AZERBAIJAN: A COUNTRY OF GREAT IMPORTANCE TO EUROPE

Located in the South Caucasus, the region that connects Eastern Europe to Central Asia, Azerbaijan is one of the most significant “geopolitical pivots” of Eurasia. Due to its geography, Azerbaijan has a “sensitive location” that presents itself as a “defensive shield” for the Caspian Sea : it opens or blocks the access to many significant extra-regional actors, oil and gas thirsty. Baku has a pair of keys to the rich energetic Caspian Sea region whose place in the global geopolitics of energy is increasing proportionally to the degree of instability in the Middle East.

Azerbaijan is of great importance to Europe in light of energy security and economic ties. The goal of the EU member countries should be to help Baku, develop stage by stage, step by step but as friends no judges. The EU needs to encourage Azerbaijan as a partner and Azerbaijan needs to strengthen its lobbying efforts in European countries namely vis-à-vis the national parliaments.

Azerbaijan faces five important geopolitical issues: pipelines, division of the Caspian, Nagorno-Karabakh, Southern Azerbaijan, and democratization.

Baku now promote its foreign policy’s interests by talking more openly to political actors using the energy language. The time when Baku was low-voiced geopolitically and high-voiced geo-economically belongs to the past. Baku has become more conscious about its role in euro-Atlantic energy security matters and learned from some of its Caspian sea neighbours how to use the energetic potential as a tool of foreign policy speaking directly to the governments whose actions or initiatives could damage its national interests.

Azerbaijan is not seeking to exercise power or influence beyond its borders in order to alter the existing geopolitical state of affairs and it is not seeking the quest for national grandeur, ideological fulfilment, religious messianism, or economic aggrandizement to attain regional domination or global standing. Baku uses petroleum politics and pipelines diplomacy in a pragmatic manner and creates strategic axis not like an offender as an active geopolitical player should be, but as a defender of its territorial integrity.