Unsettled and uncertain situations still persist in the former Soviet states of Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, posing a serious threat to the stability of civil society, democratic institutions, and the pursuit of human rights. The cry "no peace, no war" drives the consolidation of separatist regimes and transforms them into de facto states. At the same time, this stalemate undermines the sovereignty and territorial integrity of legitimate states, obstructing their political, social, and economic development and contributing to an ongoing sense of tension. Ceslav Ciobanu identifies the historical roots of these conflicts and proposes effective solutions, paying attention to external factors, such as the EU, the UN, and the relationship between Russia and the United States.

This book analyses cases of incomplete secession after separatist wars and what this means for relations between central governments and de facto states. The work explores the interplay between violence and power by examining the micro-dynamics inherent in the process of escalation between separatists and central governments. These dynamics affect not only the security interactions between these entities, but also the character of political and governance relations that are built in the aftermath of secessionist war. The book provides comprehensive analyses of the evolution of post-conflict relations between the Republic of Moldova and Transnistria and between Georgia and South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Beyond these empirical and conceptual examples, the book contributes to a key debate in International Relations that addresses the relationship between democratisation, nationalism and violence, and its applicability to the study of escalation in the post-Soviet space. This book will be of much interest to students of secession, statehood, conflict studies, democratisation, post-Soviet politics and International Relations in general. Chapter 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

International Organizations and Post-Soviet Conflicts in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine: The Limitations of Imagining Peace and the Failure and Success in Negotiations addresses the protracted history of international conflict resolution efforts to the Georgian-Abkhaz, Moldovan-Transnistrian, and Eastern Ukraine conflicts. The author explores the origins and onset of these first two conflicts in the early 1990s, but also looks at the eruption of conflict in Eastern Ukraine in 2014 and at the first months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This book shows how, from a conflict-transformation perspective, local vested interests and strategic interests have created obvious obstructions that have both fueled the conflicts and prevented their resolution. This volume develops a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding the success and failure of international engagement that offers a new understanding of the extent to which international responses may or may not be helpful. Through an analysis of over 500 closed-source documents and about 70 interviews, the efforts of pan-European international organizations — with mandates from the OSCE, EU, UN, and NATO — are examined on both political and cultural levels. This work’s innovative analyses of those institutions’ performances shows how successes have often been overlooked and identifies misperceptions that reshape our understanding of the limitations to imagining peace.

This book is a very timely account of the legal, economic and political consequences for border states caught in the current tug-of-war between the West and Russia.The Ukraine crisis of 2014 focused policy-makers’ attention on a geographical area full of dangers that had gone relatively unnoticed since the breakup of the Soviet Union, namely the security dynamics of the border states of Eastern Europe and the Black Sea. Twenty-five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a strong Russia returns alternatively threatening and cajoling, but at risk itself of suffering economic injury from western reprisals over its nostalgia for the map drawn at Yalta. That conflict, which hotted up over the Ukraine, was soon being played out over - and in the air space over - Syria and Turkey, while the border states themselves are likely to be drawn into the European refugee crisis and have the potential, after the 2015 Paris atrocities, to be breeding grounds for international terrorists. This groundbreaking book contains prescient warnings that must be heeded by leaders and diplomats on both sides of the East-West divide.

The USSR’s dissolution resulted in the creation of not only fifteen recognized states but also of four non-recognized statelets: Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Transnistria. Their polities comprise networks with state-like elements. Since the early 1990s, the four pseudo-states have been continously dependent on their sponsor countries (Russia, Armenia), and contesting the territorial integrity of their parental nation-states Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova. In 2014, the outburst of Russia-backed separatism in Eastern Ukraine led to the creation of two more para-states, the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR), whose leaders used the experience of older de facto states. In 2020, this growing network of de facto states counted an overall population of more than 4 million people. The essays collected in this volume address such questions as: How do post-Soviet de facto states survive and continue to grow? Is there anything specific about the political ecology of Eastern Europe that provides secessionism with the possibility to launch state-making processes in spite of international sanctions and counteractions of their parental states? How do secessionist movements become embedded in wider networks of separatism in Eastern and Western Europe? What is the impact of secessionism and war on the parental states? The contributors are Jan Claas Behrends, Petra Colmorgen, Bruno Coppieters, Nataliia Kasianenko, Alice Lackner, Mikhail Minakov, and Gwendolyn Sasse.

