A map of the South Caucuses and Armenian Highlands
BY ARMEN SAHAKYAN
Given the geographic proximity of the South Caucasus to Europe, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union, virtually all developments in those areas have reverberations in Baku, Azerbaijan. Over the course of the past 18 months a new foreign policy doctrine has emerged. This shift was formally codified on Dec. 3, 2014, in a largely unnoticed 50-page Russian language memo penned by Ramiz Mehdiyev—the long-serving chief of President Ilham Aliyev’s Administration—who calls primarily for a distancing from the West because of the latter’s “unfairâ€
