news.az, Azerbaijan
Jan 23 2010
Karabakh problem of concern to EU and USA – analyst
Sat 23 January 2010 | 08:00 GMT Text size:
Mark Kramer News.Az interviews Mark Kramer, director of the Cold War
Studies Program at Harvard University.
Russian President Medvedev has said that there is no going back to the
Soviet system for Russia. How sincere is this comment? Is it true of
Russia’s policy towards its neighbours?
Russia is not going to return to being the Soviet Union, but under
Putin, who is still the real leader in Russia, Russia has become a
largely authoritarian country that seeks an exclusive sphere of
influence in the CIS, including countries in the South Caucasus.
Russia wants to be the dominant power in the region, unchallenged by
any other country.
There is a view that the West lost Georgia following the 2008 war and
may lose Ukraine after the presidential elections. Is the West losing
the struggle with Russia for influence in the post-Soviet area?
The West has certainly lost some influence in the region in the wake
of the August 2008 war, but many countries in the CIS are very
ambivalent about their ties with Russia. The Collective Security
Treaty Organization has made some headway, but less than the Russians
wanted. I don’t rule out that Western countries could regain some of
their lost influence, as the United States already has in Uzbekistan.
The South Caucasus is full of conflicts. The US and EU seem not to
want to be involved in the settlement of regional conflicts,
especially after the war between Russia and Georgia.
I wouldn’t agree with you. I do think that the EU and the United
States want to serve as mediators in these regional conflicts. The
August 2008 war was a sobering reminder that if the region is left to
Russia, it will just become an array of authoritarian vassal states.
Most Western governments don’t want that. The French and the Germans
might not care much, but the other Western countries do.
Do you view the Karabakh problem between Azerbaijan and Armenia as a
purely regional problem or is it a problem for the whole of Europe, as
Azerbaijan says?
The Karabakh issue has been a flashpoint for the past 22 years and
inspired deadly warfare in the early 1990s. In that sense, the problem
is of concern to all OSCE countries. But ultimately a solution will
become feasible only if Azerbaijan and Armenia reach common ground.
Other countries can help promote that, but no one is going to be able
to impose a lasting solution on the two countries that have a direct
stake in the fate of Karabakh.
How may Georgia and Azerbaijan benefit from membership of NATO?
The question of NATO membership for either of these countries is off
the agenda for the time being, and maybe for a long time to come. The
United States has supported membership for these countries, but the
accession of new members requires unanimous support among NATO
governments. Even before the August 2008 war, the French and the
Germans were adamantly against bringing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO.
Azerbaijani membership wasn’t really on the agenda yet, but I have no
doubt that if it had been, the French and the Germans would have
opposed it. In the wake of the August 2008 war, the NATO governments
have de facto dropped the question of NATO enlargement to include
Georgia or Ukraine or Azerbaijan. I hope that at some point NATO will
revive this issue, but the French and the Germans will undoubtedly do
everything they can to oppose further enlargement.
Mark Kramer is director of the Cold War Studies Program at Harvard
University and senior fellow of Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and
Eurasian Studies.
Aliyah Fridman
News.Az