Date of Award

6-2015

Document Type

Open Access

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Political Science

Second Department

Russian and East European Studies

First Advisor

Kristen Bidoshi

Second Advisor

Michele Angrist

Language

English

Keywords

intervention, armenian, conflict, context, crisis

Abstract

My research focuses on Russia's foreign policy interests and actions in the context of the post-soviet space and its relations with western nations and organizations. I used three case studies: the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict, the Russo- Georgian War, and the Crimean Crisis. The Russian government has pursued intervention in these areas for various reasons. The most prominent of these reasons are ethnicity, religion, irredentism, great power politics, and economics. The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict centers on the Eastern Orthodox Armenian enclave in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, a nation otherwise consisting of a majority of Turkic Sunni Muslims. The Russo-Georgian War was fought in the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Ethnic issues were a part of the outbreak in fighting, but fighting also erupted due to Georgia becoming a transport state for oil and natural gas through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline. Russia sees Georgia as a competitor and so aided separatist rebels. The Crimea Crisis was studied in the context of current events and the history of the marginalized Muslim Tatars in the region. I analyze Russia's motivations for intervention, the type of intervention it pursued, international mediation, and the outcomes of the conflicts.

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