The South Caucasus has repeatedly struggled to establish a common regional framework, largely because of unresolved conflicts, competing national priorities, and different approaches to relations with external powers. Today, however, the region is entering a new phase, with progress in the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process, emerging transport and energy links, and shifting regional dynamics creating opportunities and challenges for cooperation while also raising important political and institutional questions. 

In this interview, Dr. Tatia Dolidze, an Affiliated Associate Professor at European University in Georgia and a member of the NATO-supported Partnership for Peace Consortium’s Study Group “Regional Stability in the South Caucasus,” discusses the prospects and constraints for cooperation among Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia and the conditions required to make it durable. A central theme is whether regional integration can be driven by the three countries themselves through a shared form of regionalism, or whether cooperation will continue to depend primarily on external actors and arrangements. The discussion also looks at the role of transit and connectivity, the political obstacles that remain, and the institutional foundations needed to give all three countries a meaningful stake in the region’s emerging order.

For decades, the South Caucasus has seen discussions of regional cooperation, with numerous visionary proposals and different approaches promoted by the three countries. Yet Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia have never managed to establish a lasting regional cooperation framework. What historical and political factors have made organizational cooperation so difficult, and what has prevented these different models from becoming a sustainable system involving all three countries?

The central problem has been the gap between proposing regional cooperation and agreeing on what it should achieve, whom it should include, and how it should function. First, the unresolved conflicts set the sequence, with a settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh having to precede any regional cooperation, and for three decades, none came. From 1991, the conflict denied Armenia and Azerbaijan diplomatic relations and direct dialogue, removing the bilateral foundation on which any trilateral framework depends. In 1999, when Heydar Aliyev and Robert Kocharyan met six times and then proposed a security pact at the OSCE summit in Istanbul, both treated Karabakh as the prerequisite; their reported understanding on the Goble Plan land swap died with the attack on Armenia's parliament that October. Georgia's conflicts added a second barrier, and since the 2008 war and the occupation of Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region, Tbilisi has refused any South Caucasus format that includes Russia.

Second, divergent threat perceptions produced incompatible views on which outside powers belonged in a regional arrangement. In the security-pact proposals of 1999, Armenia relied on the Russian base it had hosted in Gyumri since 1995 as its guarantee against Azerbaijan and wanted that presence written into the pact, while Azerbaijan, seeking to reverse the fait accompli in Karabakh, demanded the withdrawal of all foreign troops. Georgia, threatened by Russia itself, looked to Western integration as its counterweight. The 3+3 of 2020 admitted Russia, Türkiye and Iran: Armenia and Azerbaijan joined and Georgia would not. Georgia's latest proposal, Garibashvili's Peaceful Neighbourhood Initiative of 2021, brought in the EU and the United States instead; Armenia did not take it up. No configuration has ever suited all three.

Third, Russia treated any framework it did not control as a threat to its dominant position in the region and answered each with obstruction or a substitute of its own; the instrument changed with the period, the logic did not. Gamsakhurdia's "Common Caucasian Home" was met with the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus, a Moscow-controlled counter-force that went on to fight against Georgian forces in Abkhazia. Shevardnadze's "Peaceful Caucasus" was acceptable to Moscow only without Western stakeholders, and the Kislovodsk summit that year produced its own version, the "Caucasus Four". After 2020, Moscow wrote its border guards into the ceasefire settlement and promoted the 3+3 to sustain its influence.

Fourth, the initiatives lacked genuine regionalism: each was a tactical extension of a national foreign policy, so no shared, positive vision existed for the three to own. In Georgia, the thought leader, every proposal was a policy towards Russia. Gamsakhurdia's was an anti-imperialist union; Shevardnadze's an answer to Kremlin-backed separatism. Saakashvili's "United Caucasus" turned north, into Russia's own Caucasus power politics in disguise, a Trojan horse rather than a common project with the two neighbours. Zurabishvili's platform fell on the suspicion that it echoed a format built around Moscow. Even Garibashvili's Peaceful Neighbourhood Initiative stated its purpose as mitigating the influence of external actors, Russia above all. Armenia and Azerbaijan were no different, as their security-pact proposals at the 1999 OSCE summit in Istanbul were each built around the proposing state's Karabakh position.

None of the initiatives had an actionable strategy or an institutional mechanism behind it; they were declarations, not plans. The "Common Caucasian Home" began and ended as a concept; the "Peaceful Caucasus" was a set of six principles, endorsed by the neighbours and superseded at Kislovodsk within the year. The "United Caucasus" went furthest, with visa-free entry for North Caucasus residents and recognition of the Circassian genocide, but in North Caucasus politics rather than in cooperation with Armenia and Azerbaijan. Zurabishvili's "Caucasian Peace Platform" was a speech to parliament, dropped once her administration had to deny any link to the 3+3. Garibashvili's Peaceful Neighbourhood Initiative had a strategy on paper and produced a single meeting in April 2025. 

