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81. Beyond the Central Eurasian Pivot?

Author:
Michael Tierney
Publication Date:
08-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Central Eurasia has long been an area that occupies utmost geostrategic importance inthe international system. Scholars throughout the 20th century identified Central Eurasia as the singlemost pivotal area for powerful states to gain influence and control. Their theories were based upon the fact that the region contained vast natural resources, a large population, high economic potential, and was geographically situated in a location strategically important for all world powers. As aresult, Central Eurasia’s importance in international affairs influenced geostrategic thinking during the inter-war years into WWII, the Cold War, and the post-Cold War era. Yet the shift in power that has occurred globally in recent years has caused scholars to signal the emergence of a new multipolar world. Some scholars have additionally hypothesized that there will be new geostrategic pivot states and regions located outside of Central Eurasia as a result. This study uses both historical and contemporary literature from the field of geopolitics to construct a list of potential pivots in the current international system. It then compares potential new pivot areas to the traditional Central Eurasian region using the variables listed above. The study finds that there are in fact comparable geostrategic pivots located outside of the Central Eurasian region in the contemporary international system. The implications of these findings are then discussed in the context of geostrategy and international security.
Topic:
Cold War, International Affairs, Natural Resources, Geopolitics, and World War II
Political Geography:
Europe, Eurasia, Asia, and Central Eurasia

82. Putin's Russia: Really Back?

Author:
Aldo Ferrari
Publication Date:
07-2016
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI)
Abstract:
Attempts by Washington and Brussels to push Russia to the fringes of global politics because of the Ukrainian crisis seem to have failed. Thanks to its important role in mediating the Iranian nuclear agreement, and to its unexpected military intervention in Syria, Moscow proved once again to be a key player in international politics. However, Russia’s recovered assertiveness may represents a challenge to the uncertain leadership of the West. This report aims to gauging Russia’s current role in the light of recent developments on the international stage. The overall Russian foreign policy strategy is examined by taking into account its most important issues: Ukraine and the relationship with the West; the Middle East (intervention in Syria, and ongoing relations with Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia); the development of the Eurasian Economic Union; the Russian pivot towards Asia, and China in particular. The volume also analyzes if and to what extent Moscow can fulfill its ambitions in a context of falling oil prices and international sanctions.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Leadership, and Vladimir Putin
Political Geography:
Russia, Eurasia, Ukraine, and Syria

83. Russia and the West (1853-2016): A permanent conflict?

Author:
Leonardo Frisani
Publication Date:
12-2016
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Argentine Council for International Relations (CARI)
Abstract:
The current diplomatic and military crisis over Ukraine has led many commentators to talk about a new Cold War (Lucas, 2014). This essay, analysing the diplomatic relations and geo-political struggle between Russian and the West from the Crimean War onwards, will try to show that the present conflict, far from being caused by contingent reasons, has its enduring roots in the historical tensions over strategic areas of common Western and Russian interest, not least in Crimea itself.
Topic:
Diplomacy, History, Military Affairs, Geopolitics, and Crisis Management
Political Geography:
Russia, Eurasia, and Ukraine

84. Tools of modification and extension of the area of strategic influence of Russia / Herramientas de modificación y ampliación del área de influencia estratégica de Rusia

Author:
Samuel Morales
Publication Date:
12-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on International Security Studies (RESI)
Institution:
International Security Studies Group (GESI) at the University of Granada
Abstract:
This document analyzes the tools that at present Russia uses with the intention of modifying and extending his area of strategic influence in the East of Europe. It centers fundamentally on the external action of Russia after the change of Government on Ukraine. The document tries to give response, first, to which they are the intentions of Russia with regard to his relations with the European Union; secondly if Russia uses as political tool his energetic resources; and thirdly, if the actions of not linear war developed in the peninsula of Crimea form a part structurally of the external action of Russia. In his development it does not think that the Euromaidan constitutes a point of inflexion in the strategic Russian thought, but rather the point of decision of a strategic approximation to the new world order presented in 2007 and that was applied by the first time in Georgia's war in 2008.
Topic:
Security, War, International Affairs, Territorial Disputes, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
Russia, Eurasia, and Ukraine

85. Between TAP and Nabucco: Who is the “WINNER”? Azerbaijan or Russia?

Author:
Ilgar Gurbanov
Publication Date:
08-2013
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
BILGESAM (Wise Men Center for Strategic Studies)
Abstract:
Today, every new pipeline changes the market and geopolitics of region. Two months ago, the final decision made by Shah Deniz Consortium, surprised many people. The competition for which pipeline will deliver Azeri gas to Europe is “Almost” over. Although Nabucco-West was strongly and diplomatically supported by European Union and United States, Shah Deniz Consortium opted Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) which will be connected with Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) at Turkish-Greek border. This decision totally paralyzed Nabucco-West pipeline project. Two shareholders of Shah Deniz consortium – BP and Statoil - fully supported TAP. Because, “under agreements signed with TAP during 2012, the Shah Deniz Consortium shareholders BP, SOCAR and Total hold options to acquire a combined 50% of TAP’s shares, thereby contributing to TAP’s construction costs.”
Topic:
Markets, Geopolitics, and Pipeline
Political Geography:
Russia, Central Asia, Eurasia, and Azerbaijan

