The American and European directions of Azerbaijan's foreign policy and their impact on the Caspian region in 2003-2019.

Abstract

The object of the study is the international relations of Azerbaijan in the XXI century. The subject of the study is the North American and European directions of the foreign policy of the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2003-2019. The author dwells in detail on the interaction of Azerbaijan with the United States of America and the European Union within the specified chronological framework. The greatest attention is paid to bilateral relations, as well as partnership within the framework of various international projects. This perspective allows us to consider Azerbaijan as one of the main keys of access to the Caspian region for the United States and the EU, which have considered the region as strategically important since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The research methods are content analysis, discourse analysis and historical research methods. The choice of chronological framework is due to the fact that 2003 is the year of the beginning of the presidency of Ilham Aliyev. In 2019, Azerbaijan, together with the whole world, entered a pandemic, which marked the transition to the transformation of almost all spheres of life. However, apart from the pandemic, the Karabakh crisis has become another event in the life of the state, the significance of which has yet to be studied. The scientific novelty of the study is that the foreign policy activity of the Republic of Azerbaijan is reflected quite briefly in Russian historiography. The main attention of researchers, as a rule, is paid to the relations between Baku and other actors in the South Caucasus and the Caspian region, however, it should be noted that the US and the EU had a great influence on the political climate of the entire post-Soviet space and the Caspian Sea was no exception. The main conclusion of the author is that the influence of the West reached its apogee in the middle of the "noughties", but then, for various reasons, its curtailment followed. It is also worth noting the multi-vector approach that allowed Azerbaijan to strengthen its position in the international arena at the beginning of the XXI century, which helped Baku to overcome the Karabakh crisis relatively painlessly.