The historical pattern was therefore one of geopolitical divisions reinforced by institutional weakness. Territorial conflicts prevented mutual trust, competing alignments obstructed agreement on membership and security, and the absence of machinery left initiatives vulnerable to reversals and external pressure.

Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia have different foreign policy priorities and different relationships with Russia, the EU, the US, Iran, Türkiye, and other outside actors. Can the three countries still build a regional cooperation system based primarily on their own national interests?

Yes, provided national interests are defined as the benefits cooperation can deliver over time, not, as in the previous initiatives, through each state's rivalries and alignments. The earlier efforts treated regional cooperation as a vehicle for the proposing state's own foreign-policy aims or as a counterweight to an external threat, rather than as a common undertaking, and they failed. A durable approach proceeds from interests that each government can defend domestically - security, market access, reliable transport, investment, and reduced exposure to the leverage of any single external power. Armenia stands to gain from ending its isolation and diversifying its external links, Azerbaijan from secure access to Nakhchivan and wider markets, Georgia from a stable neighbourhood connected to its infrastructure and Black Sea ports. 

The role of outside actors ultimately depends on whether they support an agenda shaped by the region or try to shape that agenda themselves. The EU and the United States can provide finance, expertise and diplomatic facilitation, on condition that institutional neutrality is preserved and collective decisions remain with the three states. Türkiye and Iran can be engaged in a staged, consultative manner, with Turkish participation expanding as normalisation with Armenia proceeds. Russia constitutes the exception, as any arrangement that legitimised the occupation of Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region would forfeit Georgia's participation, so the framework itself must exclude Moscow, while each state retains its bilateral relationship with it.

The remaining obstacle is political asymmetry, meaning governments must accept that a neighbour's gain does not diminish their own. Regionally driven Cooperation becomes stable once each state regards its neighbours' stability and prosperity as a component of its national interest.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have made significant progress toward normalizing their interstate relations. How important is this development for the opportunities and prospects for wider cooperation among all three South Caucasus countries?

I would regard it as the most important development since independence for the prospects of cooperation among all three, and the clearest way to assess it is against the five impediments identified previously. Here it helps to group them into two dimensions: three concerned the region's external environment the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Russian influence, and the divergence over external alignments and two concerned its internal capacity: the lack of genuine regionalism and the absence of actionable strategies and institutions. My assessment is that the external ones have eased, the internal ones have not, and an additional complication has appeared.

On the external side, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict no longer prevents practical cooperation. Since last summer, the peace agreement has been initialled, the OSCE Minsk Group dissolved at both states' request, Azerbaijan's restrictions on transit to Armenia lifted, and the framework for the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) signed; delimitation commissions are at work, and the two governments negotiate directly, from their leaders to their deputy prime ministers. Georgia has maintained ties with both throughout, so for the first time since independence the triangle of working relations is complete.

As for Russian leverage, it has weakened on two accounts: the war in Ukraine has absorbed Russia's resources since 2022, and its principal instrument in the region, the Karabakh conflict, has been transformed. Armenia froze its participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in 2024 and legislated for EU accession last year; the Nakhchivan link, once assigned to Russian border guards, now falls under the Armenia–United States framework. What Moscow retains bases, energy assets, the occupied Georgian territoriesis leverage rather than a veto. Georgia's own conflicts are unchanged, but they only ever barred it from formats that included Russia. As the old divergence over external guarantors has eased as well, both Yerevan and Baku accept American facilitation, without Russia.

On the internal side, however, neither factor has moved. There is still no shared vision of what the three should build together. The one trilateral initiative, the consultation of deputy foreign ministers that Georgia hosted in Tbilisi last spring, has not been repeated and has produced no joint agenda. What is more, the peace and normalization agreement remains unsigned because Baku conditions it on constitutional change in Armenia, where a referendum is not expected before 2027. Azerbaijan itself calls the peace "de facto", so what is built on it remains reversible. And the imbalance over external alignments has not disappeared, but it has re-emerged in a different form. 

Georgia, over the same period, suspended its EU accession process in 2024, and the United States suspended its strategic partnership with Georgia in the same year. The consequence is that Georgia, physically central to the new order as the Middle Corridor's gateway, is institutionally absent from it, with no part in TRIPP nor in the EU's Connectivity Agenda Platform an absence hard to separate from the cooling of its relations with Western partners. 

A regional order is taking shape without a framework that brings all three together. Whether it develops into lasting cooperation will depend on whether the three take collective ownership while the emerging order can still be shaped.

Transport and energy connectivity are becoming increasingly important across the region, particularly with projects such as TRIPP. Are such infrastructure projects and investments necessary but sufficient to bring the three countries closer together, or would broader strategic changes also be required? If so, what factors could make such cooperation more likely?

Necessary, but not sufficient. Necessary because tangible interests are the only conditions capable of binding the three together: market integration, transit revenue, energy security, an end to Armenia’s isolation, and Azerbaijan’s connection to vital regional arteries. Closed borders and severed lines were themselves instruments of the conflict; reopening them is the physical form peace takes, and the only one that reaches daily life. Connectivity is also the one field in which each of the three holds an asset the other two cannot replace: Georgia, the Black Sea ports; Azerbaijan, the energy and the Caspian link; Armenia, the shortest line to Nakhchivan and Türkiye. 