This is a comprehensive Report on every armed conflict which took place during 2012. It is the first of a new series of annual reports on armed conflicts across the globe, offering an unprecedented overview of the nature, range, and impact of these conflicts and the legal issues they create. In Part I the Report describes its criteria for the identification and classification of armed conflicts under international law, and the legal consequences that flow from this classification. It sets out a list of armed conflicts in 2012, categorising each as international, non-international, or a military occupation, with estimates of civilian and military casualties. In Part II, each of these conflicts are examined in more detail, with an overview of the belligerents, means and methods of warfare, the applicable treaties and rules, and any prosecutions for, investigations into, or robust allegations of war crimes. Part III of the Report provides detailed thematic analysis of key legal developments which arose in the context of these conflicts, allowing for a more in-depth reflection on cross-cutting questions and controversies. The topics under investigation in this Report include drone strikes, the use of explosive weapons, small arms, forced displacement of civilians, detention at Guantanamo Bay, and the enforcement of international humanitarian and criminal law in both national and international courts. The Report gives a full and accessible overview of armed conflicts in 2012. It should be the first port of call for everyone working in the field.

This annual Report on armed conflicts around the world provides detailed information on each conflict which occurred in 2014. The Report sets out the conflicts' classification, applicable norms, key actors, methods of warfare, and the number of casualties. It also analyses key legal issues that arose in the context of these armed conflicts.

Unrecognized states are territories that have achieved de facto independence, yet have failed to gain international recognition as independent states. These territories constitute anomalies in the international system of sovereign states and often present significant challenges to policy makers, as evidenced by the war in Georgia and the continued debate over Kosovo’s independence. This book draws on both theory and case studies to better understand the phenomenon of unrecognized states, demonstrating that the existence of such entities is less unusual than previously assumed. Moving away from an overt focus on case studies, the chapters present various themes that link the emergence, operations, and development of unrecognized states and assess how the established order of states responds to the challenges they present: How do unrecognized interact with the international system of sovereign states? How does it shape their emergence, operations and development? How do these entities develop in a context of non-recognition? Are we witnessing a new form of statehood, or are these entities better understood as states-in-waiting? What are the strategies available for dealing with unrecognized states? Could power-sharing or autonomy provide a solution or are more innovative strategies necessary? With contributions from leading scholars in a number of fields, this book will appeal not only to students and scholars of Political Science, International Relations, Geography, Area Studies, Sociology, and Conflict Resolution, but also to journalists, government bodies and NGOs.

The Caucasus region and Central Asia covers a large part of the Eurasian. Both regions, where Russia and China have a serious influence and visibility, also have a location that reflects the hegemonic expectations of both these actors. In this context, domestic political developments and even internal conflicts in the region can be linked to the policies of Russia and China to a certain extent and have the potential to affect the motives of these two powers. Although Central Asia is rich in natural resources, it is landlocked and has lagged other nations in terms of agricultural production and industrial development. Although the Caucasus is divided into the North, the territory of Russia, and the South, where three independent states are located, it is insufficient in terms of production and development. The Caucasus stands out especially with energy projects and its feature of being a commercial corridor.

The breakup of the Soviet Union led to the creation of new states and territorial conflicts of different levels of intensity. Scrutinising the post‐Soviet period, this volume offers explanations for both the frequency and the intensity of crises in the region. This book argues that the societies which emerged in the post-Soviet space share characteristic features, and that the instability and conflict-prone nature of the Soviet Union’s successor states can be explained by analysing the post-independence history of the region and linking it to the emergence of overlapping economic, political and violent crises (called 'Intersecting Crises Phenomena’). Transformation itself is shown to be a decisive process and, while acknowledging specific national and regional characteristics and differences, the authors demonstrate its shared impact. This comparison across countries and over time presents patterns of crisis and crisis management common to all the successor states. It disentangles the process, highlighting the multifaceted features of post-Soviet crises and draws upon the concept of crisis to determine the tipping points of post-Soviet development. Especially useful for scholars and students dealing with the Soviet successor states, this book should also prove interesting to those researching in the fields of communist and post‐communist Studies, Eurasian politics, international relations and peace and conflict studies.