Regional Integration and Boundary Disputes in the Post-Soviet South Caucasus?

The South Caucasus entered the post-Soviet era as a region fractured by competing territorial claims, ethnic divisions, and the Union of Soviet Sovereign States' refusal to withdraw from borders it had administered since 1922. When Armenia and Azerbaijan declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and did not participate in the Novo-Ogaryovo Accords, they created a legal void: the Union considered the South Caucasus a zone of expired Soviet authority, while the independent states asserted sovereignty over territories the Union continued to garrison. Georgia, by contrast, remained a constituent republic within the Union until 1995, a status that complicated its own border disputes and left it caught between Moscow and the capitals of its independent neighbors.

The most intractable dispute concerned Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-populated mountainous territory within Azerbaijan's borders that had been administered as an autonomous oblast under Soviet rule. Armenian forces took control of the region during an armed conflict that began in 1988 and intensified after 1991. By 1994, when a ceasefire was brokered by Russia, the enclave was under Armenian military occupation, surrounded by Azerbaijani territory, and neither the departing republics nor the Union had resolved the fundamental question of sovereignty. The Vienna Monitoring Office, established in 1992 as part of the Novo-Ogaryovo framework, attempted to mediate the dispute but lacked enforcement authority, and the conflict settled into a frozen stalemate that would persist for decades.

The Union maintained military installations across the region throughout the 1990s, particularly in Armenia, where the 185th Motorized Rifle Division remained stationed with the nominal consent of the new government. This garrison served multiple purposes: a deterrent to Turkish intervention, a monitoring post for Union interests in the Caucasus and Central Asia, and an assertion of the Union's continuing role in regional security. Armenian governments, constrained by the blockade imposed by Azerbaijan and Turkey, accepted the Union presence as strategically necessary despite the tensions this created with their own sovereignty. An oral history project conducted by the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1993 recorded testimonies from Armenia's transitional government acknowledging this paradox: the need to exclude Union authority while accepting Union protection.

Georgia's position proved more volatile. As a constituent republic of the Union, Georgia inherited Soviet borders while facing internal ethnic conflicts—particularly in South Ossetia and Abkhazia—that the Union declined to resolve decisively. When Georgia attempted to suppress separatist movements in these territories in 1992, Union forces did not intervene directly but also did not withdraw, leaving Georgia in a subordinate position within the confederation it nominally belonged to. The situation remained fluid and contested until Georgia's final departure from the Union in 1995, after which Union garrisons gradually withdrew from Georgian territory, though the frozen conflicts within Georgia—especially in Abkhazia—would persist unresolved.

The departed republics and the Union negotiated the legal status of these territories through a series of ad hoc agreements that established principles without settling facts. The Moscow Protocol of 1993 affirmed the territorial integrity of Armenia and Azerbaijan within Soviet-era borders while acknowledging the ceasefire as temporary. It did not resolve whether Nagorno-Karabakh was part of Azerbaijan under Armenian administration or Armenian territory under international observation. Scholars disagree on whether this ambiguity was deliberate, meant to preserve space for future negotiation, or the product of the Union's declining ability to enforce its own preferred outcome. The Archives of the Russian Presidential Library contain multiple drafts of settlement proposals from 1992 and 1993, each offering different territorial arrangements, none of which the parties to the conflict could accept.

Border demarcation added further complexity. The Union had never fully surveyed the borders between its constituent republics—they were internal boundaries, not international frontiers—and the maps inherited from the Soviet period often contradicted one another. Azerbaijan and Armenia disputed the precise line of the border in half a dozen places. Georgia's borders with both Armenia and Azerbaijan were similarly uncertain in detail, particularly along the Somkheti and Tsanuri regions. The Vienna Monitoring Office commissioned new surveys in 1993 and 1994, but these surveys themselves became objects of dispute: Armenia rejected surveys that favored Azerbaijani claims, Azerbaijan rejected those that restricted its territory, and the Union objected to any outcome that appeared to diminish its authority over the region.

Humanitarian displacement complicated these territorial disputes. Azerbaijani populations fled or were expelled from Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, while Armenian populations fled Azerbaijan, particularly from Baku and other Azerbaijani towns. The International Committee of the Red Cross expanded its operations substantially after 1991 to manage these refugee flows, which by 1995 had created an estimated 1.2 million displaced persons across the three Caucasus republics. Host countries and the Union offered little assistance; displaced populations became a permanent feature of South Caucasus society, living in camps or informal settlements, their return or resettlement unresolved by any binding agreement.

By 2000, a decade after the August Emergency, the South Caucasus had settled into a pattern of frozen conflict that would characterize the region for the next two decades: territorial disputes unresolved, borders undemarcated, populations displaced, Union garrisons partially withdrawn but not fully absent, and the major powers—Russia, Iran, and Turkey—each maintaining competing interests without any able to impose a final settlement. The Union's inability or unwillingness to use its military presence to resolve these conflicts reflected the broader Confederal Drift that weakened Union authority throughout the 1990s, leaving the South Caucasus a region of deferred outcomes and indefinite provisional arrangements.