A Transnational Policy for Conflict Reduction and Prevention in the South Caucasus

Robert M. Cutler

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A Transnational Policy for Conflict Reduction and Prevention in the South Caucasus

Robert M. Cutler

This article examines conflicts in the South Caucasus with a view towards means for their interdependent resolution. It begins by reviewing briefly in succession situations in Georgia: Abkhazia, Ajaria, Javakhetia, and Tskhinvali (South Ossetia). A comparative qualitative analysis then follows that is heuristic rather than definitive. The situation in Mountainous Karabagh is juxtaposed to this, and complicating factors are identified. On that basis, a policy initiative for the South Caucasus is described, building upon the extensive considerations previously elaborated in a report by the Centre for European Policy Studies. A focus on nongovernmental actors in particular leads to reflections how to create potential transgovernmental and transsocietal socio-political coalitions for conflict reduction and prevention. Specifically, possibilities are considered for moving towards an institution such as a transnational Assembly for Regions and Peoples of the South Caucasus. Issues of institutional design are considered and assessed on the basis of existing comparative work on international parliamentary formations.

1. Ethnic Disputes and Conflict Resolution

Tishkov (1997) has decisively demolished the applicability of many general Western theories of ethnic conflict to the former Soviet area. He indicts Western scholars also for an over-dependence upon quantitative data from official sources, without attention to how those data were collected or aggregated. Most notably, he has empirically demonstrated, by reference to Soviet census methodology, the fallacies of relying upon categories

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of nationality derived from Soviet census data. (See Lijphart, 1980, for a related, general warning about drawing conclusions about intersubjective phenomena from subjective individual-level data.) As Director of the Institute of Ethnology in Moscow since the Gorbachev era and Minister of Nationalities under Yeltsin in the mid-1990s, Tishkov arrives at propositions that he intends to be policy- relevant. He does this by establishing categories of variables under the rubrics “out of conflict,” “from tension to violence,” and “governing ethnicity in the non-violent stage” (Cutler, 2000).

His conclusions here inform the further empirical examination here undertaken. Affirming Tishkov’s criticisms of Western approaches, this research adopts a qualitative methodology, using the “most similar systems” method (Meckstroth, 1975; Skocpol and Somers, 1980). The four intra- Georgian conflicts enumerated above provide a series of pair-wise comparisons. Indicative binary variables that operationalize concepts from Tishkov’s concluding chapters include the presence or absence of a local strongman, of an irredentist ethnos or a militant diaspora, of the feasibility of a federal solution, and of a majoritarian ethnic group on the ground. The “coding” of these variables and the necessarily heuristic analysis of the ensemble follows a brief narrative background to the conflict situations themselves.

1.1 Abkhazia

In 1988 an organization called the Abkhazian Forum proclaimed Abkhazia independent from Georgia, provoking military clashes. In 1990 the Supreme Soviet of Georgia overruled a formal declaration of independence adopted a few days earlier by the Supreme Soviet of Abkhazia. In 1992 the Russian Federation mediated the first unsuccessful ceasefire agreement. The Abkhaz rebellion festered through the fall and winter of 1992-1993, during which time Eduard Shevardnadze won a landslide presidential victory in Georgia. In August the UN Observer mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) was created. In mid-September, after UN monitors began to arrive, the ceasefire was massively violated to the advantage of the Abkhaz, with strong evidence of complicity by Russian military staff. Ethnic cleansing of the non-Abkhaz populations of Abkhazia during and after the fighting created nearly 300,000 internally displaced persons in Georgia.

In December 1993, a “Memorandum of Understanding between Georgia and Abkhazia” was agreed in Geneva, followed in April 1994 by a “Declaration on Measures for a Political Settlement of the Georgian-Abkhaz Conflict.” (The latter is the only official document that discusses possible constitutional arrangements and power sharing.) Under the terms of international arrangements agreed by the parties, Russia has the authority in Abkhazia to convene meetings with the conflicting sides and to motivate the activities of a variety of multilateral forums under the aegis of

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the Commonwealth of Independent States and also the United Nations, the latter including Friends of the UN Secretary-General for Georgia (FOG), which comprises France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The Sukhumi authorities have never backed off from their demand that Georgia recognize Abkhazia’s independence as a precondition for any formal negotiations. They contend that these should culminate in an Abkhazian sovereignty within a equal federation with Georgia. Georgia, for its part, has refused to consider any settlement other than an Abkhazia within Georgia. Georgia remains willing to grant Abkhazia a large degree of autonomy within a federal Georgia, exceeding even the degree of Tatarstan”s autonomy within the Russian Federation, but the Abkhazian leadership will negotiate nothing other than the details of independence. In November 1997, under the UN’s aegis, the Coordinating Council of the Georgian and Abkhaz Parties was created, with the participation by the OSCE and the Russian Federation. It comprises three working groups: military security, refugee problems, and economic cooperation and development. Since then a modus vivendi—but little real progress towards a political settlement—has been achieved.

