Thursday, 15 September 2016 00:00

A new balance of power in the Black Sea?

By Natalia Konarzewska

September 15th, 2016, The CACI Analyst

Despite the Black Sea’s geopolitical importance, NATO has neglected Russia’s enhancement of its military capabilities there to unprecedented levels over the past few years. Russia’s new military buildup in the Black Sea will allow it to project power into adjacent regions, and to compromise NATO’s operational ability to protect its Black Sea riparian member states. The latest NATO summit in Warsaw on July 8-9 addressed this issue and called for the deployment of new deterrence and defense measures in the region.

aegis ashore

Published in Analytical Articles

By Boris Ajeganov

August 10th, 2016, The CACI Analyst

Georgian PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili became the first foreign head of state to visit Turkey after the failed coup attempt by parts of the Turkish military in the evening of Friday, July 15. Kvirikashvili met with his counterpart, PM Binali Yildirim, and President Erdoğan in Ankara on July 19 as part of an inaugural meeting of the High Level Georgia-Turkey Strategic Cooperation Council. The visit — the PM’s first official to Turkey — was planned long before the attempted coup. Although the event focused on bilateral trade and economic issues, both parties emphasized that the official visit demonstrated Georgia’s continued support for Turkey’s democratically elected authorities, despite concerns that Erdoğan used the coup attempt as pretext for a major purge of political opponents at all levels of government. In the end of the day, regardless of what direction Turkey’s politics take, Georgia does not have much of a choice but to toe its neighbor’s line, come rain or shine.

Kvirikashvili-Erdogan

Published in Analytical Articles

By Elman Gafarov

July 29th, 2016, The CACI Analyst

2016 has become the year of most active peace talks on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict since its cease-fire in 1994. The reason is the deadly April clashes between the warring sides and the “wake-up” call to all mediators that the conflict can get out of control and cause serious damage to the regional security and stability in South Caucasus. Russia is particularly seen to be worried about this trend. Therefore, the high-level talks are held in an effort to change the status-quo on the ground and end the occupation of Azerbaijani territories. The positive trend can be nevertheless be derailed due to social and political unrest in Yerevan.

nk-jul29

Published in Analytical Articles

By Almaz Rza

July 12th, the CACI Analyst

“Sagol Azerbaijan,” German Formula 1 driver for the Mercedes team Nico Rosberg tweeted on June 20. The leader of the 2016 F1 season thanked the host country of the F1 Grand Prix of Europe. Rosberg collected his 19th Grand Prix win with Ferrari’s Seb Vettel in second and Force India’s Sergio Perez third. 

This June, the Baku City Circuit, a street track in Azerbaijan, saw F1 cars thunder for the very first time. A six-kilometer track with 20 turns is the latest design of Herman Tilke, a 61-year-old German engineer, who has designed every new F1 venue since the Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia in 1999 and also redesigned several older tracks. Like Monaco’s, the Baku track is built through the existing streets of a seaside city but unlike Monaco, which hosted its first race in 1929, the Baku track has a long straight (2.2 kilometers along the seaside boulevard) for overtaking. 

f1-baku 

Published in Field Reports

By Eduard Abrahamyan

July 24th, 2016, The CACI Analyst

On June 30, Armenia’s Parliament ratified the Russia-Armenia United Regional System of Air Defense in the Caucasian Region, thereby moving it to the operational stage. The agreement was preliminarily signed in in Moscow by Armenia’s and Russia’s defense ministers in December 2015, on the basis of analogous accords with Belarus and Kazakhstan in 2009 and 2013 respectively. While the approval was accompanied with speculations on how Armenia could benefit from the accord, Moscow’s potential to exploit the agreement in its anti-Western posture has received less attention. In particular, the joint air-defense system presumably constitutes a reinforcing element of Moscow’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities in the eastern flank of the Black Sea region.

 sc-a2d2

Published in Analytical Articles

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Silk Road Paper Johan Engvall, Between Bandits and Bureaucrats: 30 Years of Parliamentary Development in Kyrgyzstan, January 2022.  

Oped Svante E. Cornell, No, The War in Ukraine is not about NATO, The Hill, March 9, 2022.

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Silk Road Paper Svante E. Cornell, S. Frederick Starr & Albert Barro, Political and Economic Reforms in Kazakhstan Under President Tokayev, November 2021.

The Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst is a biweekly publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, a Joint Transatlantic Research and Policy Center affiliated with the American Foreign Policy Council, Washington DC., and the Institute for Security and Development Policy, Stockholm. For 15 years, the Analyst has brought cutting edge analysis of the region geared toward a practitioner audience.

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