PONARS Eurasia
  • About
    • Contact
    • Membership
      • All Members
      • Core Members
      • Collegium Members
      • Associate Members
      • About Membership
    • Ukraine Experts
    • Executive Committee
  • Policy Memos
    • List of Policy Memos
    • Submissions
  • Podcasts
  • Online Academy
  • Events
    • Past Events
  • Recommended
  • Ukraine Experts
Contacts

Address
1957 E St NW,
Washington, DC 20052

adminponars@gwu.edu
202.994.5915

NEWSLETTER
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Podcast
PONARS Eurasia
PONARS Eurasia
  • About
    • Contact
    • Membership
      • All Members
      • Core Members
      • Collegium Members
      • Associate Members
      • About Membership
    • Ukraine Experts
    • Executive Committee
  • Policy Memos
    • List of Policy Memos
    • Submissions
  • Podcasts
  • Online Academy
  • Events
    • Past Events
  • Recommended
  • Ukraine Experts
DIGITAL RESOURCES
digital resources

Bookstore 📚

Knowledge Hub

Course Syllabi

Point & Counterpoint

Policy Perspectives

RECOMMENDED
  • The Russia Program at GW (IERES)

    View
  • The Evolving Concerns of Russians after the Invasion | New Voices on Eurasia with Sasha de Vogel (March 9)

    View
  • PONARS Eurasia Spring Policy Conference (March 3)

    View
  • Ukrainathon 2023 (Feb. 24-25)

    View
  • How Putin has shrugged off unprecedented economic sanctions over Russia’s war in Ukraine – for now

    View
RSS PONARS Eurasia Podcast
  • The Putin-Xi Summit: What's New In Their Joint Communique ? February 23, 2022
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman speaks with Russian China experts Vita Spivak and Alexander Gabuev about the February meeting between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and what it may tell us about where the Russian-Chinese relationship is headed.
  • Exploring the Russian Courts' Ruling to Liquidate the Memorial Society January 28, 2022
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with scholars Kelly Smith and Benjamin Nathans about the history, achievements, and impending shutdown of the Memorial Society, Russia's oldest and most venerable civic organization, and what its imminent liquidation portends for the Russian civil society.
  • Russia's 2021 census and the Kremlin's nationalities policy [Lipman Series 2021] December 9, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with social scientist Andrey Shcherbak about the quality of the data collected in the recent population census and the goals of Vladimir Putin's government's nationalities policy
  • Active citizens of any kind are under threat [Lipman Series 2021] November 5, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Alexander Verkhovsky about the Kremlin's ever expanding toolkit against political and civic activists, journalists, and other dissidents.
  • Russia's Legislative Elections followup [Lipman Series 2021] October 4, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Tanya Lokot and Nikolay Petrov about the results of Russia’s legislative elections and about what comes next.
  • Why Is the Kremlin Nervous? [Lipman Series 2021] September 14, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Ben Noble and Nikolay Petrov about Russia’s September 17-19 legislative elections, repressive measures against electoral challengers, and whether to expect anything other than preordained results.
  • Vaccine Hesitancy in Russia, France, and the United States [Lipman Series 2021] August 31, 2021
    In this week's PONARS Eurasia Podcast episode, Maria Lipman chats with Denis Volkov, Naira Davlashyan, and Peter Slevin about why COVID-19 vaccination rates are still so low across the globe, comparing vaccine hesitant constituencies across Russia, France, and the United States.  
  • Is Russia Becoming More Soviet? [Lipman Series 2021] July 26, 2021
      In a new PONARS Eurasia Podcast episode, Maria Lipman chats with Maxim Trudolyubov about the current tightening of the Russian political sphere, asking whether or not it’s helpful to draw comparisons to the late Soviet period.
  • The Evolution of Russia's Political Regime [Lipman Series 2021] June 21, 2021
    In this week's episode of the PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Grigory Golosov and Henry Hale about the evolution of Russia's political regime, and what to expect in the lead-up to September's Duma elections.
  • Volodymyr Zelensky: Year Two [Lipman Series 2021] May 24, 2021
    In this week's episode of the PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Sergiy Kudelia and Georgiy Kasianov about Ukrainian President Zelensky's second year in office, and how he has handled the political turbulence of the past year.
  • Commentary | Комментарии

