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AZERBAIJAN: MOUNTING PRESSURE IN THE SPACE BETWEEN
Stratfor
http://www.stratfor.com/products /premium/read_article.php?id=294762
Aug 31 2007
Summary
Azerbaijan is finding itself in a very vulnerable position at the front
line of the Russian resurgence. It also finds itself in a pressure
cooker as Russia and Iran attempt to redefine their neighborhoods.
Analysis
New Kremlin point man Sergei Naryshkin arrived in Azerbaijan for
wide-ranging talks Aug. 31 with the Azerbaijani leadership. After 17
years of working with Western powers, Baku is finding itself drawn
back into the Russian sphere of influence. Sparks really will begin to
fly as the former Soviet republic returns to its standard geopolitical
status as a (shrinking) buffer between Russia and Iran.
Azerbaijan has enthusiastically courted Western powers ever since
the Soviet breakup, seeking investment in its military and energy
industries. But it has always known that its pro-Western proclivities
could only exist at the pleasure of Moscow. Unlike Georgia to its
west, Azerbaijan shares no border with a NATO country, so Baku always
tried to tread softly (politically speaking) when the issue of Russian
preferences arose.
With Russian power now rising, Azerbaijan is adopting a radically
different tack than Georgia. Tbilisi sees the coming evolution as a
zero-sum game, and as such, its public face has turned shrill in an
attempt to keep the West engaged in order to avoid being crushed by
Russian moves. By contrast, Baku is attempting to appease Russian
strategic needs, while keeping its Western investment -- and thus
its source of income -- intact.
Azerbaijan's real problems, however, are just beginning. The Russian
resurgence is not happening in a vacuum but in parallel with the
resurgence of Iran to Azerbaijan's south. Iran and Russia are far from
natural allies, something poorly understood outside the Caucasus. The
two have come into conflict several times in the past.
Iran's most recent foreign occupier was the Soviet Union.
Historically, Persian and Russian power has clashed -- violently --
along their mutual border.
The two states' relative friendliness since the end of the Cold War
was a product of their weakness. As Iran recovered from its revolution
and Russia fell from Soviet-era highs, the two countries' spheres of
influence shrank so precipitously that their interests no longer rubbed
up against each other. With no interests in contact, there were no
interests in conflict. The two countries found it useful to cooperate
not only in ways rhetorical -- primarily lambasting the United States
-- but also in terms of weapons sales and technology transfers.
But the year is no longer 1998. Russia has had 10 years to climb up
from its post-Soviet nadir and Russian power is pushing against all of
its borders -- including to the south. Similarly, Iran has recovered
from its loss of 1 million people during the Iran-Iraq war in the
1980s. Tehran is now more confident than it has been in decades,
and its influence is seeping into not only Iraq and the Persian Gulf,
but also into the Caucasus and Central Asia -- areas Moscow considers
its exclusive playground.
And so warm rhetoric is giving way to cold calculations. Russia
has stalled, and probably outright abandoned, efforts to finish the
Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran, in part due to the (accurate)
concern that a resurging, nuclear-armed Iran would be more of a threat
to Russia than to the United States (and even Israel). Russia also is
laying the groundwork for a geopolitical twist by mooting the idea
of allowing the United States sustained access to the Gabala radar
base in Azerbaijan, a radar base designed to monitor Iranian airspace.
And it should be no surprise that it will be in Azerbaijan that Iran
and Russia will face off most directly. Azerbaijan, the buffer between
the two, has a foot in each camp: Its population speaks Russian, but
is historically Shiite in religion, making it a natural rope in the
coming Russian-Iranian tug-of-war. An additional complication will
be Armenia -- which both Russia and Iran unofficially have supported
in its military efforts to take control of Nagorno-Karabakh, an
Armenian-populated enclave within Azerbaijan.
The most brutal, and unfortunately most likely, consequence in the
midterm is that the two powers will fight a proxy war in the Caucasus
using Armenia and Azerbaijan as their pawns. In large part, this
is because such a war is inevitable. Azerbaijan's newly developed
energy wealth -- it is now producing about 1 million barrels per day
of crude and some 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas, and as a
result is enjoying an annual gross domestic product growth rate in
excess of 30 percent -- has empowered it to go on a military buildup
of a sort the region has not seen since World War I as a step toward
recovering its territory from Armenian forces.
With a war coming, and Russian-Iranian competition building, the two
larger powers will be motivated to shape to their own advantage the
conflict between the two minor powers. The only thing that remains
unclear is which side Russia and Iran will support more thoroughly.
