The Role and Importance of Central Asia for Georgia's Geopolitical Security

Abstract

          At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the South Caucasus and Central Asia became a "labyrinth" of world politics, where the interests of the great powers seeking to fill the region with their influence inevitably clashed. This policy continued at the borders of the 20th and 21st centuries. The USSR as a world power, whose global leadership began to erode in the 1980s, disintegrated by the end of the century. The new Russia, in search of its lost equilibrium, unleashed bloody wars in the former geopolitical space in order to maintain its influence. The South Caucasus, with its unique geopolitical position, is a kind of micro-model of the world, where borders and bridges in all these spheres are intertwined in a complex historical and geopolitical knot. In this context, the region is of particular importance as a point of contact between the international interests of Western and Eastern countries. The rapid transformation of the South Caucasus countries from objects to subjects of international relations was the military and political collapse of Russia. The geopolitical turmoil that followed the collapse of the socialist system was in the hands of all the leading geopolitical players in international relations. The new Russia also took advantage of the chaos, hoping to hold on to the post-Soviet countries. To this end, Russia instigated all the conflicts that are still unresolved today. Initially, the US and the West in general did not oppose Russia much in its geopolitical game, there were times when Moscow acted with their tacit consent and sometimes in a veiled form, even in tandem with them. This policy led to the occupation of the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and North Kartli (so-called South Ossetia), where about half a million people became refugees in their own country. The post-World War II world order was shattered, and the powers that created the UN Charter were in no hurry to be guided by it, since they themselves were involved in one way or another.  Georgia and the South Caucasus as a whole is a region at the epicentre of the dominant geopolitical currents. The main geopolitical powers - the US and Russia - are fighting over the South Caucasus in order to acquire their geopolitical and geo-economic space, with Caspian oil and gas at the forefront of their policies.  The geopolitical position of Georgia and Kazakhstan, of the Central Asian states in general, and their influence on the current geopolitical confrontation prove that our countries have objective parameters that allow them to occupy a special place in the system of global prostate power relations. However, their effectiveness can and should be increased if the necessary structural, organisational and substantive measures are taken. The relevance of Kazakhstan and the region as a whole is determined, first of all, by the growing importance of Central Asia in modern international relations as a point of intersection of the interests of the world's largest players - Russia and the United States. Central Asia is not just a key region on the world map, the control of which will allow major emerging economies (especially China) to manage the global transit of hydrocarbons and other strategic raw materials, and thus influence their economic growth, aggregate power and areas of expansion. Central Asia is a crossroads of civilisations, the control of which, it has been believed for centuries, allows one to dominate the world. The region retains this exceptional geopolitical importance today. Thus, a comprehensive analysis of the place and role of the geopolitical interests of the Central Asian and South Caucasian states in the modern political process has shown that their priority is to ensure national and state security, political stability and fair international relations, while preserving the aspirations of individual countries to control territories and resources of strategic importance.