Challenges to the South Caucasus regional security aftermath
of Russian–Georgian conﬂict: Hegemonic stability or new partnership?
Kornely K. Kakachia
Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social and Political Studies, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi, Georgia
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 4 September 2009
Accepted 10 December 2009
a b s t r a c t
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Caspian Sea and South Caucasus has become the
focus of considerable international attention, primary because it is one of the oldest and
potentially richest oil and gas producing areas in the world. The August 2008 Russian
invasion of the Georgia and the unilateral recognition of the independence of Abkhazia
and South Ossetia fundamentally changed the situation in the region. The war has created
a new strategic situation.
And the question is now how to handle this delicate situation in a strategically and
geopolitically important region. So by controlling Georgia (in case Russia reaches abovementioned
aims), Russia actually will be able to cut off Central Asia and Caspian resources.
It means Russia would be able to isolate and cut off Azerbaijan and Central Asian countries
and it will signiﬁcantly strengthen its energy monopoly over Europe with all results
coming out from that fact. So it’s about major shift in the energy policy and major shift in
geopolitics based on this energy policy and Russian energy monopoly. The August war in
Georgia demonstrated some risks associated with the functioning of the transit energy
corridor in the southern Caucasus. It also demonstrated the need for broader security
guarantees for a region that is vital to European and global energy security. Paper deals
with economic damage inﬂicted by the Russo-Georgian war in South Caucasus and its
implications for regional security.
Copyright Ó 2010, Asia-Paciﬁc Research Center, Hanyang University. Produced and
distributed by Elsevier Limited. All rights reserved.
1. Energy security aftermath of Russo-Georgian war:
implications for South Caucasus
Since the industrial revolution the geopolitics of energy –
who supplies it and securing reliable access to those
supplies – have been the driving factors in global prosperity
and security. Over the coming decades, energy politics will
determine the survival of the planet. The political nature of
energy, linked to the sources of supply and demand, comes
to public attention at moments of crisis, particularly when
unstable oil markets drive up prices and politicians hear
constituent protests (Pascual, 2008).
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Caspian Sea
and South Caucasus region has become the focus of
considerable international attention, primarily because it
is one of the oldest and potentially the richest oil and gas
producing areas in the world. Surrounded by the three
regional powers Iran, Russia, and Turkey and located on
the crossroads of Europe and Asia, the South Caucasus
has also been at the center of post-cold war geopolitical
rivalries.
E-mail address: kakachia@gmail.com.
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Journal of Eurasian Studies
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/euras
1879-3665/$ – see front matter Copyright Ó 2010, Asia-Paciﬁc Research Center, Hanyang University. Produced and distributed by Elsevier Limited. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.euras.2010.10.005
Journal of Eurasian Studies 2 (2011) 15–20
To a considerable extent, the signiﬁcant oil and gas
reserves in the Caspian Sea, speciﬁcally in the Azerbaijani
sector, have also ampliﬁed regional rivalries for political
and economic inﬂuence in the region. Despite physical
isolation, the region sits at the very heart of one of the
world’s geopolitically most signiﬁcant and sensitive areas.
Thus, a large number of world powers see the resources as
important, making the South Caucasus the subject of
a second “great game”.
The August 2008 Russian invasion of the Georgia and
the unilateral recognition of the independence of Abkhazia
and South Ossetia fundamentally changed the situation in
the region. The war has created a new strategic situation. By
sending forces over its borders for the ﬁrst time since the
1979–1989 Soviet–Afghan War and forcibly redeﬁning
the border with Georgia, Moscow has aroused concern
among other newly independent countries about its future
intentions.
Whereas invasion of Georgia was rightfully seen as part
of Moscow’s plan to reassemble its former empire or at
least exert enough control of its border to deny Western
access to critical energy supplies without the Kremlin’s
approval, the invasion was in part a reaction to the
expansion of NATO to the borders of Russia proper along
with consideration for membership of both Georgia and
Ukraine. One of the main foreign policy priorities for Russia
is evolution of Post-Soviet space. Russia is interested in
reintegrating of this space. It wants the majority of CIS
countries to take part in the Russia-oriented security
system (CSTO), and its integration project (EurAsEC). It is
also interested in a leading role in the CIS countries’ energy
complex (Reconﬁguration, 2009).
