Russia and Azerbaijan: Relations after 1989

The sudden collapse of the Soviet unio‎n has, on several levels, brought about many novel complexities to world politics. On the global level, the collapse of the Soviet unio‎n ended the bi-polar world politics in the dangerous confrontations between Soviet ideology and power and that of the United States. The impact of the disintegration of the unio‎n of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) has been seen at the regional level as well. In particular, Central Asia and Caucasus, Eastern and Central Europe, and Baltic countries have escaped from direct Soviet domination, and so new competitions for domination have arisen. However, the most important and challenging changes have been witnessed at the individual level, insofar as fifteen new independent states have emerged post-collapse. After escaping from the domination of the USSR, these emerging states have been perplexed by the challenges of nationhood, identity politics, and state-building, re-reformulating their economic system, and entering into a global situation as independent but weak states. Thus, the collapse of Pax Sovieticus has raised a series of new foreign and security challenges, posing various obstacles and dilemmas for them.