Publications

The three South Caucasus states are responding to the same geopolitical shock with radically different resources, constraints, and choices.

The Trump administration’s success in brokering the Armenia-Azerbaijan deal demonstrates what’s possible when the United States engages seriously in the region. As the TRIPP corridor begins development, American policymakers would do well to look beyond immediate economic opportunities to the strategic landscape taking shape around them. The Caucasus is no longer Russia’s exclusive domain. The South has transformed. The North may follow, with consequences extending far beyond Russia’s borders.

Armenia faces significant challenges to its political stability and geopolitical security as it attempts a high-stakes strategic pivot away from its traditional Russian security patron and toward the West—a reorientation driven not by choice but by necessity, as the country finds itself militarily inferior, diplomatically isolated, and abandoned by unreliable security guarantors.

Since the summer of 2019, Georgia has cycled through periods of crisis and partial recovery, with the increasingly kleptocratic and authoritarian Georgian Dream (GD) government developing sophisticated methods to control public discourse and opinion. The fundamental question that Western policymakers can no longer avoid is: What is more important—a democratic Georgia or a cooperative, friendly Georgia? For years, these aspirations were aligned, but today they have diverged into mutually exclusive policy pathways, each carrying profound implications for regional stability and the credibility of Western engagement.