The United States and generally West, on the contrary,
is pursuing a policy of fragmentation of this space, of drawing
CIS countries away from Russia by either involving them
in the U.S.- and Western-oriented military-political alliances
(NATO), or by building bilateral partnerships (with
Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and in perspective with Kazakhstan).
United States and its western partners are also actively
resisting the consolidation of Russian positions in the CIS
countries’ energy industry.
As Zbigniew Brzezinski noted “Nor should one ignore
the reality that there are serious – though not war-threatening
– geopolitical conﬂicts of interest between the US
and the Russian Federation. The bottom line is that
Mr. Putin resents and wants in some fashion to reverse the
disintegration of the Soviet Union. Gaining control over
Ukraine would restore in effect an imperial Russia, with the
potential to ignite conﬂicts in Central Europe. Subduing
Georgia would cut the west’s vital energy connection (the
Baku–Ceyhan pipeline) to the Caspian Sea and to Central
Asia. Azerbaijan then would have no choice but to submit to
Moscow’s control (Brzezinski, 2009)”.
Another aspect for energy security of the South Caucasus
is that the discussion of whether the region’s energy infrastructure
will become targets in a military conﬂict has moved
from the hypothetical to the practical. The August war in
Georgia demonstrated some risks associated with the functioning
of the transit energy corridor in the region. It also
demonstrated the need for broader security guarantees for
a region that is vital to European and global energy security
(Tsereteli, 2009). As the ﬁghting in Georgia demonstrated,
regional energy infrastructure will become targeted during
conﬂicts. One of the Russian targets in Georgia was pipeline
carrying oil from the Caspian Sea to the West.
2. Economic damage of Russo-Georgian war on
regional level
The ﬁve-day clash between Russian and Georgian forces
in August inﬂicted serious damage on Georgia’s economy
both in causalities and in worsening the prospects for
development and investment. The material damage has
initially been estimated at some 1 billion dollars or about
8% of forecast 2008 GDP. The damage was mainly conﬁned
to military targets – bases, military airﬁelds, anti-aircraft
systems. There was no great damage to civilian targets,
including industrial or agricultural assets, with the factory
producing military aircraft in Tbilisi a rare exception.
Major communications routes have remained mostly
intact. The only exception here was the blowing up by
Russian soldiers of a railway bridge 40 km east of Tbilisi on
August 16, after the ceaseﬁre. This disrupted rail communication
between eastern and western parts of the country,
causing problems not only for Georgia, but also for
Azerbaijan and Armenia, for which this railway is an
important route. Georgia suffered lost revenue from the
confrontation: In 2007 BTC fees generated $25.4 million in
transit revenues, and before hostilities erupted Saakashvili’s
government had estimated BTC transit payments for
2008 at about $45 million source: Georgia-Energy bridge to
conﬂict. Oil Price. 10 October 2010 http://oilprice.com/Geo-
Politics/Europe/Georgia-Energy-Bridge-To-Conﬂict.html.
In addition seeking an alternative route, BP switched to
the recently reopened 550-mile, 140,000-bpd Western
Route Export Pipeline, better known as the Baku–Supsa
line, which opened in 1999 and was running at about
90,000 bpd. Because of the worsening military conﬂict, on
Aug. 12 BP announced that it was suspending shipments
through Baku–Supsa, as well as the South Caucasus Pipeline,
which transports natural gas from Baku to Turkey via
Tbilisi.
Completing the lock-in of Azeri oil exports, the ﬁghting
caused authorities to suspend seaborne shipments from
Georgia’s Black Sea ports of Batumi (200,000 bpd) and Poti
(100,000 bpd), both supplied by rail. Poti was closed Aug. 8
following reported Russian airstrikes (Daly, 2008). Adding
to the grim picture, authorities also ceased exports from
Kulevi, Georgia’s third Black Sea oil terminus, which
opened in 2007 and is capable of shipping 200,000 bpd.