Stratfor
http://www.stratfor.com/products /premium/read_article.php?id=294762
Aug 31 2007
Summary
Azerbaijan is finding itself in a very vulnerable position at the front
line of the Russian resurgence. It also finds itself in a pressure
cooker as Russia and Iran attempt to redefine their neighborhoods.
Analysis
New Kremlin point man Sergei Naryshkin arrived in Azerbaijan for
wide-ranging talks Aug. 31 with the Azerbaijani leadership. After 17
years of working with Western powers, Baku is finding itself drawn
back into the Russian sphere of influence. Sparks really will begin to
fly as the former Soviet republic returns to its standard geopolitical
status as a (shrinking) buffer between Russia and Iran.
Azerbaijan has enthusiastically courted Western powers ever since
the Soviet breakup, seeking investment in its military and energy
industries. But it has always known that its pro-Western proclivities
could only exist at the pleasure of Moscow. Unlike Georgia to its
west, Azerbaijan shares no border with a NATO country, so Baku always
tried to tread softly (politically speaking) when the issue of Russian
preferences arose.
With Russian power now rising, Azerbaijan is adopting a radically
different tack than Georgia. Tbilisi sees the coming evolution as a
zero-sum game, and as such, its public face has turned shrill in an
attempt to keep the West engaged in order to avoid being crushed by
Russian moves. By contrast, Baku is attempting to appease Russian
strategic needs, while keeping its Western investment -- and thus
its source of income -- intact.
Azerbaijan's real problems, however, are just beginning. The Russian
resurgence is not happening in a vacuum but in parallel with the
resurgence of Iran to Azerbaijan's south. Iran and Russia are far from
natural allies, something poorly understood outside the Caucasus. The
two have come into conflict several times in the past.
Iran's most recent foreign occupier was the Soviet Union.
Historically, Persian and Russian power has clashed -- violently --
along their mutual border.
The two states' relative friendliness since the end of the Cold War
was a product of their weakness. As Iran recovered from its revolution
and Russia fell from Soviet-era highs, the two countries' spheres of
influence shrank so precipitously that their interests no longer rubbed
up against each other. With no interests in contact, there were no
interests in conflict. The two countries found it useful to cooperate
not only in ways rhetorical -- primarily lambasting the United States
-- but also in terms of weapons sales and technology transfers.
But the year is no longer 1998. Russia has had 10 years to climb up
from its post-Soviet nadir and Russian power is pushing against all of
its borders -- including to the south. Similarly, Iran has recovered
from its loss of 1 million people during the Iran-Iraq war in the
1980s. Tehran is now more confident than it has been in decades,
and its influence is seeping into not only Iraq and the Persian Gulf,
but also into the Caucasus and Central Asia -- areas Moscow considers
its exclusive playground.
And so warm rhetoric is giving way to cold calculations. Russia
has stalled, and probably outright abandoned, efforts to finish the
Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran, in part due to the (accurate)
concern that a resurging, nuclear-armed Iran would be more of a threat
to Russia than to the United States (and even Israel). Russia also is
laying the groundwork for a geopolitical twist by mooting the idea
of allowing the United States sustained access to the Gabala radar
base in Azerbaijan, a radar base designed to monitor Iranian airspace.
And it should be no surprise that it will be in Azerbaijan that Iran
and Russia will face off most directly. Azerbaijan, the buffer between
the two, has a foot in each camp: Its population speaks Russian, but
is historically Shiite in religion, making it a natural rope in the
coming Russian-Iranian tug-of-war. An additional complication will
be Armenia -- which both Russia and Iran unofficially have supported
in its military efforts to take control of Nagorno-Karabakh, an
Armenian-populated enclave within Azerbaijan.
The most brutal, and unfortunately most likely, consequence in the
midterm is that the two powers will fight a proxy war in the Caucasus
using Armenia and Azerbaijan as their pawns. In large part, this
is because such a war is inevitable. Azerbaijan's newly developed
energy wealth -- it is now producing about 1 million barrels per day
of crude and some 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas, and as a
result is enjoying an annual gross domestic product growth rate in
excess of 30 percent -- has empowered it to go on a military buildup
of a sort the region has not seen since World War I as a step toward
recovering its territory from Armenian forces.
With a war coming, and Russian-Iranian competition building, the two
larger powers will be motivated to shape to their own advantage the
conflict between the two minor powers. The only thing that remains
unclear is which side Russia and Iran will support more thoroughly.