The 2012 Caspian Forum Reveals an Elusive Region’s Opportunities and Challenges

  • December 10, 2012
  • Andrey Makarychev

 

The Caspian Forum held in Istanbul clearly demonstrated the 21st century’s facets of state capability. Economic interests are only achievable within a wide framework of security, geo-political, socio-cultural, and humanitarian endeavors. This recalls soft power approaches: interdependence, spillover effects, the tricky balance between interests and values, and ultimately region-making.

Within the soft power logic, interdependent are not only countries, but also issue areas. The possession of military forces or extractive resources usually does not bring desired results. Oil and gas have to be extracted and transported through cross-border and trans-national projects. The application of military force can often result in highly negative political implications (as Russia’s diplomatic isolation regarding its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia has demonstrated). The Caucasus and the Caspian Sea region give the most convincing examples that there are no hard power solutions for situations involving ethnic conflicts or religious clashes.

This is why spillover plays crucial role as part of soft power approaches. Investments projects can foster solving security issues. As John Roberts a senior “Platts” analyst assumed, there are always normative repercussions of energy projects, as exemplified by the growing attractiveness of the culture of partnership, sustainability, transparency, social responsibility of business, etc. For example, Azerbaijan, through the Heidar Aliev Foundation, invests in projects supporting gender equality, literacy, human capital development, linguistic diversity, education, environmental protection, and more—all showing shows “with whom we are and in which direction we are going,” as a top-level public officer from Baku claimed.   

Balancing interests and values is another important point in soft power agenda. Ultimately, what the Caspian Forum discussed is not only a variety of energy projects, but also something more demanding: the prospects of this region’s integration with the Euro-Atlantic community. However, the EU normative agenda, which is usually perceived as values trumping over interests, was not very welcome at the Forum. This was evident, for example, by the complete absence of EU podium speakers, and general disinterest in the EU-sponsored Eastern Partnership program. On the contrary, speakers from the United States, United Kingdom, and NATO were the main discourse-makers. By the end of the day, the gist of the discourse became clear: countries such as Azerbaijan and Georgia are important to the West as security providers, but their domestic progress with democracy also matters.

All this has a lot to do with the model of region-making that the Caspian Forum promoted. Britain’s Lord John D. Waverley dubbed the Caspian region a “global energy power”—an appealing metaphor for inscribing it into a wider set of geo-economics and security relations. Former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates referred to a “broader Caspian region”—an elegant formula that is supposed to give floor to extra-regional actors in issues involving security and energy. A softer version was aired by Siddharth Saxena, chairman of the Cambridge Central Asia Forum, on the idea of a “greater Caspian neighborhood.”

Turkey wishes to be recognized as a Caspian country, relying on its exceptional relations with Azerbaijan. Ali Hasanov, chief of the Public Policy Department of the Presidential Administration of Azerbaijan, confessed that “we have chosen the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline route because we trust in Turkey’s support. We are a real family.” The special relationship between Azerbaijan and Turkey might indeed foster economic projects by decreasing risks and transactional costs. Yet it is not only a matter of ethnic affinity, as Levan Dolidze, the first deputy defense minister of Georgia, said, because Georgia is also  a key security partner with Turkey. Naci Koru, the deputy minister of foreign affairs of Turkey, confirmed that his government is especially interested in promoting such political triangles (e.g., Turkey–Azerbaijan–Iran and Turkey–Azerbaijan–Georgia).

By the same token, the United States has already politically supported the legitimacy of bilateral (i.e., between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan) agreements on divisions of the Caspian Sea floor even in the absence of a comprehensive agreement between the five littoral states. This is a clear challenge to Russia who deems that no external power can have a legitimate voice in decisions concerning the Caspian Sea’s resources, and that only the five bordering states can find a legal solution.

