Beyond the Resource Curse

7. The Impact of Energy Resources on Nation- and State-Building: The Contrasting Cases of Azerbaijan and Georgia

7 The Impact of Energy Resources on Nationand State-Building: The Contrasting Cases of Azerbaijan and Georgia Murad Ismayilov The demise of the Soviet Union gave birth to fifteen new states, all with a similar set of basic interests to pursue. Given the diverse material conditions these states were born into, however, the combination of resources and the mechanisms they could choose to utilize to address their interests was particular to each newborn republic. The latter reality, in turn, has worked to inform the diversity of pathways through which these nations’ postcolonial identities have emerged and evolved and to shape the channels through which their postcolonial polities have developed. This chapter will analyze the ways in which the forces that came with pipeline politics and energy resources worked to bear upon, and conditioned, the evolving dynamics of national identity formation in the region of post-Soviet Central Eurasia. In doing so, the chapter draws on the contrasting examples of energy-rich Azerbaijan and energy-poor Georgia. The chapter proceeds as follows. First, it contextualizes the evolution of state identities in post-Soviet Central Eurasia in a postcolonial setting and theorizes that process within a constructivist (largely Wendtian) conceptual framework. It then provides a brief analysis of the domestic and foreign policy challenges Azerbaijan and Georgia faced in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the two states’ national interests those challenges worked to shape. The chapter goes on to demonstrate how a complex 204 Murad Ismayilov interplay of the pressure of Baku’s and Tbilisi’s dire internal and external security challenges (military and economic) and their inability to deal with those problems in an autonomous mode shaped a common postcolonial agenda for Azerbaijan and Georgia—one shared by all post-Soviet states—by pushing them to engage in the struggle for “thick” Western recognition. Finally, the chapter concludes with an analysis of the mechanisms by which pipeline/energy politics introduced significant variation in the way Azerbaijan ’s and Georgia’s struggle for recognition was effected and the way their post-Soviet political identities evolved. A Theoretical Framework and a Conceptual Road Map Mainstream constructivists conceptualize a state’s “national interests” as objective interests rooted in a state’s corporate identity and, as such, common to all states and relatively exogenous to the international system. Drawing largely on Alexander L. George and Robert O. Keohane, Alexander Wendt identifies four basic (objective) national interests that any state must satisfy if it is to exist and function, and, by virtue of its stable existence, lay the groundwork for pursuing its subjective interests, those rooted in its type, role, and/or social identity. Those objective interests are physical survival, autonomy, economic well-being, and collective self-esteem. These interests, directly related to states’ material survival and ability to function, featured strongly on the agendas of the newly established states in post-Soviet Central Eurasia in the early stages of their postcolonial state-building. The states would have to satisfy all four interests, if they were to stabilize their statehoods and acquire long-term sustainability for their independence. A primary mechanism through which new states seek to satisfy their objective interests and thereby stabilize their postcolonial statehoods is what could be referred to as the quest, or struggle, for recognition. Indeed, it is through “recognition” from other states that a particular state can “engage . . . in legal relations with other States” and, in virtue of those relations , “can lawfully request military support from other States; can lawfully refuse entry to foreign military forces; can lawfully negotiate and conclude international agreements; can avail itself of other rights accorded sovereigns under international law and vindicate those rights before available international forums; and can demand respect by other States for sovereign acts exercised within its territory.” The Impact of Energy Resources on Nation- and State-Building 205 In his seminal article “Why a World State Is Inevitable,” Wendt introduces the concept of “the struggle for recognition” among states and individuals as the micro-level driving force behind structural change and collective identity formation. Picking up from Georg W. F. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Wendt defines recognition as “a social act that invests difference with a particular meaning [in which] another actor (‘the Other’) is constituted as a subject with a legitimate social standing in relation to the Self.” Elaborating further on the concept, Wendt differentiates between “thin” forms of recognition, which he...