Time to Reinforce the South Caucasus

Last week a whole series of significant meetings have taken place with the aim of strengthening security in the South Caucasus region, which has recently been shaken. A tripartite summit of the heads of Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran took place in Baku on August 8, on August 9 Vladimir Putin had a meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdogan in St Petersburg for the first time since the crisis in Russian-Turkish relations started, and finally planned talks between the presidents of Russia and Armenia were held on 10 August. Essentially, talks have been held with all the key regional players. The only thing missing was the Georgian segment, although here too there was a signal from Tbilisi: Georgia’s president Giorgi Margvelashvili proposed that a dialogue be started to resolve joint issues, noting that he was ready to have a meeting of senior officials from the two countries, “if the Russian Federation can understand that Georgia is not an enemy of Russia.” Clearly this is just an element of politeness (especially since it’s not long until parliamentary elections are held in Georgia), and the problem of recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia has not gone away, but it’s interesting that putting the issue this way, official Tbilisi does not see Russia as its enemy.

Leaving aside conspiracy theories, the experts are divided, as it were, into “pragmatists” and “politicians” in their assessment of Vladimir Putin’s “Caucasian week”. The former argue that the whole chain of meetings was mainly aimed at tackling the issue of how to implement economic projects. There was certainly plenty to discuss here: nuclear power stations in Turkey and Armenia, the 90 per cent rise in exports from Armenia to Russia, the “Turkish Stream”, the “North-South” transport corridor, the lifting of Russian sanctions against Turkey, etc.

The second point of view that of the “politicians” boils down to the fact that at a time of confrontation with the West, Moscow is looking for friends who are willing to support it in that fight. Incidentally, this point of view seems to have been to the liking of the West itself at the meetings that took place. For example, on the eve of the meeting between the presidents of Russia and Turkey the New York Times published an article headed “Putin and Erdogan, both isolated, reach out to each other”. Once the meeting had taken place and the essence of the talks had become known, the tone of the reporting in the main western media remained the same, although the motives for a thaw between the two countries go far beyond a desire to counter the EU and the USA together.

The supporters of both points of view are probably right in part, but nevertheless Vladimir Putin’s “Caucasian meetings” were probably dominated by the desire to reinforce security on Russia’s southern borders. The fact is that the talks in question took place soon after a whole string of events that could ignite the Caucasian region from within. In view of the fierce conflicts in the Middle East and the exacerbation of the situation in the Ukraine in recent weeks Russia was at risk of ending up with a zone of instability all along its south-west borders. In such a situation it would be strange, to say the least, to focus only on economic issues in talks with the key countries in the region, no matter how important they might be at this moment.

One of the key topics in the talks that have taken place was the Karabakh question. This is currently the most explosive conflict, along with the Donbass situation. We only need to recall that in April there was effectively an “unfreezing” of the confrontation between Armenia and Azerbaijan. At that time the confrontation was only stopped by Moscow’s diplomatic efforts. On June 20 Vladimir Putin brokered a meeting between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, who the media said “were at pains to show they didn’t even want to look at each other”. No serious agreements were possible in such an atmosphere, and the consequences of the increased tension between Armenia and Azerbaijan in April have made a lasting mark on the region: the recent seizure of a police station and unrest in Yerevan are part of that echo. In such a situation the process of negotiations has to be stepped up – the former status quo can no longer guarantee that the confrontation will continue to be frozen. Moreover, Russia’s image as mediator in the conflict, which was damaged by the events at the beginning of April 2016 in Karabakh, is at stake. The meetings held one after another with the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia in the past week are completely consistent with this logic of events.

In addition, the situation in Syria remains tense. The Syrian armed forces have begun an offensive with Russian support in the south-west of Aleppo – a city located on the border with the Turkish Republic. Such actions require coordination with the other external participants in the conflict, including Turkey, of course. Agreeing positions on the Syrian question was the most important and therefore the most complex issue at the meeting in St Petersburg on 9 August. It is no accident that discussion of this topic was omitted from the official part of the talks, and the parties involved preferred not to comment on Syria at the joint press conference. Differences between the parties on the person of Asad clearly remain, but after the summit it was clear from the statement by Turkey’s foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu that Moscow and Ankara had managed to minimize their differences on settling the conflict, having agreed to create some kind of “joint mechanism” on Syria in the military and diplomatic spheres and with regard to special services. The details of the agreements were not known – the relevant agencies of the two countries continued working on this mechanism after the bilateral meeting. That was on one hand. On the other hand, the situation in the Turkish Republic itself is far from stable. The internal political crisis could lead to a worsening of civil conflict, and this means Ankara cannot allow itself a protracted confrontation with Russia. This is just as important a reason for improving Russian-Turkish dialogue as the difficulties in mutual understanding with the USA and the EU.

Nevertheless, economic issues have played a far from secondary role in the meetings that have taken place. The point is that the talks discussed, and in some cases “rebooted”, large-scale infrastructure projects, although the financial benefit of such projects is far from obvious at this stage. For example, one of the economic projects on which the summit of Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran’s leaders focused was the North-South transport corridor, but for this project to work effectively major investment is required on the part of Azerbaijan and especially Iran, where goods are predominantly transported by road. A complicated situation is also developing around the relaunch of the Akkuyu nuclear power station project. At his meeting in St Petersburg with Vladimir Putin, Recep Erdogan promised to give the power station strategic investment status with the relevant privileges for its construction, but experts believe that in many ways the project is not in Russia’s economic interests. Moscow nevertheless supports the construction of these facilities. Infrastructure projects traditionally fulfil not only a purely economic function but also work to bring countries closer together politically and to strengthen regional security.

This is not to say that economics, which in this case is playing an auxiliary role, should consequently end up in an entirely subordinate position, but there is a risk of this – the partners do not forget their own economic interests. Incidentally, literally a few days after this series of meetings Iran essentially stated its willingness to step up its competition with Russia in the Turkish and EU gas markets.