CENTREPEACE public lecture: “No War, No Peace? Rethinking Power, Violence, and the Prospects for Peace in the South Caucasus”
Join us for the CENTREPEACE project’s public lecture titled No War, No Peace? Rethinking Power, Violence, and the Prospects for Peace in the South Caucasus!
Long defined by vicious cycles of violence and the intricate interplay of internal grievances with external power rivalries, the South Caucasus remains one of Eurasia’s most strategically contested and fragile regions. Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine has further unsettled this volatile landscape, disrupting entrenched conflict configurations and challenging long-held geopolitical assumptions. This lecture explores whether the repercussions of the war in Ukraine signify a substantive inflection point toward sustainable peace, driven by shifting external alignments, or whether they merely constitute a transitional phase that obscures entrenched structural vulnerabilities and introduces novel vectors of foreign interference. It critically assesses how Russia’s strategic distraction and recalibrated regional presence are reshaping the security architecture of the South Caucasus, generating both unexpected opportunities for re- or de-escalation of “frozen” conflicts and new, more diffuse threats to stability. By tracing the impacts of external geopolitical shocks across domestic political and security arenas, the lecture offers a nuanced understanding of evolving conflict dynamics: examining how shifting power balances are transforming the tools, incentives, and vulnerabilities of regional actors. In doing so, it advances the case for a more agile and strategically grounded Western engagement, particularly by the European Union, and the reassertion of its role as a normative force within an increasingly fluid and fragmented geopolitical order.
