No abstract

The Georgian war was Russia's first external war since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This paper aims to determine the factors behind Russia's invasion of Georgia using power transition theory. This theory presents the power transition and dissatisfaction of emerging challenger states as preconditions of hegemonic war. Yet, these are not enough to explain the Georgian war, because Russia avoided a direct clash with the US and invaded the US-backed Georgia instead. Therefore, this paper argues that power transition theory should be extended by adding opportunity structure that shows the costs and benefits of making war. The new conceptual framework has some practical relevance. There is every sign that a possible replay of the Georgian war model might occur in Ukraine and the Baltic states, which have similar conditions, like an antagonistic relationship with Russia and a high Russian minority population in their territory. A possible replay of the Georgian war model depends on the opportunity structure in other former Soviet states. The Crimea, with the large Russian Black Sea fleet, is populated predominantly by ethnic Russians and would offer Russia a pretext to come to their defense in some future crisis.

No abstract

This article examines the main dynamics of the Russia-Iran alignment and discusses its significance in Russian foreign policy and Russia’s balancing strategy against the US. In the Middle East, Russia does not embrace an individual state as a constant ally and seeks pragmatic cooperation with all regional states. Despite maintaining close cooperation with Tehran since the 1990s, Russia has avoided building long-term and binding alliance arrangements with Iran. Instead, Moscow has utilized its relations with Iran as bargaining chip vis-à-vis the US and distanced itself from Tehran whenever there has been a rapprochement in Russian-American relations. In this regard, the Russia-Iran alignment is not an example of ‘hard balancing’ that draws on military alliance formation and mutual arms build-up and aims at confrontation with an adversary. It can be best identified as a ‘soft balancing’ initiative that relies on less confrontational methods such as informal alignments and limited arms build-up and aims to restrain the threatening behavior of a rival state. Another significant limitation of Russia-Iran alignment is that Russia is unwilling to risk its relations with Israel and Gulf states for the sake of Iran considering the cooperation potential with those states in foreign policy, energy, and arms industry.

Yazar bu çalışmanın tüm süreçlerinin araştırma ve yayın etiğine uygun olduğunu, etik kurallara ve bilimsel atıf gösterme ilkelerine uyduğunu beyan etmiştir. Aksi bir durumda Akdeniz İİBF Dergisi sorumlu değildir.