But probably the most painful loss for Georgia was the
damage to its reputation as a safe venue for investment and
a secure corridor for fuel transportation. As early as May,
Standard and Poor’s lowered its outlook for the sovereign
credit rating of the government of Georgia from ‘positive’ to
‘stable’, explaining it by the deterioration in relations with
Russia and the reinforcement of Russian forces in the
separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. During
the August war, the agency expressed concern that investors
may become even more cautious in making investment
decisions in Georgia (Oxford Analytica, 2008). In
particular, the future of the EU’s Nabucco gas pipeline
K.K. Kakachia / Journal of Eurasian Studies 2 (2011) 15–2016
project for supplying EU member states with gas from
Azerbaijan and Central Asia may have been endangered.
Added to these concerns is the growing risk associated
to infrastructural investments in Southern Caucasus in the
aftermath of the war. Although Russian bombers did not
target any energy facilities, the coincidence of an explosion
in the Turkish section of the BTC close to the Georgian
border a few days prior to the military operations
raised some concern about the possible targeting of the
pipelines (Coskun & Yevgrashina, 2008). The war also
demonstrated that the Western guarantees for Georgia
lacked substance, and the integrity of the oil and gas
corridor depended simply on Russian good will (Blagov,
2008).
A clear sign of this came from the BP decision to
temporarily stop the oil ﬂows through Georgia to divert
part of them through the Russian facilities, while Kazakh
Prime Minister Karim Masimov ordered KazMunajGaz to
study whether the domestic market could absorb the
exports envisaged for transit via Georgia. Even the Azerbaijani
company SOCAR re-directed a portion of its exports,
normally sent through the Georgian terminal of Kulevi,
towards the Iranian port of Neka during August and
September 2008 (IEA, 2008).
The military confrontation inﬂicted signiﬁcant ﬁscal
“collateral damage” on Azeri oil exports, as all its westward
export routes were closed. The war did not spill across the
border into Azerbaijan, but its economic repercussions have.
Foreign investment has been imperiled by the geopolitical
instability laid bare by the brief war and the continuing
uncertainty about the present peace (Ismailzade, 2008). For
Azerbaijan the conﬂict was an unmitigated ﬁnancial
disaster, as the country’s oil sector receipts account for
almost half of all government revenues, with oil exports
generating around 90 percent of total export revenues.
Between the BTC explosion and the military clash,
Azerbaijan had been blocked from shipping approximately
17 million barrels of crude, while the U.S. Department of
Energy estimated that Azerbaijan’s ﬁnal cost for the lost
shipments surpassed $1 billion.
The Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan and Baku–Supsa oil pipelines
and Baku–Tbilisi–Erzurum gas pipeline, as well as the Azeri
state oil company’s recent purchase of the Kulevi oil
terminal on the Black Sea, had begun to enhance the
importance of the region as a major East–West energy
corridor. Azerbaijan and Georgia have agreed, in partnership
with Turkey, to build the Baku–Akhalkalaki–Kars
railway, connecting the rail systems of the three countries
(Di Puppo, 2007). The project would create a much shorter
and faster rail corridor between Europe and Asia than the
current one through Russia, making Georgia and Azerbaijan
the key hubs for the Eurasian transport network. However,
the war has shrouded the future of these achievements in
doubt and undermined the Azeri grand vision of turning
the south Caucuses into the primary transit hub to central
Asia. The conﬂict froze the operations of the East-West
energy corridor.
On Aug. 5, 2008, two days before the outbreak of
hostilities between Georgia and Russia, there was an as yet
unexplained explosion on the BTC segment at Yurtbasi
village in eastern Turkey. The cause of the explosion
remains unclear, although Ankara initially suspected that it
might have been a terrorist attack by the Kurdish separatist
Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan, or Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
BTC operator BP declared force majeure, and the pipeline
only resumed operations on Aug. 25.