1.2. Ajaria

Ajaria, an Autonomous Republic inside Georgia under the Soviet regime, retained de facto autonomy after 1991 even though Georgian independence was established as a unitary state without autonomous sub-units. Aslan Abashidze has run Ajaria since the early 1990s as President of its Supreme Soviet and leader of its dominant political force, the Revival Party. For the 31 October 1999 parliamentary elections, opponents to Shevardnadze’s rule throughout Georgia largely coalesced around Abashidze’s party, although many of Shevardnadze’s opponents are in Tbilisi. Shevardnadze’s party, the Union of Citizens of Georgia, won a solid majority of the seats.

In mid-February 2000, Abashidze split the opposition coalition by filing papers to oppose Shevardnadze in the presidential election. Shevardnadze held talks with Abashidze agreeing to a division of power between the regional and central authorities, and also resolving a dispute over the region’s contributions to the state budget. Two days before the election, Shevardnadze again visited Abashidze in Batumi; the next day Abashidze withdrew from the race, declined to endorse the candidacy of Shevardnadze’s main remaining opponent, and retracted his previous threats to boycott the election. Within days after the elections gave Shevardnadze another term of office, the Parliament in Tbilisi amended the constitution to create the Ajarian Republic as a political entity, effectively federalizing the Georgian state.

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There is no question of Ajarian secession from Georgia. Partly for this reason, Ajaria is actually one of the economically more prosperous regions of Georgia. The issue of the Russian military presence in Batumi is, for Abashidze, in principle separate from internal Georgian question of determining the rights and responsibilities of the region vis-à-vis the central authorities in Tbilisi (Radvanyi and Beroutchchvili, 1999).

1.3. Javakhetia

Javakhetia is divided into two districts called Akhalkalaki and Ninotsminda (formerly Bogdanovka), which are also the names of the district capitals that make up about 20 per cent of the total population. Together the two districts cover about 850 square miles with a population slightly over 100,000, of which over 90 per cent is Armenian. (Armenians settled in southern Georgia after 1828, when a treaty ceded the region from Turkey to Russia.) However, Armenians make up only about one-third of the population of Meskhetia, mostly in the Akhaltstikhe district, so that they constitute about 40 per cent of the population of the whole administrative region called Samtskhe-Javakhetia. This region is also called Meskheti-Javakhetia. Meskhetia will be remembered as the place where the “Meskhetian Turks” lived, of whom Stalin deported all 90,000 to Central Asia in one night during World War II.

The Armenian national movement in Javakhetia formed in response to events in Mountainous Karabagh. Both regions border Armenia proper, and Armenians are the overwhelming majority of the population in each. Volunteers from Akhalkalaki in Javakhetia went to fight in Karabagh from the time of the first armed clashes there. An anti-Armenian sentiment infused Georgia in the early 1990s as Armenians in Abkhazia initially supported that region’s separatism. Although Javakhetia was effectively outside Tbilisi’s control from the late 1980s through 1991, the self-constituted political-administrative apparatus of the region voluntarily dissolved itself once Shevardnadze came to power and named a prefect acceptable to the local population. The region accepted the Tbilisi regime; the Armenian organization “Javakhk” no longer exists per se in Javakhetia. Formed in response to Gamsakhurdia’s “Georgianization” policies, the Javakhk mainstream and its representatives have under Shevardnadze sought only cultural autonomy. This is now guaranteed as the large majority of schools are taught in Armenian, using textbooks published in Armenian that are provided to the region via an intergovernmental agreement with Tbilisi.

Javakhk was not a political party and its members have dispersed their activities among legally constituted parties. The most radical members of Javakhk have had ties with the Armenian “Dashnak” party and demand unification with Armenia. There is also a significant pro-Georgian faction, as well as a segment through which Russia exerts a certain influence.

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Neither the Armenians in Javakhetia nor the government in Erevan seeks to detach Javakhetia from Georgia, although the insistence upon autonomy is a propaganda tool of some Armenian political parties. Leaders of the former Javakhk mainstream agree that tensions are rooted in social problems; Russian military bases in and around Akhalkalaki are strategically sensitive but even more important economically. Indeed, these bases are a source of employment for many Armenians, who have taken temporary Russian citizenship to qualify for the work. These bases are indeed the most important employers in the region. Shevardnadze has signed an agreement with Russia permitting them to remain, but that agreement has not been ratified by the Georgian parliament. Over a thousand families depend on the main Russian base. For local residents, the bases represent a job, cheap products, and (locally accepted Russian) money. Ex-Javakh leaders feel that deeper ties with Armenia may help to resolve local problems. President Kocharian of Armenia has agreed that his country could indeed play a role in relieving the socio-economic tension in the region, by providing electricity, building roads and even sending even school teachers.

