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.
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