Bertil Nygren

Putin's Use of Natural Gas to Reintegrate the CIS Region

Putin used energy and transit dependency and Russias state-controlled energy companies as foreign policy instruments against neighboring countries.

Putin's attempt to subjugate Georgia: from sabre-rattling to the power of the purse

Since the demise of the USSR, the South Caucasus has been the most unstable part of Russia’s immediate neighbourhood, and Georgia has been the most unstable of the ‘weak states’ in that neighbourhood.1 As a result, ‘hard security’ issues are intrinsically linked with ‘softer’ security issues, all of which tend to be linked to the chase for hydrocarbon resources in the Caspian/Caucasus area.

Russian Resource Policies towards the CIS Countries

President Dmitri Medvedev is the third Russian president since the demise of the USSR in 1991. While the first began as a political hero and ended as a political wreck and the second began as a political hero and ended his terms still a hero, the third Russian president lacked a charismatic lure and his greatest asset was his predecessor’s support and popularity. The second, Vladimir Putin, began a long journey in 2000 to rebuild what I refer to as ‘Greater Russia’, to recreate Russia as a great power, basically using ‘soft power’ means. The price was high: by the end of his second term, Putin had managed to split up the members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) into those that were more closely tied to Russia and those that were more or less in open conflict with Russia — not necessarily the same constellation as in the Yeltsin years. The inheritance left to Medvedev is strategically to counter the Western drift of some — especially Ukraine and Georgia — and instrumentally to use energy issues as a carrot and stick — cheaper or more expensive oil, gas and electricity. In this chapter I am concerned with how President Medvedev has handled the inheritance with respect to using energy politics, especially gas politics as a foreign policy instrument. My starting point is the status of the ‘rebuilding’ effort by the end of Putin’s second presidential term, and I use primarily Putin’s and Medvedev’s gas politics to illustrate the mechanisms involved.1

Russia and Georgia : from confrontation to war. what is next?

The South Caucasus is the most unstable CIS region and Georgia is the most unstable ‘weak state’ of that region, today as well as historically; traditionally it was a buffer against Turkey and Persia in the early 19th century (Trenin, 2002, pp. 47, 169 and 179–80). Georgia was united in the 12th century, before the Muscovy Russian state (but after the Kievan state), but, like Kievan Russia, was conquered by the Mongols in the 13th century. From the 15th century Georgia was dominated by Turkey and Persia, and sought Russian protection. Russia conquered Georgia in the first half of the 19th century. With the Russian revolution and the ensuing civil war, Georgian self-determination was regained in 1918, but lasted only until 1921, when the Red Army invasion forced Georgia into joining Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Transcaucasus Republic of the USSR (in 1922). Georgia became a Soviet Socialist Republic in 1936 and regained some of its cultural autonomy, but, as happened with the treatment of other borders in the Caucasus, Georgian borders also included non-Georgian peoples and cultures (such as Abkhazians and Ossetians). Today Georgia borders on violence-ridden parts of southern Russia — Chechnya, North Ossetia, and Dagestan. Georgia’s post-Soviet history has been stormy, worth telling because of its many connections with the Russian-Georgian relationship itself. The pivotal part is Abkhazia (located at the eastern shores of the Black Sea), where armed clashes took place between Georgians and Abkhazians as early as 1989, also involving Soviet troops stationed in Abkhazia. In 1990 Abkhazia opted for independence from Georgia and chose its own president. In December 1991, armed clashes broke out in the Georgian capital, and Soviet forces were engaged.