However, the Armenian government has not supported the demands of some in Javakhetia for the region to obtain a separate administrative status within Georgia. Under conditions of the Turkish blockade on trade, Armenia’s only overland egress is through Ajaria, which is adjacent to the Samtskhe-Javakhetia administrative region. Were Javakhetia to separate, Armenian imports and exports would have to traverse three rather than two Georgian provinces, adding administrative complication. The Armenian residents tend to regard their relations with the Russians as an integral part of the existing social order, and some even claim that the Russians are a deterrent against Turkey. They realize that this opens the way for the Russians to use them as a geopolitical pawn but for the moment they see no alternative, despite Shevardnadze’s stated willingness to increase social programs and economic investment in the region. The realization of such programs is complicated by the fact that the Akhalkalaki region, one of the economically least developed in Georgia, is principally agricultural and has a sometimes difficult topography. Communications in Javakhetia (road, rail, etc.) are in general poor, as is infrastructure overall.

1.4. Tskhinvali (South Ossetia)

In 1989 the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast within the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic declared itself part of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, where North Ossetia is to be found. In August 1990, it declared itself sovereign; four months later Georgia replied by abolishing South Ossetia’s autonomous status within Georgia. This led

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first to armed confrontations and then, on 28 November 1991, to South Ossetia’s declaration of independence. In April 1992, Georgia reestablished the South Ossetia as an Autonomous Oblast. In June of the same year a cease-fire agreement, negotiated between the presidents of Russia and Georgia, stopped the eighteen-month war.

Ethnic unrest nevertheless escalated in mid- 1992. Within a period of weeks over 100,000 refugees fled to North Ossetia, in the Russian Federation, where ethnic Ingush refugees in the Prigorodnyi (literally “Suburban”) region around the capital Vladikavkaz were demanding the re-attachment of that region to Ingushetia, from which Stalin had severed it. The presence of so many refugees strained resources, led to disputes and unrest, and resulted in the appointment of a special prefect from Moscow to head an emergency administration. Ethnic Ossetes in North and South Ossetia alike began to call for reunification of their territory. In South Ossetia, Russia brokered an agreement providing for the deployment of a tripartite Russian, Georgian, and Ossetian force to guarantee civil peace and encourage residents to return there.

The Russian Federation continues to play a leading role in multilateral forums various under the aegis of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The OSCE provides political guidance to the Joint Control Commission (JCC), created by the 1994 agreement and originally charged with overseeing the trilateral, Georgian-Russian-South Ossetian) peacekeeping force. The JCC later expanded its activities later to include promotion of South Ossetia’s economic reintegration into Georgia. In this connection it has undertaken practical programs for cooperation among local officials. North Ossetia, which is part of the Russian Federation, participates autonomously in the activities of the JCC.

In 1995 the Parliament of Georgia adopted a new constitution that left open the question of Georgia’s territorial and administrative structure in relation to South Ossetia (as well as Abkhazia). President Shevardnadze proposed a federal solution. Bilateral talks led to the agreement in Moscow, in July 1996, of a framework agreement officially titled the “Memorandum on Measures to Provide Security and Strengthen Mutual Trust Between the Sides in the Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict.” (Also in 1996 Georgia changed the official name of the region from South Ossetia to Tskhinvali, which is also the name of its administrative center.) The 1996 Memorandum provides for return of refugees, negotiations on political arrangements, and round-table meetings of mass media, civic organizations and intellectuals from both sides. A new administration took office in the region that was not connected with the immediately preceding conflict period. Working arrangements on practical every- day matters have followed since then.

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Negotiations over the status of the region began in March 1997 in Moscow but have not made progress. Neither have proposals for an interim agreement been followed up. The South Ossetian side awaits the outcome in Abkhazia to define the widest limit of any possible autonomy they may subsequently negotiate. The fact that the region now has a government that is not implicated in the earlier conflict has been very important in readying the population to accept eventual Georgian jurisdiction. The approximately 30,000 refugees from the region now living in Georgia appear to consider improved economic conditions on par with security issues in determining to return. On 8 April 2001, South Ossetia held a referendum changes to its constitution that were intended to increase presidential power. Voter turnout was roughly two-thirds, of whom two-thirds again approved the changes. Since the “Republic of South Ossetia” held the referendum on its own initiative without central Georgian participation, the EU and the OSCE condemned it and declared it illegal and void.

2. Analysis

2.1. Inspection of the Four Cases

Table 1 takes relevant variables from Tishkov’s work and evaluates their presence or absence in each of the four situations discussed above. The situations are assessed as they stand at the end of 2002. This classificatory exercise is essentially ahistorical. It does not address how the “observations” may have evolved over time or the interdependence of the conflict situations. For example, ethnic Armenians were a majority in Javakhetia until 1995, when the region was merged into the larger Samtskhe-Javakheti administrative district. Also, it is possible to argue that in South Ossetia there was a local strongman earlier in the 1990s, although not today. In the instance of Abkhazia, some irrendentism with ethnic groups in the neighboring region of the Russian federation was evident in the early 1990s.

