Point Paper Caucasus Region

It massive forests and frozen tundra’s have picturesque views that would astound anyone. The country has a land surface area of 6,592,735 square miles, making the largest country by land comparably to the world. Since Russia is the biggest country in the world, it has every landscape imaginable. From Lake Baikal, the biggest lake in Europe, to the Ryn desert, and the cold Siberian forests. Russia has it all when it comes to land geography. The northern part of Russia concealed with the Arctic Ocean, which is froze for the majority of the year. To the west the only way Russia has access to the Atlantic Ocean is through the Black Sea, and then through the Mediterranean Sea. Another way to access the Atlantic Ocean is through the Baltic Sea or through the Barents Sea, which is only operable in the summer, since in the winter everything over the 60-degree latitude line turns into ice. Even though Russia can access the Atlantic Ocean through the sea when you look at a map, there is two more non-geographic obstacles. The first one is that countries that are around the sea, for example, Turkey, and Denmark, which are part of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), can deny or make it hard for Russia to use those routes. NATO’s purpose is to pledge the liberty and safety of its members through military and political methods. In other words, if one NATO country takes a conflict with a non-member of NATO, then all

Saudi Arabia and Iran are two countries that sit on opposite sides of the Sunni/Shiite divide, which can be argued as being the most prominent issue the Middle East faces today. Saudi Arabia is predominantly known to be a Sunni state, while Iran is largely inhabited by Shia Muslims. Both countries aspire to be the hegemonic powers of the region. Ethnically, Iran is known to be a Persian land, unlike Saudi Arabia that is known to be in the heart of the Arab world. These two countries are separated by the Arabian Gulf and throughout the twentieth century and up until today, the relationship between the two countries has been notoriously contentious. Within the past few years especially relationships between the two states have been very fragile with Saudi Arabia ending diplomatic ties early in 2016. The two states are strained over many issues of which are, interpretations of Islam, oil export policy and hegemonic regional leadership.

The two most important resources in this region are oil and water. The huge oil “deposits there and in the neighboring countries around the Persian Gulf (the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain) established these countries as some of the richest in the world” (Document F). Nevertheless, the countries who do not have as much access to oil are weak economically. Oil is the biggest export in the Middle East, and in a way, the amount of oil a country has determines how wealthy that country will be. Another component of oil is that countries and ethnic groups are disputing for the control of prices of this economic resource. It has gone to the far extent of foreign countries attempting to control the oil price and also the use of weapons for this (Document E). In addition, it is impossible for each country to have equal access to water due to the unbalanced distribution of these essential resources. As a result of this, these countries are fighting for as much control of water sources they can get. Radically, there are many countries in the Middle East that are striving to obtain as many natural resources to strengthen their economy and lifestyle, and it seems most obvious that the scarcity of these resources is a significant problem in the region

The Gulf houses half of the world’s oil reserves and a third of the natural gas. The Gulf States still continue to supply the international markets with a significant amount of the hydrocarbons. The stability of the region is crucial for the stability in the global oil markets. The Gulf also hosts one of the most strategically and important choke points in global trade, The Straits of Hormuz, which moves about 35% of the global seaborne oil, natural gas and other trade goods.

“Because of its strategic and commercial importance, the Bosphorus Strait has played a significant role in the world history” (Kayaalp 9). The Bosphorus Strait was best known for its oil

• US Domestic Considerations are the oil pipeline through the Southern Caucasus Region and the Black Sea for trade access.

Conflict over energy resources—and the wealth and power they create—has become an increasingly prominent feature for geopolitics particularly in the Middle East . The discovery of oil in the late nineteenth century added a dimension to the region as major outside states powers employed military force to protect their newly acquired interests in the Middle East. The U.S.’s efforts to secure the flow of oil have led to ever increasing involvement in the Middle East region’s political affairs and ongoing power struggles. By the end of the twentieth century, safeguarding the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf had become one of the most important functions of the U.S. military establishment. The close relationship between the United States and the Saudi royal family was formed in the final months of World War II, when U.S. leaders sought to ensure preferential access to Saudi petroleum. The U.S. link with Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region has demonstrated to be greatly beneficial to both parties, yet it has also led to ever deepening U.S. involvement in regional politics.

