Armed conflicts in the post-Soviet region: Present situation, prospects for settlement, consequences. OSW Study 9/2003

Unresolved conflicts continue to smoulder in Transnistria, Chechnya, Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia. "Para-states" have formed in most conflict-affected areas. These have grown to become permanent players in the region. In Chechnya, guerrilla fights continue in the wake of the Russian army's siege of the republic. The conflict in Tajikistan ended in 1997 and the normalisation process is currently under way. Each of these conflicts has entailed profound political, social, ethnic and economic changes, as well as affecting other spheres of life. Presently, it is impossible to return to the pre-conflict situation. The "para-states" have fortified their independence and are no longer controlled by the external powers on which they depended in the initial phases of the conflicts.

Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh: unfrozen conflicts between Russia and the West. OSW Special Report, 9 July 2008

The Southern Caucasus is the site of three armed conflicts with separatist backgrounds, which have remained unsolved for years: the conflicts in Georgia's Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and Azerbaijan's conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh (including the areas around Nagorno-Karabakh which were seized by Armenian separatists in the course of the war). Neither Georgia nor Azerbaijan have had any control over the disputed areas since the early 1990s. Both states are simultaneously in conflict with the separatists' informal patrons, respectively Russia and Armenia. After over a decade of relative peace during which the conflicts remained frozen, tension has recently risen considerably: in the case of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, large-scale fighting may break out in the coming months, whereas in the case of Nagorno-Karabakh and the Azeri-Armenian conflict, such a threat may materialise within the next five years. The current formula for politically resolving the conflicts is ineffective and close to exhaustion, and the prospect of any alternative peace plans being developed is rather distant. The conflicts in the Southern Caucasus are of increasing concern to the West, mainly because of the Western actors' constantly growing political and economic involvement in Georgia and Azerbaijan (including support for reforms and development of the gas and oil transmission infrastructures), as well as its less intensive commitments in Armenia. An outbreak of open fighting over the separatist regions would destabilise the Southern Caucasus, largely undoing the results of the actions which the EU, NATO and the USA have taken in the region in recent years. Moreover, the situation in the Southern Caucasus, especially the separatisms themselves, have in fact become an element in the wider geopolitical game between the West and Russia. For Russia, the stakes are maintaining its influence in the region, and for the West, demonstrating its ability to effectively promote democracy and economic modernisation in the countries bordering it.

The devil is in the details. Information warfare in the light of Russia's military doctrine. OSW Point of View 50, May 2015

By highlighting informational threats and giving them a military dimension, the authors of the Russian Federation's military doctrine have outlined the concept of information warfare. It is a kind of combat conducted by both conventional and indirect methods, open and concealed, using military and civilian structures. It has two dimensions: broader ("non-nuclear containment", i.e. combat waged on various levels - political, economic, diplomatic, humanitarian, military) and narrower (as an element supporting of action). An analysis of these issues enables us to identify several rising trends over the period 2000-2014 in Russian security policy. These boil down to a blurring of the boundaries between internal and external threats, introducing non-military methods and organisational structures to armed combat, and conferring an ideological character on this combat. This leads to a blurring of the contours of inter-state conflicts, which allows Russia to take part in armed conflicts in which it is not officially a party.

A Differentiated, Balanced and Patient Approach? The EU’s Involvement with Georgia’s Secessionist Conflicts beyond the August 2008 War. EU Diplomacy Paper 06/2015.

The August war in 2008 between Russia and Georgia caught the world by surprise but nevertheless brought the European Union (EU) to the forefront of the international efforts to end the hostilities, and the EU became the leading international actor involved with the conflict resolution process. However, in the years following the armed conflict, the conflict resolution process lost pace, and the impact of the EU beyond the immediate aftermath of the August 2008 war has been put into question. By undertaking a qualitative case study, this paper aims to explore to what extent the EU has impacted on the conflict resolution process of Georgia’s secessionist conflicts in 2008-2015. It will argue that the EU’s policies have only to a limited extent impacted on this conflict resolution process, which can be related to the objectives, priorities and time perspectives of the EU’s conflict resolution policies. The EU’s efforts have significantly contributed to the objective of conflict prevention, but the profile of the EU in the field of international conflict management weakened its position in the area of conflict transformation, where the lack of progress in turn limited the EU’s impact in the areas of international conflict management and conflict settlement. The main conclusion put forward is that in order to have a true impact, the EU needs to undertake a differentiated, balanced and patient approach to conflict resolution.

"Viewers should not try this at home". Die Verfassungsgerichte Bosnien-Herzegowinas und Kosovos in deren Rolle als Schlichtungsinstanzen in ethnopolitischen Konflikten = The constitutional courts of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo in their role as arbitration bodies in ethno-political conflicts. EDAP 01/2014

The article analyzes the role of constitutional courts in Bosnia and Kosovo, both characterized by their partly internationalized membership, in the adjudication of cases that are highly controversial between the different ethno-political factions. The main focus is on the Constitutional Court of Bosnia, which presents one of the richest and most interesting examples of “lawfare” in divided societies. The concept of lawfare has been adapted to refer to the continuation of political battles by ethno-political actors through legal means, in this case, constitutional adjudication. In Kosovo, the Constitutional Court has been an important defender of diversity, albeit its primary focus and merit are to have contributed to the establishment of a concept of democracy close to the people of Kosovo. The article concludes that constitutional courts represent important institutions of internal conflict resolution in divided societies, which have been instrumental in shaping multiculturalism in these post-conflict societies divided by deep ethnic cleavages.