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The inspection of Table 1 from the “most similar systems” standpoint yields the following observations. In the Abkhazia-Ajaria comparison, the absence of irredentism/diaspora promotes success, while the absence of an ethnic majority on the ground and the possibility of a federal solution may be contributing factors. In the Javakhetia-Tskhinvali comparison, the presence of irredentism/diaspora promotes success. In the Abkhazia-Javakhetia comparison, the absence of a local strongman and the absence of an ethnic majority, separately or together, may promote success. In the Ajaria-Tskhinvali comparison, the presence of a local strongman promotes success, while the availability of a federal solution may be a contributing factor. From these observations, the following findings arise. The presence of a majoritarian ethnic group on the ground never promotes success. The possibility of a federal solution has promoted success for Javakhetia but not for Abkhazia or Tskhinvali. The presence of an irredentism/diaspora has promoted success for Javakhetia but not for Abkhazia. The presence of a local strongman has promoted success for Ajaria but not for Abkhazia.

From a methodological standpoint, causal inferences are unwarranted. To start with, there are four cases and five variables. It is possible to eliminate sets of variables and do multiple pairwise comparisons with the identical pair of cases—i.e., considering first only variables 1, 2, and 5; then 1, 3, and 5; and so forth—such that each “pairwise” comparison of cases in fact comprises six three-variable comparisons. Even then, however, all these tests would not be mutually independent. For such an hypothesis as “an ethnic majority never produces success,” the requisite qualifying condition is “where the majority does not protect the minority”; and even here, there is only one case. (But on the utility of case studies for nomothetic research, see Lijphart, 1971, 1975.)

Clearly there is a more complex dynamic at work than this simple categorical analysis is able to capture. Nevertheless, consideration of the cases on their idiosyncratic basis, eschewing the search for nomothetic laws, reveals that federalism is not a panacea for resolving problems of Georgia’s territorial integrity, although it can help. South Ossetian elites have in the past greeted favorably the prospect of federal status within Georgia. The establishment of South Ossetia as a federal Georgian entity in this context would be a promising development. Unfortunately, this is less likely an outcome today than a few years ago. Even if such a federal precedent may help resolve the status of South Ossetia, it would not satisfy Abkhazian demands. In Abkhazia, the indigenous leadership has long rejected the idea of inclusion within the Georgian state. For example, the congratulations addressed to Shevardnadze by Abkhazia’s leader Vladislav Ardzinba upon Shevardnadze’s re-election were couched in protocol reserved for

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communications between heads of state. Neither traditional federal nor even confederate arrangements will solve the Abkhazia problem.

To establish Javakhetia as a federal entity, on the other hand, could create more problems than it solves. The districts comprising Javakhetia are part of a larger administrative region called Samtskhe-Javakhetia. The Virk party in Javakhetia, demanding autonomy, rejected a call by Armenian President Robert Kocharian to support Shevardnadze for re-election. Armenia and Georgia have taken steps to ameliorate the region’s difficult economic situation. Although President Shevardnadze has identified the guarantee of Georgia’s territorial integrity as the state’s highest priority, even the emergence of Georgian federalism might not be enough. Georgia and the South Caucasus as a whole require a comprehensive international political initiative.

2.2. The Karabagh Case

Does the foregoing shed any light on the conflict in Mountainous Karabagh? The current conflict in Mountainous Karabagh broke out in the late 1980s when, under conditions of Gorbachev’s glasnost, the Karabagh Armenians began political organizing to take their territory out of Azerbaijan’s hands. They sought to unify the territory with Armenia, notwithstanding the absence of a common land border. In February 1988 the Supreme Soviet of Mountainous Karabagh voted such a reunification with the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. Moscow thereupon abolished the local government there and instituted direct rule from Moscow through a Special Administration Committee. Karabagh forces responded by seizing the Azerbaijani town of Lachin, key to the “Lachin corridor” where a narrow winding mountain road (much improved since, thanks to funds from the Armenian diaspora) connects Karabagh to Armenia. Then, turning northward, they seized and held Azerbaijan’s Kelbajar district, which is not part of Mountainous Karabagh. This move abolished Karabagh as an enclave and attached it geographically to the main body of Armenia. It also turned Karabagh into an aggressor in the eyes of world public opinion. The situation on the ground has changed little since.

The OSCE Minsk Group is the focal point for multilateral consultations about Karabagh since the disintegration of the Soviet state. Its consultations were the basis for the decision by the OSCE to deploy peacekeeping forces in Karabagh, as Russia did not receive—either from the CIS Collective Security Committee or from the United Nations—the mandate it sought to play such a role.

