War, Status Quo, and Peace in the South Caucasus: A Power Transition Perspective

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.

The impact of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 2020 on the perception of combat drones

“…As time went on, that race gained more and more intensity. During 1999, the completion of the Baku-Supsa and Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipelines in 2006, as well as the commissioning of the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline in the same year, enabled Azerbaijan to export its natural resources outside Russia, which led to economic empowerment in Azerbaijan (Güneylioğlu, 2017).…”

“…At the same time, it should be noted that Russia has been trying all these years to preserve the frozen conflict without the interference of the West, primarily the United States. It even actively tried to appease Azerbaijan by insisting on diplomatic negotiations that would resolve the status of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, and did not refrain from selling military weapons and military equipment to Azerbaijan, despite good relations with Armenia, a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) which is a counterpart to the NATO pact (Güneylioğlu, 2017).…”