Following this unrelated attack on the Baku–Tbilisi–
Ceyhan pipeline in Turkey, the violence brought air and rail
trafﬁc to a sudden halt, closed the Kulevi port of Georgia
and forced the evacuation of Azeri personnel. As a result,
Azerbaijan and its Western oil company partners were
forced to suspend operations in the Caspian oil and gas
ﬁelds and energy contracts had to be re-negotiated.
Kazakhstan has backed off the plan to build a $1 billion oil
reﬁnery in Batumi, a $10 million grain terminal in Poti, and
to export oil products and other goods through the territory
of Georgia. The export of Turkmen gas through the south
Caucasus has been similarly affected.
The Georgia–Russia war has placed Armenia which is
hemmed in on all sides by closed borders with Azerbaijan
and Turkey, in a bind as well. The war, and its complicated
aftermath, has thus inﬂicted a considerable amount of
damage on the Armenian economy. One of the consequences
of this action was that some 107 train cars of
wheat, 10 fuel containers and 50 additional train cars with
miscellaneous goods were left in limbo. The unloading of
ships with goods meant for Armenia reportedly resumed
only on September 1, according to the information of
Armenian government.
The delays were stoking concern about a possible wheat
shortage in Yerevan. Armenian companies were attempting
to import the wheat via Iran. Gasoline has been another
problem. Until late August, many gas stations country-wide
posted “No gas” notices. Although the government declared
that gas reserves were sufﬁcient to withstand a temporary
shortfall, drivers who were forced to wait in long lines to
buy gas scoffed at the assurances.
The stand-off has reminded Armenians that their
country’s economy is too dependent on Georgia for its own
good. Only in August last year, when the war interrupted
Armenia’s export trade, the country lost 600–700 million
US dollars (CRS No. 495, 2009). At the moment, 70–80 per
cent of Armenian exports travel to Russia, leaving the
Georgian port of Poti for Bulgaria, then shipped to Novorossiisk
on Russia’s southern coast. The whole journey can
take eight or ten days, whereas the road through the
mountains and Upper Lars is relatively quick. This quickly
drove Yerevan to intensify its dialogue with Turkey over
prospects for opening their common border that has been
closed for decades, and, like Belarus, to join the EU’s Eastern
Partnership1
.
While the consequences of the conﬂict will be felt for
a long time throughout the region, the balance of power in
the Caucasus has shifted. Relations between Armenia and
Azerbaijan have been inﬂuenced and the conﬂict might
also have an impact on the Nagorno–Karabakh conﬂict.
1
In September 2008 Turkish President Abdullah Gul visited Armenia
and attended a football match between the two historic confronted
parties becoming the ﬁrst Turkish leader to set foot in Armenia since the
end of Nagorno–Karabakh conﬂict.
K.K. Kakachia / Journal of Eurasian Studies 2 (2011) 15–20 17
Armenia was left with no military ground transit from
Russia, and the country is now essentially cut off from any
possibility of obtaining effective help from its ally and has
decided to respond quickly to Turkey’s proposal to
normalize relations and open the border. The very idea
that Turkey would go through with the border talks
without attaching any conditions on Karabakh has
provoked anger in Azerbaijan, especially since Turkey
sealed the border in 1993 in response to the Armenian
occupation of the regions, a reality which has clearly not
changed.
3. Geopolitical interest of regional players
and balance of power
The European Union has long sought alternate supply
routes, including the prospective Nabucco pipeline that
would carry Caspian and Central Asian gas to Europe but
skirt Russia. The EU also risks continued energy dependency
on Russia and a sharp rise in natural gas prices unless it
backs alternative non-Russian projects similar to White
Stream. The White Stream Pipeline aims to bring Caspian gas
through Azerbaijan and Georgia and across the Black Sea to
Ukraine and Romania, from where it will travel farther into
Europe. The pipeline would reduce the impact on the EU of
any future Russian gas cut-offs and complicate Russian plans
to put gas prices on a higher footing for the long-term.