At its 1995 Lisbon Summit, the OSCE passed a resolution calling for the “highest degree of autonomy” of Mountainous Karabagh within the Azerbaijan, the territorial integrity of which was to be preserved. All

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OSCE states except for Armenia accepted the resolution. In 1997 the Minsk Group proposed: (1) Armenian withdrawal from all of the occupied territories, (2) a buffer zone to be patrolled by an OSCE peacekeeping force, (3) an OSCE-administered lease of the “Lachin corridor” from Azerbaijan to Karabagh, (4) return of all ethnic-Azeri displaced persons people to the occupied region, (5) lifting of all economic blockades, and (6) Karabaghi self-government within Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan accepted the document as a basis for negotiations, but Armenia and Karabagh responded that adequate guarantees of security were necessary to facilitate withdrawal from the occupied territories.

In 1998, the Minsk Group adopted the Russian proposal for a “common state,” meaning a de facto independent Karabagh that could not secede unilaterally from Azerbaijan, and with which it was have non-hierarchical relations. Armenia and Karabagh accepted this proposal while Azerbaijan rejected it. The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan were said to have been close in 1999 to an agreement somewhat resembling the “common state” although under another name, until the political situation within Armenia became stalemated, after a Erevan journalist entered the Armenian Parliament building while it was in session and assassinated many members of the national leadership. (See, inter alia, Tavitian, 2000.)

The later “Key West” formula has not been publicly disclosed, but it seems to include withdrawal of Armenian troops from six of the seven Azerbaijani administrative districts that they occupy, the bundling together of Mountainous Karabagh with its Lachin land corridor as a self-governing region within Azerbaijan, and an internationally patrolled corridor through Armenia’s Meghri district, to link Azerbaijan with to its exclave Nakhichevan. The Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations in Key West were said to have been “very fruitful,” with a significant narrowing of differences between the sides and the development of basic principles of a new package deal. Despite the optimism emerging from the Key West summit, the momentum for a settlement has nevertheless been lost.

Categorically, following Table 1, Mountainous Karabagh is most identical with the Abkhazia case. The distinctive feature of the Karabagh case, however, which is not characterisic of any of those four cases, is that the leadership of the irredentist region has itself gained executive power in one of the existing states in the region. It is not without reason that many Armenians in Erevan refer to their state, since Robert Kocharian’s elevation to the presidency, as the “Republic of Greater Karabagh.” Nevertheless, the fact of gaining influence over the state policy of Armenia would be promising if this meant that the leadership could take progressive steps towards settlement.

2.3. A First Attempt at Comprehensive Settlement

The only comprehensive initiative for a region- wide resolution of conflict situations in the South Caucasus remains the “Stability Pact for the South Caucasus&rdquo published by the Centre for European Policy Studies (Celac and Emerson, 2000; Emerson, Tocci, and Prokhova, 2000; Tocci, 2001). In this vision, neither of two European stability pacts of the 1990s was a pure model for the Caucasus. The Balladur Stability Pact of 1994–95 was EU preventative diplomacy, designed to clear up frontier and minority problems among accession candidate countries, using this as a precondition for accession and therefore a strong incentive mechanism to settle. The Balkan Stability Pact of 1999 is a soft conference mechanism, dependent upon the earlier NATO intervention, that held the incentive of integration into the EU as a carrot. The Caucasus Stability Pact was to be devised differently. One suggested possibility, for example, was for a trilateral understanding, formal or informal, comprising the Russia, the EU and the U.S., to sketch its agenda. Such an understanding might include not only conflict resolution and prevention but also a South Caucasus Community eventually linked to an OSCE regional security system, as well as broader institutionalized Black Sea–Caucasus–Caspian economic and political cooperation.

The ambitiousness of the project is signalled, inter alia, by its proposal to establish without adequate preparation a regional parliament for the South Caucasus that bears a striking resemblance to the European Parliament, which has required over four decades to reach its present stage of evolution, departing moreover form cultural, economic, historical, and sociological conditions that differed radically from those obtaining the South Caucasus today. It is not surprising that, despite the positive reception of the plan as a whole and its modest success in certain other areas, its parliamentary complement has remained a nonstarter. The whole Caucasus Stability Pact initiative has folded into a series of meetings and conferences now dubbed the Peaceful Caucasus Process.

The remainder of this article seeks to refine and redefine the parliamentary component of the ambitious Caucasus Stability Pact plan. A more theoretically-informed approach to policy, akin to what Ruggie (1998) called “social constructivism in action,” may be indicated. In the present instance, one might seek pragmatically to “unpack” the states into institutional and cognitive elements. The reason for making this distinction is better to induce change in state behavior through influence upon the formation of national interest and policies to realize it. One might even refer to this as the creation of a “transnational interest.” Relatively new inter-NGO networks in the South Caucasus have already begun this process. It needs to continue also at the national political levels. The question in both

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theory and practice then becomes the combination of research with initiatives for policy activity to implement the societally generated “transnational interests” within key sections of the respective state bureaucracies.