86. Russia's Arab Spring Policy

Author:
Muharrem Erenler
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
BILGESAM (Wise Men Center for Strategic Studies)
Abstract:
One of the regions where Russia‟s interests are constant and historic is the Middle East, which has been being shaken by revolutions and insurgencies since January 2011. Being hesitant between supporting the desire of protestors to overthrow their long-ruling leaders and aligning with the stable authoritarian regimes of the Middle East, Russia has so far failed to adopt a consistent policy. Moreover, by following a low profile policy, Moscow seems indifferent to using the regimes changes as an opportunity to penetrate the region and revive its wading influence in the Middle East. Russia‟s inflexible foreign policy mentality, secondary importance of the Middle East in Russian foreign policy, perception of Arab Spring as a tool of outside powers, and the unrest it could arouse in motherland (as well as near abroad) could account for Moscow‟s reluctance to adopt a proactive role in reorganization of the Middle East.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Authoritarianism, Geopolitics, Arab Spring, and Strategic Stability
Political Geography:
Russia, Eurasia, Middle East, and Arab Countries

87. Security Threats and Risks in South Caucasus: Perceptions From the Western Black Sea

Author:
Plamen Pantev
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
Perception1 of security threats is a dynamic process determined by the outside world and the perceiver’s culture, attitudes, expectations, needs, experience and other attributes. Each interpreter, depending on her or his respective analytic point of view, subjectively defines the facts in the security realm. Values, beliefs and cognitions constitute the bulk of any perception, including about security issues. A value is a preference for one state of reality over another. A belief is a conviction that a description of reality is true, proven or known. And cognition is information derived from the environment that can be substantiated through physical evidence or perceptual observation. Cognitions are key elements in establishing perceptual systems and in changing those systems. The threat perceptual systems of the Western Black Sea countries – Bulgaria and Romania, are strongly influenced by their values, beliefs and cognitions as sovereign nations with specific geopolitical positions and interests. They are also shaped in the context of their membership in NATO, as future EU members and as US allies on whose territories would be stationed American military bases.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Geopolitics, and Risk
Political Geography:
Europe, Eurasia, South Caucasus, and Black Sea

88. The Emergence of a New Geopolitical Region in Eurasia: The Volga-Urals Region and its Implications for Bulgarian Foreign and Security Policy

Author:
Nicolay Pavlov and Plamen Pantev
Publication Date:
12-2000
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
The application of geopolitical methodological instruments to the study of Bulgarian foreign and security policy issues has two fundamental causes: first, for many decades this has been a neglected intellectual instrument of international political research – for political and ideological reasons – and, second, the end of the Cold War necessitated an improvement of the conceptual and the analytical tools of security studies in Europe and the world. The traditional approach of ISIS to search ways of improving the security situation by conceptualizing events and processes in a novel way has focused the efforts of its researchers on security problems that cover a broad strategic zone: the Balkans – the Black Sea – the Transcaucasus – the Caspian Sea. Continued cooling – for more than ten years –of bilateral Bulgarian-Russian relations is conceived as one of the problems of this broader strategic and systemically linked zone. The geopolitical and geostrategic model – imposed on Bulgaria by the Cold War divide, the country’s membership in the Warsaw Pact and the thorough domination by the USSR – ended and was replaced by a different reality. The geopolitical projection of the ideological and socio-economic divide was no longer an applicable paradigm. At the same time the balance of power and the geostrategic approaches of understanding the evolving international environment proved to be inadequate after the end of the 1980s of the 20th Century. Russian, and to a lesser extent Bulgarian, politicians lost the orientation and the perspective of the bilateral links. This led to a dramatic diminishing of the meaning of bilateral relations in the general foreign-political engagements of the two countries. Bulgaria had undertaken a clear orientation to market economy, democracy and rule of law – a philosophic course, which logically prioritized the attraction of the European Union as the efficient integration nucleus of Europe, and of NATO – the symbol of stability and guaranteed prosperity in the broader Euro-Atlantic space. Though NATO was no longer perceived in the Cold War antagonistic pattern by Russia, and the very substance of the Alliance intensively adapted to the post-Cold War realities, Bulgaria’s political and security choice of joining the Euro-Atlantic community of developed democratic nations was negatively assessed by the Russian elite.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Regional Cooperation, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
Europe, Eurasia, Eastern Europe, and Bulgaria