![]() Following an expected worsening across most FSI indicators in 2009, after the Russian incursion into Georgian territory, the country has managed to cut the infant mortality rate by half since 2008, decreased poverty rates by nearly 40% between 20, while homicide rates, once one of the highest in the region, have fallen by 90% over the past decade. Georgia, sixteen years after the Rose Revolution, and almost 11 years after a Russian invasion that nearly drew in NATO allies and plunged the region into war, continues to make slow but steady progress. ![]() This is most apparent in two countries in particular: Georgia and Armenia. In 2018, however, there was cause for cautious optimism in a region where the ghosts of superpowers past and present continue to exert outsized influence. These so-called “frozen conflicts” have further created wide swaths of no-go zones in the South Caucasus, making travel and trade between and among the countries costly and complicated. This has had deleterious effects not only on any attempts to unify the region, but is also a constant strain on the economy, more so in Armenia than oil-rich Azerbaijan. In Armenia and Azerbaijan, a long simmering conflict over the disputed region of Nagorno Karabakh continues to periodically erupt in violence, and keeps the two countries locked in a semi-permanent war posture. In Georgia, two breakaway regions remain under Russia’s sphere of influence, and firmly outside of Tbilisi’s control. ![]() In addition to being a pivotal region for the economic and security interests of the West and Russia, the South Caucasus has had its own regional and internal challenges over the past two decades. It is also a land where the echoes of the Cold War continue to play out decades after the collapse of the Former Soviet Union and the realignment of the global world order. ![]() Straddling Europe and Asia, the South Caucasus has long been considered a region of strategic importance for past empires and modern-day superpowers. ![]()
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