January 2006
Coddling the Caucasus
Iran's Strategic Relationship with Azerbaijan and Armenia
This article analyzes the geopolitics of the Southern Caucasus through a Neorealist paradigm and demonstrates how Iran's behavior and actions in the region are a direct result of the anarchical system that ensued after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. The author argues that the lack of a bipolar system in the Caucasus is pushing the region to the brink of another regional conflict that could potentially be more far-reaching and widespread than the rather contained Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Iran's foreign policy demonstrates Iran's pragmatism in the Southern Caucasus, maintains the author; dictated not by religious ideology, but rather by national interests.
© 2006 The Caucasian Review of International Affairs (CRIA)
Download:
Author:
Geoffrey Gresh
Publication:
Publisher:
Caucasian Review of International Affairs (CRIA), Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Share this:
