The Caucasus is a region on the Eurasia bordered on the south by Turkey and Iran, on the west by the Black Sea, on the east by Caspian Sea, on the north by the Russia. The northern portion of the Caucasus is known as the North-Caucasus and the souther...
The Caucasus is a region on the Eurasia bordered on the south by Turkey and Iran, on the west by the Black Sea, on the east by Caspian Sea, on the north by the Russia. The northern portion of the Caucasus is known as the North-Caucasus and the southern portion as the Transcaucasus. The nation-states are Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and various parts of Russia. The Russian divisions include Krasnodar Krai, Stavropol Krai, and the autonomous republics of Adygea, Kalmykia, Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya and Dagestan. Four territories in the region claim independence but are not generally acknowledged as nation-states by the international community: Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Ajaria and South Ossetia.
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Caucasus remained the most conflict-prone part of the former Soviet Union. Taking advantage of results of the fall of Communism, U.S. push their own regional agendas that make geopolitical change in Caucasus. Russia sees itself caught between NATO to the west and chaos to the south. In the Caucasus, Russia has lost its strategic defensive structures against NATO's southern flank in Turkey. Moscow perceives this loss as significant, given NATO expansion east and the alliance's willingness to use force in the extended European arena. Explicit statements of intent to join NATO by georgia and Azerbaijan have angered Russian policymakers, along with the active involvement of regional states in NATO's Partnership for Peace Program, and the formation of regional alliance among states that have opted out of the Russian-led CIS security structures(the so-called GUUAM group of Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbeskistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova).
The Caucasus have become Europe's backyard, and the European Union and key states like Germany are beginning to formulate long-term plans for engagement with the region. As North Sea energy reserved diminish, Europe will also put greater emphasis on Caspian energy. Over the next decade, if Turkey and the Eastern European and Baltic states accede to the Union, Russia will be the only country separating an expanded Europe from Central Asia and the Caucasus.
The Caspian Basin itself has become one of the principal points of tension in U.S.-Russian relations.
Russia was critical to U.S.'s foreign policy agenda and NATO foreign policy. Putin's regime challenges to the rapidly changing world situation by countermeasures. Russia published a New National Security Concept and a New Foreign Policy Concept approved by President Vladimir Putin in 2000, which describes the country's diplomacy as protecting the country's national interests. The new concepts says that "new challenges and threats to Russia's national interests are emerging in the international sphere, while the tendency towards a uni-polar structure of the world, in which the U.S. dominates economically and militarily, is strengthening". Russia's foreign minister emphasized that Russia will strive for a multi-polar system of international relations that will reflect the diversity of the present-day world and its diverse interests in a real way, and that Russia has always been and will be a great power, a powerful military and nuclear power and that the role of Russia is the role of a great power in the world order of the 21st century taking shape today.
But Russia's policy toward the Caucasus failed to transform improvised responses to regional challenges into a coherent strategy. The States of the Caucasus have become objects of policy rather than allies or partners. Competing policy priorities between America and Russia have served to confuse regional states.
The Caucasus is a strategic border zone for Russia, Turkey and Iran. The regions secured places on the geopolitical agendas of these three states long before large-scale energy exploitation in the Caspian Sea. The United States first official foray into the Caucasus came in 1991.