Carnegie Moscow Center
The attack by militants on the Chechen parliament is a new blow to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. It is becoming increasingly clear that Kadyrov’s heavy-handed methods for suppressing opponents are no guarantee of long-term security.
Diaspora Armenian politics are playing a significant role in holding up U.S. diplomatic nominations to the countries of the South Caucasus, which risks undermining U.S. engagement and influence throughout the region.
The Pacific island microstates of Nauru and Tuvalu have found an incentive to take sides in the efforts of Caucasian breakaway territories like South Ossetia and Abkhazia to gain international recognition of their sovereignty.
The current political and economic situation in the South Caucasus is partly the result of the misconceptions about the region that have been propagated by both outsiders and locals.
The blast in Vladikavkaz is the latest episode in what is becoming a latent civil war in the North Caucasus, where the Russian authorities are facing an opposition with its own specific religious and political ideology.
Narrow bilateralism is an abiding problem in regional policies in the South Caucasus, and it is only complicated by the multiple policy agendas of outside interests such as Russia or the United States.
Religious services held inside Turkey’s borders by Pontic Greeks are a sign of the breakthrough in Turkish-Greek relations and a similar initiative at an Armenian church inside Turkey would be another step toward the normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia.
The militant attack on Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov’s home village has shown the vulnerability of the Kadyrov regime, which is commonly considered the most successful in the North Caucasus and quite capable of guaranteeing stability.
If Russia wants to be a principal security provider and peace guarantor in the CIS space, it will need to refocus its strategy away from resisting NATO's drive and U.S. deployments and toward conflict prevention and conflict resolution.
The Russian government should use soft power to win back sympathy from the Georgian population in preparation for the end of Georgian President Saakashvili’s term in office in 2013.