Sufficiency is another matter, because infrastructure distributes power as well as goods, as it decides who collects revenue, who controls access, who sets the terms of exchange, and where those advantages concentrate. Connectivity reproduces dependence and rivalry rather than resolving them. Not every route needs to cross every country, but the system as a whole must give each a reason to keep it open.

TRIPP now tests that principle, and it is a hard test. Its framework gives the United States 74 per cent of the development company for an initial 49 years, extendable only by mutual consent, while Armenia retains full sovereignty over the route. Long-term commercial rights are being fixed before the three states have any common forum for regional connectivity. Armenia's Constitutional Court has cleared the framework and parliament is to ratify it, while the shareholders' agreement and the company's charter remain to be signed, the concession terms on tariffs and access are still being drafted, and no binding arbitration has been made public. An outside anchor can deliver a settlement; it cannot deliver ownership, and without ownership the settlement stays reversible. 

Energy shows the stakes most clearly, because it is where the three are least connected and most dependent on outsiders. Armenia's gas network belongs to Gazprom, Nakhchivan's supply rests on the pipeline from Türkiye that reduced its reliance on Iran, and the Black Sea electricity cable, as planned, links Azerbaijan and Georgia to Europe with no Armenian leg. Armenia's parliament speaker said this month that Armenia is ready to buy gas from Azerbaijan and Türkiye. That makes electricity and gas interconnection the most promising trilateral project. 

As for the factors, some are conditions, and some are choices. The conditions are a signed treaty and a referendum result, an end to the confrontation with Iran that makes construction along the Arax hard to insure without state backing, and the actual opening of the Türkiye–Armenia border. On Baku's own estimate, the corridor will not open before 2028, so Georgia keeps the only working east–west route bypassing Russia and Iran for at least two more years, a window for shaping terms rather than a reason for complacency. 

In law, the concession should carry transparent tariffs, clear access rights and binding arbitration; it should also settle how Armenian customs authority, Eurasian Economic Union rules and the Russian Railways concession over Armenia's network are to coexist; and construction needs political-risk cover from the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) or the World Bank's Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). In commerce, the Georgian and Armenian routes should run as one corridor with two lanes, coordinated border procedures, timetables and port connections, with specialisation following demand and cost rather than decree, serving Azerbaijan's export volumes as much as Georgia's transit. In diplomacy, the EU should link its financing and its connectivity platform to a standing trilateral process, and the European Political Community meeting in Dublin on 12 November is the next opportunity to do so. For Georgia, the choice is to deliver Anaklia and its rail links and to repair relations with the EU and the United States, since terms are set by those present when they are written.

Looking ahead, what do you think is a realistic and likely scenario for regional cooperation in the South Caucasus? Should we expect a formal regional organization, closer ties built around transport, trade, and connectivity, or a looser form of practical regional coordination without a permanent political model? And what would a more idealistic scenario for regional integration look like?

The realistic scenario is the last of your three, and it follows from the balance I drew earlier: the external impediments have eased without being resolved, while the internal ones the absence of a sustained shared agenda and of practical arrangements involving all three have barely moved; the trilateral channel opened in April 2025 has produced no publicly documented second round since. That balance makes practical coordination without a permanent political model the likeliest outcome, provided normalisation continues, and at the regional level the frameworks that carry weight are convened by others. The strands the Armenian–Azerbaijani border delimitation commissions, Azerbaijani fuel supplies and third-country grain transiting Azerbaijan to Armenia, the TRIPP Development Company envisaged under the Armenia–United States framework, the EU's Connectivity Agenda Platform and its Peace through Connectivity package overlap without forming a system governed by the three. 

A formal organisation is unlikely soon: two of the prospective members have no formal diplomatic relations, pending the signature and entry into force of the peace treaty, which Baku conditions on constitutional change in Armenia; and the settlement's architecture, built without Georgia, offers no framework containing all three. The result is an order without an organisation, sustained by outside interests that are durable but partial; the 49-year rights envisaged for the development company cover one route, not the region, and the risk is already visible: connectivity advancing without collective decision-making, with decisions affecting Georgia taken in a governance structure where it has no role.

The idealistic scenario is the transformation from a contested periphery into a cohesive and influential bloc: not a union on the European model, but a South Caucasus that acts as one logistics and energy space between Europe and Asia, with common rules on tariffs and access for the corridors crossing it, a collective voice in negotiations over corridor governance, a grid connecting all three, a treaty in force and the Armenia–Türkiye border open. That vision rests on three principles trust-building, equitable benefits, and sustainability and on one factor the region does not control and one it does: favourable external conditions help, but whether the three build a system they govern together is their own choice. 

Interview conducted by Luka Okropirashvili for Caucasus Watch