Contesting Russia’s Leadership in the Post-Soviet Space: Hedging Strategies Comparison of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Armenia

Description

The main objective of the research is to compare the experience of implementing a hedging strategy by Kazakhstan (between Russia and China), Azerbaijan (between Russia and Turkey) and Armenia (between Russia and the EU), to determine under which foreign policy features the hedging strategy is more successful for reducing Russian leadership in the post-Soviet space. In the framework of this research strategic hedging is considered as a neorealist school concept to operationalize state foreign policy towards great powers in obstacles of high uncertainty. The research seeks to test the hypothesis: strategies of contesting Russian leadership were more successful in the case of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, and less effective in the case of Armenia.. The analysis of text content and documents is used in the research. Research focuses on primary (national government documents, agreements) and secondary (think-tank publications, media articles) sources.. The results of the research show that the hedging strategy of contesting Russian leadership was most effective in the case of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, and less effective in the case of Armenia. This is mainly due to the lower dynamics of competition both at the regional and global level between Russia and Turkey (in the case of Azerbaijan) and China (in the case of Kazakhstan). In turn, Armenia, for lack of other options, was forced to seek support from the EU, what caused a negative reaction from Russia, exacerbated the contradictions in the Caucasus region, and did not bring the expected results of contesting Russian leadership.. Comparative research concludes that Kazakhstan’s and Azerbaijan’s hedging strategies of contesting Russian leadership have been more successful rather than Armenia’s in the post-soviet space. The hypothesis that strategies of contesting Russian leadership were more successful in the case of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, and less effective in the case of Armenia proves.

Period	29 Mar 2023
Event title	RSU Research week 2023: PLACES
Event type	Conference
Conference number	3
Organiser	Rīga Stradiņš University
Location	Rīga, LatviaShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International