On April 3, 2024, a group of mujahideen from the Caucasus affiliated with Syrian jihadi group Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), released a nine-and-a-half-minute video in Russian.
Can we stop things falling apart? 2024 begins with wars burning in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine and peacemaking in crisis. Worldwide, diplomatic efforts to end fighting are failing. More leaders are pursuing their ends militarily. More believe they can get away with it.
Here’s the full text of the written interview that I gave to Dutch journalist Laura Oorschot, who incorporated some of the insight during her appearance on blckbx’s livestream on this subject on 22 September.
Abstract: The world has never been safe for small and vulnerable countries. Their perilous position has been largely determined by weak economic, political and military capabilities, which deprive them of the ability to ensure their national security effectively. The existing literature concerning national security of small and vulnerable countries reveals that overemphasis is placed upon diplomacy as the major instrument of advancing the national interests of such states while overlooking the importance of their supportive institutions, such as intelligence services. The literature regarding the role of intelligence services in national security demonstrates that the secretive nature of intelligence activities and their association with “dirty tricks” of statecraft demonises intelligence services, ultimately undermining their role in national security. Moreover, discrediting the intelligence services is fueled by frequently blaming the intelligence community for strategic failure, even when the inadequate political decision-making process causes it. Inquiring into the Georgian national security environment, which exemplifies well the difficulties faced by small and vulnerable countries, allows us to review and challenge the existing trends in academia regarding the interplay between intelligence and national security.
The 10th anniversary of the start of Ukraine’s Euromaidan, when thousands of demonstrators set up a protest camp in Kyiv’s central square, was last week.
Ukraine’s economy had been struggling and the Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych knew something had to be done to create new opportunities. Meanwhile the EU’s Eastern Partnership, the platform used by Brussels to engage with Eastern Europe, was keen to deepen relations with the countries of east, especially Ukraine. This led to a proposed political association and free trade agreement between the EU and Kyiv.
The North Caucasus has always been and remains a strategically important object of global geopolitics and geopolitical competition. Throughout Russia’s history, the Western political system has wanted to destabilize the North Caucasus in order to disintegrate the territorial integrity of the state. In the strategy of Western intelligence services in the North Caucasus, special attention is paid to the religious and ethnic factor.
The turmoil spreading across the globe makes it difficult to meaningfully respond to individual crises. The resulting expectation of impunity is emboldening aggressors.
In the last months alone, a bloody civil war has broken out in Sudan; Azerbaijan has conquered the Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh; a Serbian militia has tried to destabilize the north of Kosovo; military coups have proliferated in Africa; the Sahel zone is increasingly turning to anarchy; and Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine continues unabated. The latest outbreak of violence, Hamas’s terrorist attack on southern Israel followed by Israeli retaliation on the Gaza strip, could still escalate into a devastating conflagration across the Middle East.
Instead of Russian and Western drafts of a peace treaty, there will now only be one: Azerbaijan’s.
Last month, Azerbaijan used force to seize control over Nagorno-Karabakh, a long-disputed ethnic Armenian enclave, displacing almost the entire Karabakh Armenian population. It might seem that their exodus has paved the way for a comprehensive peace deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia: after all, if the Armenian presence in the region is no longer a political factor, what is there to argue about? Yet Karabakh was not the only source of conflict between the two countries. Behind it loom other territorial disputes.
By the time the last bus carrying ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh arrived in Goris, an Armenian city on the border with Azerbaijan, the scale of the tragedy had become clear.
The 19 September lightning offensive by Azerbaijan ended thirty years of self-rule in the breakaway region, located within its borders but – historically and as a result of the long-running conflict – inhabited almost exclusively by ethnic Armenians.
By the time the last bus carrying ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh arrived in Goris, an Armenian city on the border with Azerbaijan, the scale of the tragedy had become clear.
The 19 September lightning offensive by Azerbaijan ended thirty years of self-rule in the breakaway region, located within its borders but – historically and as a result of the long-running conflict – inhabited almost exclusively by ethnic Armenians.