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Analyst: â€œUS policy more focused maintaining status quo and balancing other regional playersâ€

01 June 2011 09:31 (UTC +04:00)

- What needs to happen in South Caucasus countries so that they better integrate into Euro-Atlantic structures? Where do you see the region in the long-term period?

- Different security perceptions of the three South Caucasian states are key obstacles in forging closer relations with each other and it also undermines regional unity, negatively affecting relations with Euro-Atlantic structures. As a result, despite their geographic proximity, three countries have generally fared poorly at interstate cooperation. In order to integrate into Euro-Atlantic space South Caucasian countries need to think on long term security interest of the region, which is not the case at the moment. However, in medium and long term one could predict new regional alliances involving close ties with NATO and EU as result of ongoing substantial changes of strategic environment in the region.

- There is a major disagreement in many countries about the OSCEâ€™s role as a mediator in conflict zones. Is the OSCE an effective mechanism for peacemaking? If not, what should be done to make it more effective?

- OSCE has done everything possible to halt the ethnic violence in many parts of Europe; however, it was less successful in the South Caucasus. To become effective conflict manager the OSCE sometimes may require "intrusion" in the domestic and foreign affairs of participating states, which is not an easy task for organization that works in consensus based environment. It is especially difficult when it has to deal with great powers interest as most of them though formally accept OSCE norms, in reality donâ€™t tolerate OSCEâ€™s active role. This policy consideration is especially true in the regions where great powers have strategic interest. Thatâ€™s the one of the major reason why participating States had failed to reach consensus on the future role of the OSCE.

- Is there anything that the West can do in the Caucasus? What are the main differences in Bush and Obama administrationâ€™s approach to this region?

- During the last two decades the West and particularly EU had a chance to enhance and reposition itself in the South Caucasus; however, EU political visibility as security actor was not as obvious as it could be. Most of the cases it was tied to monitoring conflict resolution process and included small scale support for democratization, good governance and human rights benchmarks. At present it seems that due to its internal difficulties stemming from global financial crisis, enlargement fatigue, war in Afghanistan, and other issues the West lost strategic insight towards South Caucasus. Largely same could be attributed to US policy towards the region. While Bush administration was focused to enhance security ties with South Caucasus and to support further integration of the region into Euro-Atlantic community present US policy constrained by internal priorities as well as â€œresettingâ€ its ties with Russia. The individual countries of the region are not of vital interest to the United States thus its policy more focused maintaining status quo and balancing other regional players.