Carnegie Moscow Center
Without intellectual efforts it is impossible to find a viable solution to the dire post-August 2008 reality, which put both Georgia and Russia in an extremely difficult situation.
The North Caucasus remains economically and politically a part of Russia, but the internal situation there is increasingly regulated by the region’s own local traditions.
While Vladimir Putin is unlikely to give up power any time soon, the political and economic system he created is incapable of dealing with Russia’s rapidly changing conditions. Crises are likely unavoidable unless Russia changes and modernizes.
Moscow needs to drop the notion of creating an exclusive power center in the post-Soviet space. Like other former European empires, Russia has no choice but to reinvent itself as a global player and as part of a wider community.
As Georgia enters a period of transition, with upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections, the current government has made good progress in building a functioning state that delivers services to citizens, but Georgia’s economic picture is increasingly uncertain.
Putin’s Russia—which raised living standards, increased political apathy, and led to sovereign democracy—is over. As parliamentary and presidential elections approach, long-simmering social, economic, and political disputes are spilling into the open, and public politics are returning to the fore.
While Turkey’s vote against additional UN Security Council sanctions on Iran was viewed by some as a sign that Turkey is drifting away from the West, in reality the relationship is much more complicated.
While there is virtually no hope that the 2009 Armenian–Turkish Protocols will be ratified soon, both parties should take steps to rebuild confidence and affirm their faith in the process.
While an analysis of the military aspects of the 2008 Russian-Georgian conflict is important, it is also necessary to understand the timeline of political events, in Russia and Georgia, that led to the war.
While the Caucasus is too often treated as a subset of Russian history or as merely a gateway to Asia, it remains an important and combustible region, whose inner dynamics and history deserve a much more complex appreciation from the wider world.