All this brought back to discussion the concept of a region as largely defined from the outside and lacking a common identity (like the Caucasus). But some of the elements of discursively shaping the “broader Caspian region” were quite visible at the Forum. Its construction presupposes that Russia and the EU play the roles of “external others”: both are partners but not indispensable elements in the emerging regional infrastructure.

Robert Gates did not even mention the EU among those top actors that have vested interests and abilities to protect them in Central Asia and the Caucasus. While Russia is excluded from regional settings mostly by political reasons, Europe is by and large portrayed merely as an association of consumer countries increasingly dependent on external energy supplies.

Two other countries are attributed the roles of “internal others.” Iran is economically important but politically troublesome, while Armenia is pushed out of the Caspian Forum discourse and features only as an occupier of Nagorno-Karabakh. If Russia thinks that Armenia is its strategic outpost in the Caucasus, this might be an illusion that comes with a high price to pay. We could be seeing Russia’s growing alienation from a regional milieu that develops beyond Russia’s control and which doesn’t take into serious consideration Russia’s voice.

All in all, political repercussions of the forming constellation of forces in this part of Eurasia abound. Some speakers referred to the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Caspian Sea as post-imperial regions, which is largely true, and carries the implication that imperial policies, often associated with Russia, would be rebutted here.

But the Silk Road, as we were reminded, was a colonial concept as well. However it sounds quite appealing. Perhaps, because it is grounded in an economic rationale and looks for an institutional basis. In this light, rethinking and even resignifying its imperial legacy can be viewed as an important element of Turkey’s soft power policy in neighboring areas. In the words of Muammer Turker, secretary general of Turkey’s National Security Council, the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire didn’t bestow long-term peace and stability for the world of Turk people. Ultimately, it is the Turkish imperial legacy—like the restoration of ancient monuments in Crimea or Bosnia-Herzegovina—that is one of the focal points for Turkey’s soft power projection.

With a final word on Russia, it is clear that Moscow faces new types of power mechanisms on its southern periphery. These have emerged from a combination of global governance tools and regional institutions. Tim Gould from the International Energy Agency is right in that Russia cannot stop these processes and many will probably end up challenging Russia’s policies (take for instance the role of Russian troops in separatist regions). Of course, Russia can continue to claim that it is NATO and the EU that are eager to deprive Russia’s neighbors of their independence, but the Kremlin’s role as the defender of sovereignties resonates less and less.

Andrey Makarychev is a Guest Professor at the Free University of Berlin, blogging for PONARS Eurasia on the Russia-EU neighborhood.

 

Related Topics
  • Makarychev
Previous Article
  • In the News | Hовости

GW Researchers Gain Northern Exposure

  • December 10, 2012
  • PONARS Eurasia
View
Next Article
  • Uncategorized

EU-Russian Border Security: Challenges, (Mis)Perceptions and Responses

  • December 10, 2012
  • PONARS Eurasia
View
You May Also Like
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

The Desire to Possess: Russia’s War for Territory

  • Irina Busygina
  • February 8, 2023
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Kyiv-Washington Relations in Times of Colossal War: The Ultimate Test of a Strategic Partnership

  • Volodymyr Dubovyk
  • January 11, 2023
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Prevailing Soviet Legacies

  • Irina Busygina and Mikhail Filippov
  • December 27, 2022
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

In Russia’s Nuclear Messaging to West and Ukraine, Putin Plays Both Bad and Good Cop

  • Simon Saradzhyan
  • December 23, 2022
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Ukraine’s Asymmetric Responses to the Russian Invasion

  • Nurlan Aliyev
  • July 28, 2022
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем
  • Territorial Conflict

Dominating Ukraine’s Sky

  • Volodymyr Dubovyk
  • March 5, 2022
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Russian Anti-War Protests and the State’s Response

  • Lauren McCarthy
  • March 4, 2022
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии

Путин и Лукашенко

  • Konstantin Sonin
  • August 29, 2020

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

PONARS Eurasia
  • About
  • Membership
  • Policy Memos
  • Recommended
  • Events
Powered by narva.io

Permissions & Citation Guidelines

Input your search keywords and press Enter.