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What the Karabakh war renewal may bring

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Author:  Story by Irakli Aladashvili, Editor-in-chief of the military analytical magazine “Arsenali”

Following the UN’s recognition of Kosovo’s independence in May this year, the process of determining the fate of the “blank-spots” in the post-Soviet space – including Nagorno-Karabakh – may accelerate.

Armenia, with its strong world lobby is likely to push a number of states towards recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence, possibly through the use of serious financial incentives. However, any large-scale attempt by Yerevan’s to gain recognition for Nagorno-Karabakh will certainly trigger a serious response by Baku. The Azeri Government’s counter measures would develop in two directions: firstly, at an official level, Baku would use all its diplomatic leverage in international organizations – the UN, the OSCE and the EU – to hinder the recognition of the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh by any world state. Secondly, there is certainly a risk that Azerbaijan may attempt to forcefully restore its control over the territories that it controlled as the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. Should this occur, the consequences for the countries of the South Caucasus would be disastrous.

Presently, Azerbaijan’s military forces - including the army, and interior and frontier armed forces - are made up of about 150,000 men, and, as Azeri politicians have declared, the Azeri state military budget exceeds the total budget of Armenia. However, the size of its army and its huge military budget do not guarantee complete victory. Officials in Baku should take into account that in any battle over Nagorno-Karabakh, it will have to face not only Karabakh Armenians, but regular Armenian army units including Russian military specialists presently serving at the Russian military bases in Armenia.

Baku has already foreseen the abovementioned problems, however the Azeri Government is worried about another important issue – if wide-scale military actions do resume in Nagorno-Karabakh and other Azeri-Armenian borders, will Tbilisi allow Russian forces pass its territory?

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Window on Eurasia

Both aspects of Russia’s ‘Nationality Problem’ remain unsolved, Moscow analyst says

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Author:  By Paul Goble

Both aspects of Russia’s “nationality problem” – the country’s relationship with the outside world and the relations among ethnic communities within its borders – remain unsolved and remain defining factors of Moscow’s policies, according to a leading Russian commentator.

In an essay posted on the Grani.ru portal yesterday, Yevgeny Ikhlov argues that the first, often not considered “a nationality problem” may be the more important. Indeed, he says, “the dilemma of the last five centuries of Russian statehood” has been about the choice between two very different definitions of the country (grani.ru/blogs/free/entries/180114.html).

On the one hand, Russia can be “a universal messianic empire” pursuing “a special path.” Or the other hand, Russia can become “an equal partner with other former parts of the Russian empire and a junior partner and student of the European civilizational dominant of the German-Romance world.”

Efforts to avoid a clear choice and to “recombine these elements,” Ikhlov says, have produced “unstable” situations. “The accelerated Europeanization of the empire under the last Romanovs and the Europeanization of the USSR under Gorbachev: both contributed to the disintegration of the country.

“The simple cause” of that outcome, the Grani writer says, “every people (every national elite) of the empire considered that it would be able to better Europeanize itself on its own.” Meanwhile, “a national state which has chosen ‘a special path’ and refuses to take part in the civilizational fields of the next order quickly is converted into a historical preserve.”

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