The foreign policy behaviour of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan

This thesis considers the South Caucasian Countries as small states but also as states with agency in foreign policy who seek to mitigate the asymmetry between themselves, the West and Russia. This thesis argues that these states can resort to strategic narratives, as proposed in their official state foreign policy discourses, in order to influence their self-projection vis-à-vis these greater external players. This dissertation is based around the assessment of two case studies of foreign policy activity per country, one chosen from the domain of (relatively) traditional or “hard” foreign policy concerns around security and trade and a second from the so-called softer range of foreign policy activity. In the case of Armenia, the focus is on the withdrawal from the European Union Association Agreement talks and on the strategic use of the Armenian diaspora. In the case of Azerbaijan, the study focuses on the state’s energy strategy and on its public diplomacy strategy. In the case of Georgia, the PhD explores the 2008 war and the quest for visa liberalisation in the Schengen area. The methodology follows an approach of triangulating a detailed reconstruction of the events with political speeches from key government figures and expert interviews. In this way, publicly available foreign policy choices, public government discourses and expert interviews provide different lenses through which to look at the same events, seeking to reconstruct both foreign policy objectives and state self-projection vis-à-vis the external environment. It also offers an opportunity to explore “discursive omissions” – the absence of public discourse on issues that must have been of concern – allowing some tentative analysis of non-tangible elements, such as non-action in cases of disparity of strength between small and great powers. The work concludes that in all three cases under analysis the states pursue active foreign policy goals and preferences, which can be analysed through their public discourses, even though each state is constrained by a challenging external environment. Additionally, in spite of the peculiarities of each South Caucasian country, they share some common features in their general attitude towards the EU and Russia, namely the desire for further cooperation with the former and a common, if differentiated, fear of the latter. Finally, this thesis contributes to the study of small states and their strategic behaviour by highlighting the strategic use of political speeches. In particular, it shows how all three countries use political discourse as a strategic tool aimed at an external audience. It also emerges that, even though the study was limited to public discourse, a conscious articulation of different messages around some characteristics of the various external “state audiences” can be observed