3. Towards the Parliamentarization of Transnational Conflict

3.1. Applied Theory as the Basis for a Real Solution

Such an approach is founded in a constructivism that recognizes the primacy of states in certain security issues and works with them (Boekle/Rittberger/Wagner, 1999). A domestic political system must be able to convert the elements of national power—particularly human demography and economic geography—into political resources. However, that “conversion process” develops at different rates in different places (Knorr, 1970, 1975). Indeed, “overlay” (Buzan, 1991) has made the operation of independent security dynamics in the region impossible. It is accurate to speak of a race between the governments’ penetration of their own societies and their own penetration by the international system. States, while enjoying some relative autonomy (Moore, 1966), remain an interface between demands and supports originating internationally and domestically. This dynamic is further complicated, and the acuteness of the situation continually exacerbated, by sociological phenomena such as diasporas, low-intensity ethnic conflict, and international migration, which significantly affect the construction, development, and definition of national interests of states and their construction of images of security (Coppieters, 1996; see also Adler/Barnett, 1998, and Buzan/Waever/deWilde, 1998).

It is instructive to synthesize the perspectives of social constructivism and organizational theory. Trondal (1999) has done this with an applied focus on the EU’s committees and working groups, but the South Caucasus is a more conflictual region than that. Paradoxically, to promote a “security community” in the South Caucasus requires de-securitization of conflict issues in the region. How is this to be accomplished? Transgovernmental institutions (Slaughter, 1997) are spaces of focus for emergent transnational advocacy coalitions. There they can communicate with one another and with disaggregated elements of formal state organizations. A focus on transgovernmental institutions ceases to restrict the stakeholders to states alone, yet does not exclude them altogether.

It follows that any sort of a regional South Caucasus parliamentary assembly should not seek from the start to legislate supranationally. Rather, it should more modestly act as a focal point for NGOs and inter-NGO networks. Such an assembly should build upon recently formed interparliamentary working commissions among the South Caucasus governments, which are organized by the Speakers of the three national parliaments under the aegis of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council

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of Europe. This strategy promotes the resolution of the state security dilemma through a transnationalized “deepening” of security (Krause/Williams, 1997), because such forums present the opportunity to adopt common goals and to identify the means to realize them. (Finnemore, 1996a, 1996b, provides the basis for this possibility in discussions of “sociological institutionalism.”)

When specified and operationalized in space and time, as it is in the CEPS Caucasus Stability Pact initiative, this institutional approach may be called “sociologized security.” This approach may also be expressed in the language of regime theory. Trondal’s (1999) synthesis of social constructivism and organization theory concludes on a threefold classification that characterizes social mechanisms as rational, cognitive or integrative. This typology is likewise parallel to the Hasenclever/Mayer/Rittberger (1997) classification of schools of regime thought. Their power-based school is rational in Trondal’s terms, because it emphasizes is on maximizing relative gains. Their interest-based approach is integrative in Trondal’s terms, because it emphasizes maximizing absolute gains. Their knowledge-based school is cognitive in Trondal’s terms, because it emphasizes sociological intersubjectivity. Using this shorthand, a pragmatic approach may be said to implant cognitive norms engineering rational behavior into integrative structures.

Recent research indicates that balance-of-power maneuvers such as we have seen in the Caucasus are a short-term, stopgap solution to providing international security. Current international relations theory, relying more heavily on sociological approaches (as summarized above), draws attention to the proliferation of contact among transnational forces, specifically as a mechanism that motivates states to overcome their perceived security dilemma. The South Caucasus is thus a crucial test case, both for theories holding that minimal levels of self-evolving cooperation are sufficient to coordinate international security, and for theories holding that multilateral frameworks for international public policy are necessary to manage geo-economic conflict. The multiplicity of conflict situations and issues indeed makes the Caucasus a crucible for how examining transnational processes can encourage policy-makers to trust one another, and how non-security relations might contribute to an enhanced security environment.

3.2. Transnational Parliamentarization in Practice

How would one begin to establish, in the South Caucasus, even an unofficial or semi-official transnational forum for discussions of security, economic, and political issues among individuals from the most important demographic and geopolitical formations from the region? The following answer does not explicitly consider the role such a forum might have,

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should have or could have, within the context of a broader stability and/or security pact for the South Caucasus. However, with proper organizational design and political engineering, it could become useful and facilitative if not occasionally catalytic.