Abkhazia, located between Europe and Asia, is known as a separatist state. Separatism is when a smaller group separates from a larger group. Though they are mostly independent from each other now, Abkhazia’s history of autonomy from Georgia has been on-and-off. Wars and conflicts in the past have changed their relations numerous times, by force and by choice. In 1008, Abkhazia

Russia is touched in many places by several large bodies of water. The Barents and White Seas in the far northwestern section of Russia are both important bodies of water for Russia as far as trading goes. As large as Russia is, it is mostly landlocked, making the Barents Sea very important for trading in large cities such as Arkangelsk. The Baltic Sea is another important body of water, as the large trading port of St. Petersburg is located on the coast of The Baltic. On the eastern coast of Russia, all of the larger cities, such as Vlakivostok, are

The invasion of Ukraine caused the interest of non-state actors, key individuals, international governmental organizations,

Russia's new strength is also based on its vast reserves of oil and natural gas, which as the price of crude exceeds $ 120 per barrel, give the country tremendous bargaining power, not only in its relations with countries directly dependent on its supplies as Ukraine, Germany and Hungary, but, in general, by the capacity of influence that give

After declaring independence from the USSR, and still financially distressed after the end of the Nagorno-Karabakh War in May 1994, the government of Azerbaijan, then headed by current President Ilham Aliyev’s father Heydar Aliyev, opened its numerous oil fields in an agreement with several transnational oil corporations in a contract known as the “Contract of the Century.” This contract, passed only 7 months after the end of the war, required the agreeing oil corporations to invest heavily in developing and modernizing the Azeri oil industry. Azerbaijan’s role as an oil producer was critical to these Western countries, helping them reduce their reliance on Russian or Middle Eastern oil production.

The main component is the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which is a dedicated crude oil pipeline system that extends from the Azeri-Chirag- Guneshli (ACG) through Azerbaijan and Georgia to a terminal at Ceyhan on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, bypassing the environmentally sensitive Black Sea and the Turkish Straits. The pipeline, which has a capacity of 1 million barrels per day, and at 1760 kilometers is the second longest of its kind in the world. The first cargo of oil, which had travelled through the BTC pipeline to Ceyhan, has been loaded onto a tanker on 4 June 2006. As of 15 October 2012, over 1.5 billion barrels of Azeri oil was loaded to tankers from Ceyhan and shipped to international markets. Republic of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (2014).

The Caspian Sea region has long been one of the richest in the world for fossil fuels. Azerbaijan was an early power in oil, for example. The Soviet Union's vigorous defense of the region at Stalingrad not only kept the oil out of the hands of the Axis powers, but it secured the region's hydrocarbon resources for Soviet development. During the Soviet era, fields in what are today the independent nations of Russia, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan were developed. After independence, Kazakhstan has retained and upgraded the Soviet-era infrastructure in order to develop its oil and natural gas industries.

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan has been an active terrorist group in Central Asia since 1991. Before 1991, it was not structured and consisted of different extremist’s small groups, in particular the Adalat group. Its original goals were to overthrow the government of Uzbekistan, in particular Uzbekistan’s President Karimov and to establish an Islamic Caliphate in Central Asian countries. After the United States of America’s invasion of Afghanistan that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, the IMU reallocated to the borders in Afghanistan and Pakistan. During this time, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan’s leaders were killed, Juma Namangani in November 2001 and Tahir Yuldashev, in August 2009. Despite changes within the group, they continued to operate in and around South Waziristan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, against Coalition Forces. Today, the IMU takes the form of a decentralized network that has become unpredictable, making it hard to target. Even though it is displaced from their original areas of operations, the IMU continues to persevere. There is a risk in the future that the IMU will thrive and pose a danger with its new allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.