Armenia, the Regional Powers, and the West: Between History and Geopolitics

About the Author Alla Mirzoyan received her PhD from Florida International University in December 2007. She has taught various courses in International relations including International relations of the Middle East. She currently works at the US Civilian Research and Development Foundation in Arlington.   Product Description This work represents the first systematic study of Armenia’s foreign policy during the post-independence period, between 1991 and 2005. It explores four sets of relationships with Armenia’s major historical ‘partners’: Russia, Iran, Turkey and the West (Europe and the United States). Each relationship reveals a complex reality of a continuous negotiation between ideas of history, collective memory, nationalism and geopolitics. As a result, an important conclusion of this work is that an analysis of a small state’s foreign policy is best captured by looking at regional dynamics rather than more structural approaches to international politics. For Armenia, this book argues that although its foreign policy has been severely constrained, it was nonetheless adept at carving a space for action that privileged the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh over other geopolitical imperatives. Review “Mirzoyan's book is an analysis of the last fifteen years of Armenia's relations with regional and global powers, Turkey, Iran, Russia, and "the West." This book's great strength is that it elucidates the formation of the international identity of one country, Armenia, rather than the role of the region, the Caucasus, in international relations. The analysis of their foreign policies towards the Southern Caucasus, and Armenia specifically, on the other hand, illustrates how the global informs the local and vice versa. The author's family history in Nagorno-Karabakh, her life in Armenia up to 1994 and her continuing contacts with personnel of the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs provide valuable insights available to few others.”--Patrick Dale, St Olaf College