Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
There are still many questions about Armenia’s future in the Russia-led Eurasian Customs Union, as well as the future of the union itself.
To paraphrase Tolstoy, “All democracies are alike, all non-democratic regimes are unhappy in their own way.” This is what should be borne in mind, looking ahead into 2014 in the Caucasus region.
Eurasia Outlook returns in 2014 and in the months ahead it will focus on the issues that are likely to shape the future of Eurasia.
By pretty much any historical standards, the wider Europe at the dawn of 2014 is incredibly peaceful. However, peace in Europe should be a signal not for Panglossian optimism but for redoubled Europeans to be vigilant against the risk of new conflicts, large and small.
The Armenians can use Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s visit to vent some of their frustrations with Turkey—and then get back to talking again.
As the focus is all on Putin's effort to reshape his neighborhood this week, a Kazakh and a Belarusian silence is an awkward reminder that the Eurasian Union was supposed to be a collaborative project and that the more Putin grabs the headlines, the less that is the case.
After its success with Ukraine, Russia will try to blackmail Georgia and Moldova into refusing EU association agreements. Europe needs to think about how to counter Putin.
European support for democracy faces a series of challenges stemming both from the results of the Eurozone crisis and from the difficult state of democracy worldwide. In order to confront these challenges, the EU must rethink its approach.
The October elections in Azerbaijan and Georgia seem to mean different things for those two countries. In Azerbaijan, there is a continuity of Aliev rule that is moving toward sultanism. In Georgia, one could observe the end of one epoch and the beginning of another.
The administration of Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan embraced a Russian takeover of the nation’s economy that left political control in Armenian hands. As Sargsyan began to have second thoughts about this bargain, he found himself short of options.