Having seen that BTC (Baku–Tbilisi–Cheihan) and BTE
(Baku–Tbilisi–Erzurum) are aiding its efforts toward energy
diversiﬁcation, the EU representatives are debating various
new energy-import projects. This in turn is leading
potential supplier and transit countries to line up to get in
on what promise to be very lucrative deals (Pannier, 2009).
But by diversiﬁcation, Europe also means ﬁnding routes
that do not go through Russia.
In order to meet this challenge this summer (2009), EU
backed consortium of energy companies from Turkey,
Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Austria that have joined
together to build the $11 billion Nabucco natural gas pipeline.
Such an energy strategy, pundits say, is urgently needed to
stop Moscow’s “divide-and-conquer politics”. Nabucco
would bring gas from Middle Eastern and Caspian ﬁelds
across Turkey’s Anatolian plateau, and north into Europe. The
pipeline is backed and partly funded by the EU and is strongly
supported by the United States. Perhaps most importantly,
Nabucco would completely bypass Russia. But the real
question that will determine Nabucco’s future – a question
vividly on display in every country the pipeline will touch – is
whether Europe has the stomach to ﬁght as hard for its
interests as Russia does for its own (Freifeld, 2009).
Meantime, Russia’s aggressive behavior versus Russia’s
neighbors and outright aggression against Georgia, that led
to effective annexation of two Georgian territories Abkhazia
and South Ossetia, creation of the Russian military bases
and deployment of regular Russian forces makes the role
and security of current or future pipelines running through
that country an issue that weighs heavily on the minds of
many in the EU.
As a basic energy supplier and hydrocarbon transit hub,
Russia is turning this state of affairs to account, sometimes
aggressively promoting its interests around the globe,
while also controlling the game at home by keeping the
largest energy companies and pipelines under state control,
and thus dictating the rules of competition and increasing
the Kremlin’s clout in negotiations with foreign investors
(Filis, 2009). Similarly, whilst Russia sees the economic
value of the energy security issues, this is secondary to its
geopolitical value as a means of maintaining control over
it’s so-called “near abroad” and ensuring only nominal
independence for the countries of the region. This policy is
most clearly evidenced in their intervention in the internal
affairs of these countries. Moreover, Russia seems unable to
control the political development in the region and has
moved to dominate region including through military
means.
Though ofﬁcially Russia does not object to the construction
of the Nabucco gas pipeline and as Russian Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin said after the signing of South
Stream documents with European partners “will not create
any impediments”, it has attempted to block alternative
energy routes other then its own encouraging crisis
between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno Karabakh
and destabilizing and publicly invading Georgia. The drive to
stop Nabucco is one of the major goals of the Russian elite.
This – i.e., the drive to discourage the creation of gas export
routes not controlled by Russia – appears to have been that
one of the primary aims of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s
recent (2010) trip to Azerbaijan and Central Asia.
Moreover, like Iran, Russia envisages resources of the
Caspian Sea into the energy hub of non-Western energy
zone (Sinker, 2001).
Moscow has sought to gain control of the energy
transport and distribution networks in neighboring states
for long-term economic gain and leverage over their
policies, and to ensure that the energy producers among
them export through Russia. Russia has also aggressively
pursued blocking potential natural gas export competitors
from entering the European market, such as Iran,
Azerbaijan and producers in Central Asia, and works
assertively to retain control over Central Asian export. Iran
is the only country that has the volumes of natural gas and
the location to pose any major threat to Russia’s supply
dominance in Europe. In the spring of 2007, Moscow spent
a considerable amount of money to buy out Iran’s
potential access to the European gas market through
Armenia (Shaffer, 2009).
If Russia can be seen as the current leader in the
competition for inﬂuence in the South Caucasus, Iran can
be considered an outsider for now. Iran’s policy in the
Caucasus is based primarily on its own security and
economic considerations. Domestic inputs and constraintsdprimarily
the presence of a signiﬁcant Azerbaijani
minority in Irandand its interests and confrontations
beyond the region, including that with the United States,
also inﬂuence Iran’s policies toward the region. However,
the major Iranian concern in the region is not economic
but strategic and its main objective is to expand its
inﬂuence, for historic, economic and political reasons. In
recent years, Iran also sees the role in energy security
issues in the region and stands a good chance of being
a future contributor to existing and planned pipelines
through the Caucasus.
K.K. Kakachia / Journal of Eurasian Studies 2 (2011) 15–2018
As for Turkey, Ankara would prefer to see the European
Union-backed Nabucco pipeline built2
, since it would
transit Turkish territory and thus provide both a new
source of gas for the country and a new source of revenue.
But Turkish participation in Nabucco also comes at a price.
From Europe, the Turkish government seeks guarantees of
eventual Turkish membership in the European Union. From
Azerbaijan, the Turkish government wants a DAF (Delivery
At Frontier) agreement, meaning Azerbaijani gas becomes
Turkish gas as soon as it enters Turkish territory (from
which Turkey will sell it on to Europe).
In general, despite initial efforts by Turkey and Iran right
after the fall of the Soviet Union to become leading power
players in the Caucasus, none of these two countries has
been able to consolidate its long-term presence and inﬂuence.
Notwithstanding the ethnic factor in Turkish–Azeri
relations and signals of the institutionalization of Turkish–
Georgian military cooperation, the negotiations of Ankara
with Brussels in the next decade or more would gain much
more importance for Turkey then any power projection
initiative eastward. Iran, on the other hand, faces a serious
national security challenge with the US military presence in
Iraq, and will care much more for the consolidation of its
regional presence in the Middle East through the
strengthening of the Shiite axis then about the South
Caucasus. None of these countries will cease to mark their
presence in the region, yet not in terms of power projection
or any meaningful interventionism.
4. Conclusion
Once considered a “crossroads of civilization”, the South
Caucasus has emerged as a crossroad of energy-export
routes – spurring renewed competition in the region. The
August war radically transformed the geopolitical pattern
in the South Caucasus in several ways. First, Georgia lost its
previous central role in the region, which may endanger
many investment programs (including energy) previously
linked to that country. Second, due to the break in relations
between Georgia and Russia, Moscow lost part of its
inﬂuence on the whole region, with the European Union
and Turkey striving to ﬁll that gap. Third, the ﬁve-day war
showed everybody how fragile south Caucasus stability is
and how dangerous an armed conﬂict may be in this region.
As the competition continues, only one thing is certain –
there is no formula for energy-export routes through the
Caucasus that can satisfy all the interested parties inside
and outside the region. European Union Member states
who in its ofﬁcial documents even before the possible
realization of projects like Nabucco, underlined their
support of stability in the South Caucasus region not paying
enough attention to it (Adilgizi, 2009). Understanding that
completion of the Nabucco will contribute to stability in the
South Caucasus and expected to assist in the long-sought
stabilization of the region the EU supported all kinds of
mediation initiatives by the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Minsk Group and the UN
directed at solving security problems in the South Caucasus
region. However, as it seems now in reality it has no
instruments in its own common foreign policy which can
be used to help implement a solution to the conﬂicts in the
South Caucasus. The West’s failure to intervene credibly in
Georgian conﬂict reduces the prospects of strong Western
action to strengthen and broaden the East–West energy
transportation corridor across the South Caucasus.
Although Russia may seem to be a common enemy, the
policies Moscow follows often make sharp different South
Caucasian states. And Russian policymakers frequently
choose to play one against another. The recent visit of US
President Obama to Turkey was far more signiﬁcant than
the President’s speech would suggest. For Washington,
Turkey today has become a geopolitical “pivot state” which
is in the position to tilt the Eurasian power equation
towards Washington or signiﬁcantly away from it
depending on how Turkey develops its ties with Moscow
and its role regarding key energy pipelines.