It is first of all necessary advisable to limit the initiative to the South Caucasus, because the North Caucasus is a complex unity where unexpected interdependencies crop up as unintended consequences of even well-intended moves. Not only would the inclusion of Chechnya be problematic—not least because of the difficulty of choosing amongst potential Chechen representatives—but also that would eventuate in the further necessity of including at least Dagestan as well. The problem here is that the ethnic variety and complexity within Dagestan is so great that the very number of communities to be represented would expand the size of the prospective forum beyond the point where it would be manageable in the first instance. (Participation by various North Caucasus entities in the discussions and deliberations of such a forum is a matter for later consideration. It should not be excluded in principle, for limited and well-defined purposes in specific instances.) The participation of diverse “regions of the South Caucasus” should not be conditioned upon their separate corporate representation in a national parliament or their actual political existence as distinct administrative regions within a state.

The list of prospective non-state invitees nevertheless expands beyond Abkhazia and Mountainous Karabagh. Such a list could include Ajaria, Tskhinvali (South Ossetia), and perhaps Javakhetia. The list of politically Georgian entities, already quite long, must be stopped here, lest the Georgian ethnos itself begin to subdivide, leading to separate Svan, Mingrelian and Kartvelian demands for representation (all of which could be given real and reasonable basis in both demography and geography). Nevertheless, some thought would need to be given to representation by the Meskhetian Turks, an ethnos deported by Stalin whose return to Georgia has been mandated by the Council of Europe. Therefore they too may be added to a provisional list. States might have some kind of presence at the forum, but representation of the respective national political executives should be tightly limited. The Azerbaijani exclave Nakhichevan is well represented in the executive of the country’s national government and therefore does not require a separate voice as a region.

A provisional forum such as this may be convoked upon invitation from an external body such as one European organ or another. If the South Caucasus states themselves are to be responsible for the convocation, then such vexing and distracting questions as about the status of the assemblage under international law would be raised too early. One need only imagine the debates, for example, as to whether invitation represents any kind of

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official or even unofficial recognition of one or another international-legal status of the invited entities. It makes sense, therefore, for a respected non-Caucasus diplomatic actor to issue in the first instance a convocation to a South Caucasus Congress for Stability and Cooperation. Properly prepared, that convocation may then be supported by official, semi-official and unofficial instances from the South Caucasus proper. The goal of “pre-Congress” preparation should be to guarantee that no political authority in the region will frown on a formal initiative. Progress on this should not be hostage to progress on amore ambitious regional settlement. The form of this may be optimized by considering three matters together. These are the range of issues with which the assemblage may deal initially (and with which it may seek to deal subsequently), a comparative assessment of potential “models” for such an assemblage, and representation.

Concerning the range of issues. What should be involved is a transnational social-consultative forum that may later evolve towards a quasi- parliamentary body. It should not have actual international legislative authority, certainly not in any immediately foreseeable future. At the same time such an assemblage should conserve its sociological and demographic basis, which could be also expanded in the more foreseeable future, incorporating even non-ethnically based actors them and co-opting them into its deliberations. The pertinent issues would require careful circumscription. The competences and issue areas that animate respondents to the initial convocation will be play a determining role. Some initial programmatic determination may be necessary at the outset. Speakers of the three national parliaments of the South Caucasus countries have met regularly in Western Europe following an initiative of French diplomacy, under the aegis of the Council of Europe. The Azerbaijan side has stated that any (formal) international parliamentary institution or (official) parliamentary assembly of the South Caucasus states would have to await definitive settlement of the Mountainous Karabagh conflict. In order to avoid an initial failure that would discredit the overall exercise, therefore, any such issue or conflict should not be a first focus.

Concerning potential “models” for such an assemblage. The word “parliament” and its various forms are to be avoided as designations for this initiative, because these echo too loudly with the idea of official representation. States could easily balk at this. The adjective “regional” should be avoided because it threatens confusion between the assemblage as a forum where the regions of the South Caucasus may have a voice and the assemblage as a forum for the South Caucasus as a region international politics. The latter of these two connotations opens up, too much and too soon, the Pandora’s box about which non-Caucasus entities may have a voice on which issues and how. It is a good nuance

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nevertheless to consider this assemblage as a something “for regions” of the South Caucasus, rather than as one “of regions” of the South Caucasus, because a forum “of regions” implies such questions as: What is a region? And who says so? A forum “for regions,” on the other hand, comfortably allows for participation by entities from outside the South Caucasus while not mandating this yet also it maintains a problématique focused on the South Caucasus itself.

