Between Eurasia and the Middle East: Azerbaijan's New Geopolitics

BakudialoguesSvante E. Cornell

Baku Dialogues, September 2020

Azerbaijan’s geopolitics have changed considerably in the last decade, along with the growing general instability in its neighborhood. Gone are the days symbolized by the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline’s construction, when a relatively stable balance existed between a loose Russian-led alignment including Iran and Armenia, and an informal entente between the United States and Turkey, which supported the independence of Azerbaijan and Georgia and the construction of direct energy transportation routes to Europe. From 2008 until today, the geopolitical environment has shifted in several important ways. First, it is more unstable and unpredictable. Second, the threshold of the use of force has decreased dramatically. And third, to a significant extent, the geopolitics of Eurasia and the Middle East have merged, bringing increasing complications. 

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Published in Staff Publications
Thursday, 05 December 2019 16:54

America and the Kurds

Real Clear Defense
December 3, 2019

John Bednarek and Svante E. Cornell 

 

Much of the outrage and frustration for the U.S. withdrawal from Syria focused on America’s long-standing relationship with the Kurds, without differentiating between Kurdish groups. While America’s relations with Syria’s Kurds are in flux, as a matter of foreign policy, America should increase its support for the Kurds of Iraq, a clear and reliable long-term partner in this historically contested region.

Published in Staff Publications

By Svante E. Cornell

The U.S. and Turkey

A Road to Understanding in Syria?

Getting to better relations with Turkey will not be easy. But it's far from impossible.

June 2018

 

Click for full article

Published on: June 22, 2018 

 

Published in Staff Publications

The American Interest

MIDDLE EAST AFLAME

The U.S. and Turkey: Past the Point of No Return?

SVANTE E. CORNELL

With Ankara and Washington on a collision course in northern Syria, both sides will have to rethink their priorities if they want to salvage an increasingly hollow alliance.

U.S.-Turkish relations have deteriorated for some time. But until recently, no one would have thought that the American and Turkish militaries, closely allied since the 1950s, could end up confronting each other directly. Yet in northern Syria today, that is no longer unthinkable.

In mid-January, to forestall U.S. intentions to build a “Border Security Force” composed mainly of Syrian Kurdish fighters, Turkey launched a military operation in the Kurdish-controlled Afrin enclave in northwestern Syria. On January 24, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan expressed his determination to move beyond Afrin into other parts of northern Syria, mentioning specifically the town of Manbij, where U.S. forces are deployed alongside Kurdish YPG troops. Turkish officials warned the United States to sever its ties to the Kurdish forces, which Turkey considers a terrorist group. This led President Donald Trump to tell Erdoğan to “avoid any actions that might risk conflict between Turkish and American forces.”

The collision course Ankara and Washington are on is making any notion of a Turkish-American alliance increasingly hollow. If a point of no return is to be avoided, both sides will have to rethink their priorities, and begin to build trust. That process can begin with an honest appraisal of how we got to this point, with America and Turkey on the verge of coming to blows.

In the United States, much of the blame has naturally been laid at the feet of Erdoğan, the headstrong and authoritarian Turkish President. To American eyes, it is easy to see how Erdoğan’s growing intolerance of dissent goes hand in hand with an increasingly adventurist foreign policy that directly challenges American interests. Yet while Erdogan is part of the problem, its full scope goes far beyond a single individual. The real story of the past several years is how the Syrian and Kurdish issues have interacted with Turkish domestic politics to pull Ankara and Washington apart.

Published in Staff Publications

On November 7, Svante Cornell testified at a Joint Subcomittee Hearing on "Russia: Counterterrorism Partner or Fanning the Flames?" convened by the Subcommittees on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade and Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the U.S. House of Representatives. 

The video of the event is available from the following link, with Dr. Cornell's statement at minute 47.

1711Hearing

For the written testimony, click here,

1711Hearing-pdf

Published in News
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