that divide the nations of the South Caucasus—which without doubt do exist—can overshadow their unifying common features. This underlying similarity may result both from a multi-century symbiosis within the same region as well as from a shared bicentenary history within the Russian Empire and later the USSR. Even the languages of the principal nation-states of Transcaucasia, belonging as they do to the different linguistic families—Indo-European, IberoCaucasian, and Turkic—today compose a single Linguistic Union or Sprachbund. As of today, an average resident of Baku, for example, may have more in common with a Georgian or Armenian than with a Turkish Anatolian despite sharing a common language with the latter. At any rate, the so-called “civilization factor,” which more often than not is overemphasized by some authors (especially American ones) with regard to the South Caucasus, seems to be quite irrelevant. In the modern world, with all its developments and trends toward globalization,