Central Asia and the Transcaucasus
131. It is the security situation on Russia's southern
borders which, as we discovered on our visit to Moscow, drives
much of Russia's foreign and security policy.[252]
The memory of the Chechen war is still raw. This is an additional
driver of Russia's attitude to the situation in Kosovo. The region
is certainly unstable—there is continued warfare and terrorist
activity in the autonomous republics of the Russian north Caucasus,
there is renewed ethnic conflict within and between the Transcaucasus
states; there is growing competition over access to natural resources,
particularly water, oil and gas; there is growing fear of a real
or imagined increase in Islamic fundamentalist activity; and there
are the widespread problems of poverty and the political turmoil
which in most of these countries has followed the attempted transition
to a market economy. There is also a legacy of weapons in the
area left behind by the Soviet armed forces, and this contributes
to instability in the region, although the withdrawal of nuclear
weapons from Kazakhstan eased the threat.
132. Although the EU has sought to build up political
and civil institutions and entrench human rights, progress in
the region has not been rapid. Georgia is making progress, and
is on track to be granted membership of the Council of Europe.
Progress in Armenia and Azerbaijan is still retarded by the effects
of the Nagorno-Karabakh war. Armenia is, however, displaying some
signs of democratic development.[253]
Azerbaijan's President Aliyev could not be described as a democrat,
but has succeeded in unsettling Russia and his neighbours by threatening
to invite NATO to establish a base in his country. This ludicrous
and empty threat was a constant topic of discussion during our
visit to Moscow, and was seized upon by several of our interlocutors
there (whether cynically or credulously it was difficult to tell)
as evidence of NATO's aggressive territorial ambitions. In contrast,
the close military relationship between Russia and Armenia is
well attested, and appears to have involved large scale transfers
of weapons. There is scant progress towards democracy in Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan.
133. However, all the nations in the region, with
the exception of Tajikistan are members of PfP, and several have
received funding from the UK's Military Training and Support programme
(now replaced by the ASSIST scheme). Interestingly, a number of
the states in the region manage to combine PfP membership with
membership of the Treaty for Collective Security of the CIS. It
is in this region that the interests of NATO and Russia in the
establishment of stability most coincide, and if NATO can persuade
Russia that stability in the Balkans and stability in Central
Asia and the Transcaucasus are goals where they can develop mutually
reinforcing policies, then this may do much to cement relations.
252 Meetings in Moscow, 15 to 17 March 1999 Back
253 See
eg The New Caucasus: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in the
1990s, E Herzig, Chatham House, 1999 Back
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