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VOL. 2 (2) – SPRING 2008
Research Papers
Corridor of Power: The Caucasus and Energy Security
(pp. 64-72)
by Tracey C.
German
Governance, the State, and Systemic Corruption: Armenia and Georgia in
Comparison
(pp. 73-83)
by Christoph
H. Stefes
Fluid Party Politics and the Challenge for Democracy Assistance in
Georgia (pp.
84-93)
by Max Bader
US Missile Defense Shield and Russia: Second Cold War as a Farce
(pp. 94-100)
by Rashad
Shirinov
Licensing Afghanistan’s opium: solution or fallacy?
(pp. 101-106)
by Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
Comment
The New Face of Central Asia
(pp. 107-111)
by Ambassador
(ret.) Michael W. Cotter
Research
Papers
Corridor
of Power: The Caucasus and Energy Security
(pp. 64-72)
by
Tracey C. German
This article
examines one of the key drivers of the South Caucasus’s escalating
international significance, its role as both a source of and transit
route for hydrocarbons. Energy security has become a significant factor
driving deepening international engagement with the South Caucasus and
there is a need to ensure reliable and stable export routes for
hydrocarbons from the Caspian Sea region. Whilst the development of new
pipeline infrastructure has brought many benefits to the area, it is
still beset with unresolved conflicts that threaten to undermine the
progress made in terms of economic and political stability, as well as
regional co-operation…read
more
Governance,
the State, and Systemic Corruption: Armenia and Georgia in Comparison
(pp. 73-83)
by
Christoph
H. Stefes
Endemic corruption has been a
destructive legacy of Soviet rule for most successor states of the
Soviet Union. Yet as the two cases of this study demonstrate, corruption
has manifested itself in different ways. While the smooth transition of
power in the early 1990s has allowed Armenia’s political leaders to use
corruption to consolidate firm control over the state apparatus,
Georgia’s tumultuous transition has caused the disintegration of the
state apparatus into feuding groups that abuse their official positions
for private gain. Rebuilding central political authority has therefore
been an arduous journey vulnerable to sudden ruptures…
read more
Fluid
Party Politics and the Challenge for Democracy Assistance in Georgia
(pp. 84-93)
by Max
Bader
Party politics in
Georgia since independence has suffered from a complete lack of
institutionalization, reflected most visibly in the high rate of
turnover of parties. Furthermore, Georgia’s elusive party system has
been affected by regime changes and by abuses of executive authority.
This article highlights the dilemmas inherent to studying fluid party
systems such as that of Georgia and identifies a number of underlying
reasons for the lack of party system institutionalization. Over the
course of a brief overview of international political party assistance
in Georgia, it is argued that party assistance by western actors has not
been responsive to the structural problems of party and party system
development…read
more
US
Missile Defense Shield and Russia: Second Cold War as a Farce
(pp. 94-100)
by Rashad Shirinov
Karl Marx used to say that history
repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. In line with this,
the entire recent idea of a missile defense shield that the US has been
willing to install in Eastern Europe is reminiscent of that of the Cold
War era, when two major superpowers were targeting their strategic
missiles towards each other. And although in 1972 both global powers
agreed on not using anti-ballistic missiles, after two decades US had
reexamined its thinking on the issue. The United States has decided to
deploy radars and interceptors in the Czech Republic and Poland as part
of a missile defense shield against possible Iranian or North Korean
attacks. From the very start, Russia has been seeing the shield as
directed towards itself…read
more
Licensing
Afghanistan’s opium: solution or fallacy?
(pp. 101-106)
by
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
For almost two decades
Afghanistan has been the world’s largest illicit opium producer. Decades
of war, droughts, poverty, and political incapabilities have driven up
the country’s opium production despite counter-narcotics programmes
ranging from forced eradication to alternative development. In 2005,
that is, a few years after the replacement of the Taliban regime by the
Karzai administration, the licensing of Afghan opium for the production of legal medicines such as
morphine and codeine was proposed as a solution to address
illicit Afghan opium production. This proposal benefited from a very
positive stance of the world press, in spite of its many inaccuracies
and fallacies…
read more
Comment
The
New Face of Central Asia
(pp. 107-111)
by Ambassador
(ret.) Michael W. Cotter
For the first
time in centuries, the region from Western China to Iran and from the
Steppes of Russia to Northern India can and, this essay argues, should
be viewed as an entity. Possessed of significant natural resources, and
forming the backyard of five important world powers, the region has
great possibilities for economic development, but it also contains the
potential for conflict among nuclear-armed neighbors. One of the great
challenges of the 21st century will be to ensure that the
region becomes an engine for growth, not for conflict…read
more |
