Georgia

Post-Soviet Confidence Games

Confidence-building measures can help to stabilize a conflict, but the stability they generate is often fragile and temporary. In an environment like that in Ukraine, there is a risk that such measures will sustain, not end, the conflict.

Now Crimea’s in the bag, where next for Putin and Russia?

17 March 2014 | Geopolitics in Eastern Europe, Georgia, Notes, Ukraine

A foreign policy “success” like the one Putin has just had with Crimea, may well embolden further Russian moves; the only hope is that the West will be better prepared for a possible next round of conflict with the Kremlin.

The European Union’s South Ossetia Dilemma

2 December 2011 | Confidence Building in the OSCE Region, Geopolitics in Eastern Europe, Georgia, Notes

The dilemma for the EU is that it has put itself in a position in which it cannot side with the people of South Ossetia who, in their majority, have endorsed a female candidate in a presidential election deemed free and fair.

Two decades of ‘frozen’ conflicts in the post-Soviet space

11 July 2011 | Confidence Building in the OSCE Region, Geopolitics in Eastern Europe, Georgia, Moldova, Notes

At the end of 2011, it will be twenty years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union but so-called “frozen conflicts” in Moldova, Georgia, and Azerbaijan stubbornly persist. Why, despite significant international efforts, has no settlement been achieved for these conflicts over the past two decades?

Can the EU do without its Special Representatives?

11 June 2010 | Geopolitics in Eastern Europe, Georgia, Moldova, Notes

As so often with international organisations, the problem might be less the availability of resources and expertise, but the political will to deploy them.