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The failing states of the
Caucasus
By Stephen Blank
As
the deadline for new elections in Azerbaijan and Georgia
approaches, there are increasingly visible reasons to
fear for the stability of both of these countries. And
should either of them descend into conditions of state
failure, that process would constitute a major setback
to both regional security in the Caucasus and the global
"war on terror".
The proximate and long-term
structural causes of potential failure are different in
each case, but ultimately they trace back to the
inability to establish firm, legitimate and competent
governance at home, a situation which inevitably invites
external meddling and ongoing political violence.
Azerbaijan is witnessing regime change. The old
fox and long-term ruler of Azerbaijan, eighty-year-old
Haidar Aliyev, has renounced his power and reelection as
his health is visibly failing. However, he and the Azeri
elite, determined to "retain the Mercedes in the
family", have put up his son, Ilham Aliyev, as the
candidate to succeed him in an effort to emulate what
might be called the "Syrian or dynastic scenario". This
scenario appears to be increasingly popular among rulers
in Central Asia and the Caspian as they begin to
contemplate their mortality, and fear for the fortunes
of their family after their rule comes to an end.
However, in Azerbaijan's case, Ilham is clearly
running into difficulties. Although he has secured the
support and recognition of everyone of Azerbaijan's
principal external interlocutors, including Armenia, it
is clear that his own domestic elite has serious doubts
about his capability, political intelligence and
fortitude.
It should be made clear that nobody
had such doubts about his father. Moreover, his father
and the Azeri elite's misrule, amply documented in
multiple studies, made the country a text book case of
corruption and left it with an economy dependent on oil
and gas pipelines. Compounded by the misallocation of
resources and the elite's failure to resolve the
explosive territorial issue with Armenia, Ilham has been
left quite vulnerable. Mass disaffection is high and the
opposition is clearly profiting from it. In turn, this
has led to an increase in official harassment and
coercion of the opposition to the widespread belief that
the election will be a stolen one.
Even if it is
not a stolen election - a highly unlikely though
possible outcome - the new regime's legitimacy will be
impaired from the start. Both at home and abroad, there
will be sizable and meaningful political forces
committed to undermining whatever legitimacy Ilham will
possess. When that foreign pressure is then added to
doubts about Ilham's staying power, his ability to rule
Azerbaijan and steer between domestic and foreign
pressures remains open to interpretation.
Mindful of these possibilities, Baku (the
capital of Azerbaijan) has lately sought to cement its
military ties to both Moscow and Washington, but its
relations with Iran remain poor and no amount of foreign
support will be able to ensure the regime's stability if
popular unrest explodes, or if elite disaffection mounts
beyond the critical point.
Georgia's case is
different, even if the symptoms of its degeneration are
all too familiar to that of developing nations.
Excessive chauvinism cost Georgia the power to rule over
much of its nominal territory, which includes numerous
ethnic minorities. Its relations with Abkhazia and South
Ossetia are frozen, as those provinces gradually slide
into a kind of quasi-statehood backed up by Russian
bayonets and economic power.
At the same time,
President Edvard Shevarnadze has long since lost the
will and ability to run the Georgian economy. Georgian
corruption and official criminality has reached
legendary proportions and its armed forces survive only
on the basis of that corruption, criminality and
generous foreign aid from the West. While the US-backed
program to train and equip the Georgian military to deal
with terrorists was a success for the US, the economic
misrule of Georgia has given Moscow plenty of
opportunities to turn it into an economic satellite
without threatening it militarily.
Indeed,
because the Georgian public let itself be inveigled into
the belief that it could have electricity for free,
American providers turned around and sold out to
Russia's state electric company. This sale, combined
with Moscow's domination of the gas and oil pipelines,
gives it a virtual hammer lock on Georgia's economy,
regardless of the disposition of its military forces,
which remain intensely interested in striking at the
hated Shevarnadze.
Meanwhile, Shevarnadze is
clearly too tired to campaign for his own party, bring
fresh blood into government, or fight the ubiquitous
corruption. Thus an already quasi-amputated state sinks
deeper into a morass of misgovernment, huge corruption,
private violence, private armies and foreign domination
of key economic assets. In August, Georgia was
proclaimed to be on the verge of default and Shevarnadze
has been reduced to begging for the continuation of
American aid. Although Washington recognizes the
strategic significance of keeping Georgia out of Russian
clutches, it also is dismayed at pouring foreign aid
into the economic equivalent of a black hole. By the
time Shevarnadze's term ends in 2005, the country could
be ripe either for an explosion, implosion or simply for
becoming another state utterly dependent on Moscow, and
possibly to a lesser degree, Washington.
These
possibilities benefit nobody. Russia, rhetoric to the
contrary, cannot afford these failed states. The
possibility in either country of a failed state will
invariably invite new violence and terrorist incursions
of the sort that led al-Qaeda to Georgia's Pankisi
Gorge, its border with Chechnya.
Failure in
Azerbaijan or Georgia, if anything, raises the
possibilities for Russian domination of the key
pipelines and energy holdings in the area. This outcome
is diametrically opposed by both the vital interests of
Azerbaijan and Georgia on the one hand, and of Turkey
and the US on the other.
To no avail, Georgia
and Azerbaijan have constantly appealed to the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization either to take them in - a
most unlikely outcome - or to protect them and their
pipeline. But should a crisis come to pass, one can be
sure that foreign interests will be sucked into this
vortex due to energy interests and the associated threat
of terrorism and ethnic violence.
At present,
nobody seems eager to rock the boat for fear of what
might happen if they do act resolutely in either state.
But it is clear that disintegrative trends are gathering
force, yet nobody seems able or willing to fight or
arrest them.
The failure of Georgia and
Azerbaijan would be a serious blow to the "war on
terrorism". The Caucasus is a vital theater for the US,
as a presence in the Caucasus is necessary to support
the presence of troops in Central Asia. Russia, Iran and
Turkey also define this area in terms of their vital
interests. Thus, if either of theses states does
collapse, not only will their own peoples confront the
resulting anarchy, but regional security will also be
put squarely at risk.
Stephen Blank is
an analyst of international security affairs residing in
Harrisburg, PA.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times
Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information
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