Rusya-Gürcistan Krizi: Yerel Bir Çatışma, Küresel Yansımalar
The Russian-Georgian Crisis: A Local Conflict and Its Global Repercussions

Summary/Abstract: As the Caucasus has been an area of increasing chaos and conflict since the 1990s, Georgia, as a state in the region, has been struggling with ethnically triggered domestic conflicts in this era. The South Ossetia problem, a domestic and regional problem, was the major reason for the Russian occupation of Georgia in 2008 and has become an international crisis, as its implications go beyond the boundaries of the Caucasus. The long-lasting competition between Russia and the United States over Eurasia, because of its rich natural resources and decisive geopolitical position on earth, and over the Caspian Basin and the Caucasus (and Georgia) for their importance for world energy supply and energy transport routes, has played a decisive role in this. This competition and the post-Cold War era problems between Russia and the United States, such as securing Eurasian energy resources and transport routes, the enlargement of NATO, the U.S. Missile Defense Shield in Europe and so on, have put more pressure on the fault lines between the two countries. This paper proposes that the August 2008 War in Georgia, as part of Russo-American competition in Eurasia, was the collapse of these fault lines at their weakest point.

• Details
• Contents