Prisoner of the Caucasus?

For much of the past three decades, the South Caucasus has been internally fragmented, with former imperial hegemon Russia attempting to manipulate the region’s multiple conflicts to keep Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia from spinning too far out of Moscow’s orbit. Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine therefore created a fundamentally new reality. Russian distraction both provided the three South Caucasus states new freedom of action and created opportunities for other regional and non-regional actors to bolster their political, economic, and security presence. These include the United States, which now has occasion to rethink its approach to a strategically significant region that has, arguably, been less of a priority in recent years.

A new U.S. strategy for the South Caucasus must grapple with this evolving strategic landscape. It should accept that while the South Caucasus is not going to be a central priority for the United States, the region maintains a geostrategic importance that outstrips the size of its population or GDP. The South Caucasus has added importance for the European Union and for individual U.S. allies. Prospects for the expansion of the European Union into the South Caucasus remain uncertain, and the expansion of NATO into the region is even less likely. More broadly, all three states face limited options, prefer to hedge against risks, and will resist efforts to force them into binary choices.

Funding for this project was provided by National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS).