The Role of Infrastructure in International Relations: the Case of South Caucasus
Davtyan, E.
Abstract:
The research is concentrated on the impact of hard types of infrastructure on international relations in South Caucasus. The matter of fact is that transport, energy and water management infrastructures have always played a key role in the formulation of foreign strategies of Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan. The dislocation of various types of infrastructure has highly influenced the level of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Sometimes the economic and political relations of South Caucasian republics with the neighboring states (i.e. Russia, Turkey and Iran) have been conditioned by the “quantity” and the “quality” of infrastructural development that Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan possessed.
Therefore the research aims at investigating the impact of regional infrastructures on regional affairs in the post-Soviet era, simultaneously drawing parallels with the pre-Soviet period, i.e. during the independent nation-states of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan (1918-1921). The immense progress in high technologies has had a prominent impact on state communications in the scope of national security concepts of the three states. Thus, the struggle for “more infrastructures” becomes more and more important in the context of geopolitical terms, therefore the struggle “through infrastructures” is considered to be one of the efficient ways of policy-making process in the “South Caucasian concert”.
Keywords: South Caucasus, infrastructures, balance of power, international relations, geopolitics
LINK
APA citation
-
Davtyan, E., (2014). The Role of Infrastructure in International Relations: the Case of South Caucasus. International Journal of Social Sciences, III(4), pp. 22-38.