70 Middle East Policy, Vol. XXIV, No. 2, Summer 2017 © 2017, The Author Middle East Policy © 2017, Middle East Policy Council The South Caucasus: Turmoil in the Shadow of Russo-American Relations Emil Aslan Souleimanov Dr. Souleimanov is an associate professor with the Department of Security Studies, Institute of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. He has published widely on the Caucasus and the adjacent areas of Russia, Turkey and Iran. A s the United States recuperates from Donald Trump’s unex- pected victory, commentators across the globe contemplate the prospects of a Trump presidency and its impact on U.S. and world politics. The future of U.S.-Russia relations will po- tentially have a substantial impact on the South Caucasus, a vulnerable region of strategic signiicance sandwiched between Russia, Turkey and Iran. While the features of Trump’s foreign policy have still to materialize, promises and allusions made during his election campaign suggest a bleak scenario for this post-Soviet region. A TROUBLED REGION Few regions emerging from the ashes of the former Soviet Union have experi- enced as much turmoil as the South Cauca- sus. At strategic crossroads of Europe and Asia — on the edge of the Black Sea and the Caspian — the newly independent na- tions of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia have since the early 1990s experienced a series of coup d’états, civil wars, ethnic strife and interstate armed conlicts. At some points in the region’s modern history, these conlicts threatened to drag in their powerful neighbors: Russia, Turkey and Iran. As the escalation of violence in South Ossetia in 2008 and in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2016 has illustrated, this possibility is still likely, given the volatility of some of the region’s “frozen” conlicts. ARMENIA AND AZERBAIJAN Armenia and Azerbaijan, now tiny republics of three and nine million, re- spectively, have engaged in full-ledged armed conlict from the moment of their appearance on the political map in early 1992. The Armenian-Azerbaijani war over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian- majority Baku-controlled enclave within Azerbaijani territory, lasted until 1994, when a ceaseire agreement was brokered by Moscow. Since then, no peace has been reached, and the state of war drags on. During the armed conlict, Moscow sought to present itself as an honest broker while using the war as leverage on both Yerevan and, especially, Baku in order to advance its interests. Fearing an emerging Turko- Azerbaijani alliance, Yerevan was quick to allow Moscow to deploy its troops in