It clear, that if Ankara decides to collaborate more closely
with Russia, Georgia’s position is precarious. As a result
Azerbaijan’s natural gas pipeline route to Europe, the socalled
Nabucco Pipeline, could be blocked as well. If it
cooperates with the United States and manages to reach
a stable treaty with Armenia under US auspices, the Russian
position in the Caucasus is weakened and an alternative
route for natural gas to Europe opens up, decreasing Russian
leverage against Europe (Engdahl, 2009).
Moreover, for the Turkey and South Caucasian countries
(remaining members of the Commonwealth of Independent
States (C.I. S)) the choices are stark–continue relations
with Georgia after the August war as before, thereby tacitly
approving Tbilisi’s confrontational posture vis-a-vis Moscow
and risking Russia’s wrath, or pay heed to Medvedev’s
“privileged interests” in the Caucasus (Daly, 2009). While
little is clear in this respect yet, last year’s military clash has
given former Soviet states signiﬁcant food for thought
about what happens to former Soviet republics that ignore
Moscow’s concerns and stray too far westwards.
The global economic recession, decline of European
demand and the lack of available investment are among the
key factors making westbound pipelines from Eurasia largely
a pipedream. Add to that the increasing geopolitical “pull” of
China, an increase in Russian clout in its so-called “near
abroad” after the Georgian war and the possibility of a future
Iranian route – if rapprochement with the US succeeds – and
these uncertainties make the future pipeline policy in South
Caucasus a forecaster’s nightmare (Cohen, 2009).
In addition if the combined effect of the ﬁnancial crisis
and the August war is likely to weaken the political support
for investments in South Caucasus aimed at freeing the
Caspian resources from the Russian control, it is even more
likely to undermine the economic viability of these
investments that has already been questioned because of
the insecurity of the supply of gas (Giuli, 2009).
2
At the time of the project’s inception, it was envisaged that the
pipeline would be ﬁlled primarily with Iranian gas. However, the complex
geopolitical situation around Iran, coupled with the current underinvestment
in the Iranian hydrocarbons infrastructure that has turned
this country with colossal reserves into a net importer of gas, has led to
a shift of focus. Attention now centres far more on Azerbaijan; speciﬁcally,
on its offshore ﬁeld of Shah Deniz. Gas for Nabucco is expected to
come from Phase II of the project, which could provide the base load for
the pipeline.
K.K. Kakachia / Journal of Eurasian Studies 2 (2011) 15–20 19
And the question is now how to handle this delicate
situation in a strategically and geopolitically important
region. So by controlling Georgia (in case Russia reaches
abovementioned aims), Russia actually will be able to cut
off Central Asia and Caspian resources. It means Russia
would be able to isolate and cut off Azerbaijan and Central
Asian countries and it will signiﬁcantly strengthen its
energy monopoly over Europe with all results coming out
from that fact. So it’s about major shift in the energy policy
and major shift in geopolitics based on this energy policy
and Russian energy monopoly.
The August war in Georgia demonstrated some risks
associated with the functioning of the transit energy
corridor in the southern Caucasus. It also demonstrated the
need for broader security guarantees for a region that is
vital to European and global energy security.
The overview above illustrates the complexity and
interrelated nature of security threats in the South Caucasus.
Either individually or in combination, frozen territorial
conﬂicts, dormant ethnic tensions, internal power struggles,
foreign meddling, political violence and transnational
crime all contribute present and potential threats to the
security of the region.
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Dr. Kornely Kakachia is Associate Professor of Department of Political
Science at Tbilisi State University. At the same time he works as Director
of School of Politics & International Relations at University of Georgia
and teaches classes on World Politics and International organizations
and Global Governance. His research interest includes the CIS and
regional security issues in South Caucasus. He has written articles on
GUAM, Public security sector reforms in Georgia, role of international
actors in conﬂict settlement in Georgia. Previously he worked as an
Analyst for the ofﬁce of Special Representative of the UN SecretaryGeneral
for Georgia at United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia. He
served as a President of Georgian Young Political Scientist Association
and received IREX Contemporary issues and Faculty Development
Program fellowship of OSI.
K.K. Kakachia / Journal of Eurasian Studies 2 (2011) 15–2020