Today’s Zaman
September 13, 2014
Will NATO build military bases in Azerbaijan?
Nazila Isgandarova
Intensified tension between Ukraine and Russia and regional instability continue to jeopardize the security of the oil resources of the Caspian Sea and important oil and gas routes. It also triggers the “security vacuum” in the region, which in turn invites rival powers to come along and occupy it.
Therefore, the threat in the region has two dimensions: the threat to the oil supply routes and the prospect of rival powers coming into the region. In this regard, growing competition in the South Caucasus between Russia and the Western powers is another important aspect of Azerbaijan’s security.
The main question is who will fill the security vacuum in the region. Some analysts anticipate that the conflict in Ukraine may result in NATO’s establishment of military bases in Azerbaijan. This speculation is doubted by many analysts due to Russia’s open and explicit position on NATO’s expansion in the South Caucasus.
However, similar doubts were also expressed when NATO showed interest in actively participating in the region in 1995-2000. Their main argument was based on NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana’s statement after a meeting with Armenian President Robert Kocharyan in Brussels that “the alliance was not thinking of deploying any troops in the region.” However, the regional actors, i.e., Azerbaijan, did not exclude the fact that NATO was interested in the security of the pipeline.
NATO’s formal involvement in the Caucasus began as early as 1990 with the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). Almost immediately, as the South Caucasian states became North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) members in 1992, this forum touched upon the conflicts in the region. For instance, the participants of the ministerial meeting of June 5, 1992, paid significant attention to the set of regional problems in the South Caucasus, and in 1994, NATO launched the Partnership for Peace (PfP) project. NATO’s other program, Individual Partnership Action Plans, was launched at the November 2002 Prague Summit and was open to countries that have the political will and ability to deepen their relations with NATO.
In both projects, NATO’s primary task in the region was to adapt its political and military infrastructure to new threats. NATO was able to shift from a realist-based military alliance, which was primarily tasked with protecting the survival of the Euro-Atlantic democracies from communism, to a security alliance geared to managing instability and other nontraditional threats to peace and prosperity across Europe,..
Furthermore, due to NATO’s passive presence in the region, such involvement contributed to a new dilemma in the region that relates to the Western concern about the rapidly developing security relationship between Russia, Iran, China and India in the region.
The relationship with Moscow and Tehran is more problematic. Russia and Iran have identical foreign policy positions regarding the Caspian Sea region; therefore, the alliance between them attempts to block NATO influence in the area and monopolize energy corridors from the Caspian region to Europe, and most important, to prevent NATO’s intervention to protect the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline.
However, recent speculations that NATO may build military bases in Azerbaijan suggest that the issue of security in the South Caucasus has an importance that goes beyond the regional location of the area. NATO’s involvement is important because instability in the area may result in the interruption of oil supplies to other parts of the world. Hence, instability in the region may have grave economic consequences and bring about the danger of regional war.
The security question has been intensified because of the position occupied by the area as regards oil production. It cannot be ignored that oil extracted from the Caspian Sea represents an alternative to the Gulf area for the West. In addition, the oil resources of the Caspian Sea have the potential to contribute to the economic prosperity, energy security and stability of the region.
Therefore, after the conflict in Ukraine, the interest of other parts of the world, particularly, the West and Russia, in Caspian Sea oil and gas has brought a state of confrontation between the US, Russia and Iran in the region. The rivalry between the West and regional powers such as Russia and Iran has created a sense of potential threat to the oil supplies to the West through the BTC. The West and Russia try to demonstrate their military presence in the region. In this way, threats and risks to the Caspian Sea region come from international or regional instability.
Thus, the search for security in the South Caucasus involves international and regional actors. The regional states and the Western companies in the Caspian Sea rely on NATO to reduce these threats and risks in the region.
In conclusion, the security implications in the South Caucasus include the Caspian’s importance in the context of the West’s energy security. Azerbaijan and Georgia have high expectations of NATO to address the security challenges in the region, but NATO and its member countries still do not have a clear strategy and appropriate methods to address these security challenges.
*Nazila Isgandarova is a Toronto-based researcher and author of “The Nectar of Passion.”
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