All the countries of the South Caucasus are in anticipation, waiting for Russiaโs withdrawal from the war with Ukraine. It is clear that it will emerge from this conflict weakened, but it is not known to what extent
Georgia
The policies of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia, as well as their foreign policy orientations, play a key role in shaping regional security and stability in the region. The problem is that the South Caucasus has never been a unified geopolitical space throughout its modern history.
In November 2023, the BESA Post-Soviet Conflict Research Program published a series of texts, half of which focus on the recent surge of anti-Semitism in the region of interest, and the rest on the recent dynamics of military supplies in the South Caucasus, Russian-Georgian relations, and the electoral behavior of Kazakhstan's Russian-speaking minority.
BESA Post-Soviet Conflicts Research Digest No. 1 (September-October 2023)
Georgia is a very important element of Russia's connection with the global South, and in informational terms, working relations with Georgia are an extremely convenient element for Russian propaganda, unlike relations with Ukraine. The main goal of the Russian Federation in its relations with Georgia is to keep Georgia in the ecosystem of Russia's survival under sanctions.
- Dr. Roie Yellinek
- May 29, 2020
- Paper No. 1588
In 1992, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, both the US and Israel established diplomatic relations with Georgia, which had been freed from the grip of the Soviet bloc and was setting out as an independent state. Between then and now, relations between the states have tightened in all areas: diplomacy, security, and trade.
- Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Mordechai Kedar
- November 14, 2018
- Paper No. 1006
On October 13, 1921, the Kars Agreement was signed in the town of Kars in eastern Anatolia (Western Armenia). This agreement redrew, in Turkeyโs favor, the Kars-Ardahan-Artvin border between Turkey and the Caucasus republics of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, an area that had been stripped from Turkey by the post-WWI Sรจvres peace treaty. While there are irredentist trends in the now independent Caucasian republics that wish to invalidate the Turkish claim, they are being restrained by present day realities.
- Emil Avdaliani
- November 2, 2017
- Paper No. 632
One might be excused for believing the South Caucasus to be of little interest to Israel, as it does not border the Jewish state and hosts several intractable conflicts. But Israel has unique interests in each of the three component South Caucasus countries โ interests that have only grown as Iranโs influence has expanded following the lifting of sanctions in 2016.