Concerning representation. Parts of the South Caucasus that are not “regions” will be represented at least partly through states. (The proposed assemblage differs slightly, in this respect, from the Assembly of European Regions associated with the Council of Europe.) However, such state-based ethnic communities are best represented in the assemblage at other than the level of the national political executives. For this, there are two reasons: first, analogous political-executive authorities do not necessarily exist for all potential invitees; and second, this forum should remain in the first instance an assemblage of social forces. This does not mean that some of the representatives may not be chosen or seconded from the national parliaments. Still, the Assembly to be created by the initial Congress should be “for regions and peoples,” the better to include social formations that in fact do have a place within the bureaucratic and representative apparatus of the South Caucasus national-states themselves. If the convocation is issued by some voice from outside the South Caucasus altogether, then parties engaged in conflict are not the ones determining the invitation list, and multiple representations from various disputed territories becomes a possibility, either as direct participants or as observers. Still, it is not yet productive to think about allocation of “delegates” amongst various possible participants. Rather, it is more practical to sketch in slightly more detail the first few steps of institutional development that such a nascent assemblage might follow. This sketch draws on Cutler’s (2001) comparative study of the evolution of international parliamentary institutions.

3.3. Next Steps

It is not enough simply to convoke such a Congress. It is also necessary to consider in advance not only how such a assemblage may be convoked but also how it may develop and grow. It is natural to foresee at least two stages of development in addition to the preparatory work necessary to the initial convocation. As suggested above, the first convocation should not be issued to convoke a Congress of representatives of these various social (and political) forces. The three national parliaments, which are natural constituencies to be interested in such a proposal, are unlikely to accept even virtual participation without the consent of their

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national political executives. Therefore the initiative would have to the outlined to those leaderships and their suggestions solicited.

Let us call the “Congress,” the first meeting of those who may decide to establish on a more permanent basis, an Assembly for Regions and Peoples of the South Caucasus. Such a Congress should of course not be a rubber- stamp of decisions in practice previously agreed and awaiting some manner of formalized approval. By the same token, every precaution should be taken to avoid fiasco, at least by cataloguing the (at first limited number of) issues that may be raised at the Congress, even if these do not appear on a provisional agenda. This first meeting, the Congress, should aim at establishing the Assembly on a regular basis. However, it is possible that constructive developments may occur at the meeting itself, making a second Congress propitious. There should be an explicit a priori limit of two such Congresses. Any further deliberations best follow in a more institutionalized context.

At the Congress, it is well to consider establishing an interim or provisional secretariat either within the South Caucasus itself or, temporarily and only provisionally, under the auspices of a European organization, awaiting the more definite preparation of institutional infrastructure. In principle, it could better to have a “native” South Caucasus provisional secretariat, but choosing its geographic location would be a delicate task. It may well be desirable to give to such a bureau significant institutional support by coordinating its activities with a European body on an on-going basis. In this connection, it is worth considering later whether the precedent is pertinent, of the Central European Initiative, which has a functionally-specific secretariat in London actually inside the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and which coordinates work with it.

4. Conclusion and Prospect

Based upon the actual situation in the South Caucasus, the present diplomatic conjuncture and existing comparative research into European and international representative assemblies and institutions, the schema emerges of convoking a Congress for a maximum of two meetings. In the meantime a secretariat is established for the purpose of circulating information and settling procedural norms. This will be also an organizational womb for the nascent institutional memory. From the labor, an Assembly emerges. The provisional name of the follow-on, standing Assembly should avoid the explicit rubrics “security” and/or “stability,” because their habitual usage in the lexicographic field in diplomacy suggests giving privilege to the interests of states over peoples. Standing international diplomatic habits

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will doubtless take good care of the states as political formations without the need for such special attention.

The Assembly will decide upon the pace at which it will create rules and supervise them, to regulate those matters over which its participants agree to its competence. To some degree these rules are functional requisites, to another degree they will determine the Assembly’s autonomy and capacity to set its own goals. As such, the Assembly begins to evolve towards a transnational- deliberative institution in international affairs and world society. This schema will be further refined and elaborated as the entire South Caucasus diplomatic process develops in the near future. Fine- tuning will be necessary as the process gathers momentum, and only through a continuous process will it be possible to optimize the institutional infrastructure first of the Congress and then of the Assembly. This optimization does not imply a static institutionalization. Rather, it means an evolving organization that will sooner or later participate in the setting of its own agenda and procedures. It also means, later if not sooner, an organization that should not hesitate autonomously to launch self-originated activities, creating subsidiary or auxiliary bodies on its own initiative, and even spinning these off after they have acquired sufficient life and momentum of their own. The Benelux, Central American, and Baltic integration organizations would be useful precedents for comparison to the Caucasus situation, as each of them, like the Caucasus, comprises a handful of small countries having a tightly interwoven common history, began as a trade organization, and has subsequently acquired a political structure, including a regional parliamentary assembly.

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Dr. Robert M. Cutler [ website — email ] was educated at MIT and The University of Michigan, where he earned a Ph.D. in Political Science, and has specialized and consulted in the international affairs of Europe, Russia, and Eurasia since the late 1970s. He has held research and teaching positions at major universities in the United States, Canada, France, Switzerland, and Russia, and contributed to leading policy reviews and academic journals as well as the print and electronic mass media in three languages.

 
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