EU Energy Security is the Caucasus’ Political Insecurity
The current energy crisis sweeping through the European Union will be no news to the reader. Over-reliance on Russian imports and a failure to switch to renewable sources of energy at a faster pace has left the EU in a challenging situation. The outbreak of the Ukraine war necessitated a wide-ranging response from the 27 member states and the growing need to ensure reliable energy supply has signalled several policy shifts. In the endeavour to accommodate this new pressure, changes to the European Union’s energy strategy have had a direct effect on security in the Caucasus.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine on the 24th of February 2022 forced the EU to rethink the energy relationship with its eastern neighbour. The European Union is largely dependent on external supplies of gas and Russia, until recently, remained one of the primary suppliers of those needs. By 2021, Russian imports accounted for 40% of the Union’s total consumption, a rapidly increasing reliance from just 20% in 2005. This trend became a growing cause for concern as Russia flexed the expansionist aims of its president Vladimir Putin.
The EU has been forced to change tactic. The first step: to sanction, reduce and eventually move away from Russian gas imports on the principle that the Union would refuse to continue investing in a nation intent on invading neighbouring states. This process has begun, albeit begrudgingly. Germany and Austria, with their particularly high reliance on Russian energy, bore the brunt of the push away from Russia. By the start of August, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer announced that dependence on Russia was now below 50%. To his north, despite a surge in energy bill prices and understandable disquiet over the precarious situation, recently elected German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has committed the German government to the EU sanctions regime, shelving prospective plans for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Germany and Russia in the process.
The second step should have signalled a top to bottom rethinking of the European Union’s energy strategy. The Russian invasion of Ukraine highlighted the geo-political liability of importing gas from external sources, especially when those sources are autocratic regimes. This was the time to put EU resources, investment, and infrastructure behind renewable energy; to inaugurate the much-discussed green revolution in Europe. It could have been a move away from a reliance on import systems and toward a self-sustainable model, one which would bring security and mark a serious fight back against climate change.
Instead, step two led to a rehashing of previous policy. In response to the Ukraine war, the European commission signed a new energy deal with Azerbaijan in July 2022. Ursula Von der Leyen announced that the Union was ‘turning toward a more reliable energy supplier’ in Azerbaijan, agreeing to double imports of natural gas to the EU by 2027. This continued reliance on energy imports regrettably has all the hallmarks of repeating the same failed strategy.
Azerbaijan, an oil rich oligarchy of ten million people in the Southern Caucasus is led by Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar Aliyev as president following his death in 2003. Supported by his wife, vice president Mehriban Aliyev, Ilham Aliyev has consolidated his hold on power over the last twenty years. Freedom house has characterised Azerbaijan as ‘not free’, owing to the limited political rights and civil liberties of its citizens, stating:
‘Power in Azerbaijan’s authoritarian regime remains heavily concentrated in the hands of Ilham Aliyev and his extended family. Corruption is rampant, and the formal political opposition has been weakened by years of persecution. The authorities have carried out an extensive crackdown on civil liberties in recent years, leaving little room for independent expression or activism.’
In 2008, the EU initiated the Southern Gas Corridor initiative with the aim of locating and funding new sources of natural gas to Europe. Following the European Commission’s strategic energy review in response to growing concerns over Russian foreign policy, the EU identified Azerbaijan as a key strategic partner. Since then, a series of pipelines have connected Europe to supplies of gas from the Caucasus. The opening of the Southern Gas Corridor took place in 2018, consisting of the South Caucasus pipeline, the Trans-Anatolian pipeline, and the Trans-Adriatic pipeline, all of which brought energy supplies from gas fields located in the Caspian Sea and controlled by Azerbaijan.
A significant aspect of Azerbaijan’s domestic politics is its ongoing conflict with ethnic Armenians in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a population of 120,000 people who formed a de-facto independent government in 1991 in response to the breakdown of the Soviet Union and the emergence of newly independent states in the Caucasus. Ilham Aliyev reignited the conflict in 2020, leading to the acquisition of areas which had been under the control of the Armenian administration in Karabakh since the ceasefire agreement of 1994. A fragile peace was reached at the beginning of 2021 and Russia stepped in as the guarantor of this ceasefire, implementing a peacekeeping regime for a minimum of five years. The 2020 war was the setting for several human rights violations committed by the armed forces of Azerbaijan. Agencies, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reported the beheading of ethnic Armenian civilians, the mistreatment and continued detainment of Armenian prisoners of war and the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage. Despite the notional working ceasefire, Aliyev has continued to mount pressure on Armenian communities with several small-scale annexations along the borders of Nagorno-Karabakh. In the early winter of 2022, Azerbaijan cut gas supply to the region, freezing the Armenian population in minus temperatures.
With Russia distracted by the Ukraine war, the European Union has stepped into a leading mediation role in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, marking its first serious engagement in this capacity. The EU considers Azerbaijan and Armenia as strategic partners in its neighbourhood policy framework and this latest involvement marks an increased European interest in the region. Until recently, the Republic of Armenia has provided security guarantees to the population of Nagorno-Karabakh, and this has perhaps unhelpfully meant peace negotiations revolve around representatives from Armenia and Azerbaijan, rather than the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh themselves. The EU has declared its ongoing support for the International Community to engage in efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict and several delegations from the two southern nations of the Caucasus have met with the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, over the last six months. Whilst much of this mediation work is driven by good intentions, it is also motivated by increasing energy interests in Azerbaijan and the need to have a stable geo-political situation to accommodate these needs. In doing so the EU has also taken on a major responsibility in the region. It must now secure a long sought-after peace agreement where others have failed and ensure the safety of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh in the process.
In the endeavour to achieve a new energy status quo with Azerbaijan, the European Union’s strategy bears much of the same flaws as its previous investment in Russia. The Union has elected to engage in energy supply from an autocratic regime, one with aggressive aims against a population it believes should be fully incorporated into its state structure. Whilst switching from one autocratic regime to another is plagued with the same energy insecurity, it also has a more direct effect on a community which the EU now has responsibility for. A matter of weeks after the energy deal between Europe and Azerbaijan was signed, Ilham Aliyev initiated a new push against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh. Military strikes succeeded in displacing Armenian communities and Russian peacekeeping forces from the localities of the town Berdzor, which controls access to the vital Lachin corridor between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. This act was in direct violation of the 2021 cease fire agreement and has marked the beginning of renewed aggression in the region. Families have now been forced to move and a vital infrastructure route for the remaining Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh is now compromised. There is no doubt that the EU’s new energy policy has played a key contributing role in emboldening Aliyev toward new action in Nagorno-Karabakh. Much like Putin’s Russia, energy co-operation creates dependency which is used by autocratic regimes as a lever to pursue their aims.
The European Union is at a key crossroads. In the face of global climate breakdown, the rising cost of living, humanitarian upheavals and the Ukraine war; reliable, self-sustaining, and renewable energy is essential. However, a policy based on ethically responsible supply must be a leading principle at the heart of this framework, one which considers the full consequences of EU investments. As it stands the European Union is hindered by a reliance on a failing policy of energy import from unreliable autocratic sources. If the EU is to successfully navigate the numerous global crises unfolding ahead of it and if it is committed to fulfilling its newfound peace-making role in the Caucasus, another energy strategy must be formulated.
