15.12.2020
Abstract
A reflection on the Nagorno-Karabakh war and the EU’s power to promote stability and security.
In 2004 the EU launched the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), and since 2009 the Eastern Partnership policy has been in place as a specific dimension of the ENP. The EU policy towards the Eastern and Southern neighbourhood has been guided by the objective of having a “ring of friends” in the neighbourhoods. However, instead of the desired “ring of friends”, the EU has faced a “ring of fire” in North Africa and the Middle East, and in the Eastern Partnership area. The Eastern neighbourhood has been, indeed, highly affected by complex and prolonged frozen and armed conflicts; the recently erupted Nagorno-Karabakh conflict constitutes one of those. The devastating war in Nagorno-Karabakh, in fact, has entailed major geo-strategic reshufflings in the South Caucasus. Meanwhile, the EU’s weak response to the war has clearly demonstrated the Union is far from being a “geopolitical”; i.e. strategic-security actor in the region. As a result of the weak response, the EU is sidelined in the South Caucasus in strategic terms
About the author
Hasmik Khachatryan has studied Political Science at Yerevan State University (Armenia), Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University (Sweden), and European Politics at the College of Europe (Belgium). Her professional experience includes enrolment at the Association of Foreign Affairs (Sweden) as a Middle East Policy Analyst, and at the German Marshall Fund of the United States as a Policy Designers Fellow.
#War #Nagorno-Karabakh #EU Foreign Policy #Security #Geopolitics #Eastern Neighbourhood
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