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TRANS-DNISTRIA. Last night at the Patterson School, a pair of Caucasian scholars gave an in-depth discussion of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. Long story short, the disputed area is helping to prevent any long-term Caucauses wide cooperation, and there doesn't seem to be much indication that it will be resolved soon. Armenia won the war over the area in the 1990s, but Azerbaijian probably holds the military advantage now. Azerbaijian is reluctant to press that advantage, however, because chaos in the area will threaten Western oil contracts. Azerbaijian and Armenia also have remarkably complicated relations with Iran, Russia, and Turkey. Russia also has conflicts with Georgia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two breakaway regions that are essentially occupied by Russian forces.Trans-Dnistria, a breakaway region in Moldova, is in a different neighborhood but has some of the same problems. Fortunately, Doug Muir is beginning a series at Fistful of Euros on these "frozen conflicts," starting with the Trans-Dnistria region. A taste:
Trans-Dnistria, aka Transnistria, is a long sliver of land on the east bank of the river Dnistr, between Ukraine and Moldova. It used to be part of Ukraine, but Stalin grafted it on to Moldova because he wanted all of the lower Dnistr valley to be a single political-economic unit. Partly this was because he wanted to develop the lower Dnistr with all sorts of hydroelectric plants and heavy industry and stuff, and didn’t want two republics arguing over it; partly it was because Stalin had a tidy mind.Check it out. Because of both energy and transnational crime concerns, the Caucauses are going to be demanding a lot of attention in the future. --Robert Farley
