An interview with Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe. Interviewers: Adam Reichardt and Agnieszka Widłaszewska

An interview with Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow with Carnegie Europe. Interviewer: Bartłomiej Krzysztan

BARTŁOMIEJ KRZYSZTAN: The second Nagorno-Karabakh war left the South Caucasus in new geopolitical circumstances. What do you perceive as the main changes from the perspective of the international order? 

THOMAS DE WAAL: This war was a defeat for the attempt to achieve a multilateral, international peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Since the early 1990s that has been the vision: that this was a conflict which had not just Russian mediation, but also mediation from the United States and France. Part of the vision was that it would be some kind of multilateral peace, maybe similar to the one we have seen in the Balkans, but hopefully without its flaws, one which would take into account human rights abuses and be accompanied by some democratisation and a European integration agenda. That was the hope.

The international order has never been tidy or complete, always having lands with contested sovereignty. The breakdown of empires is the most common catalyst for producing new aspirant states. The post-Soviet space is especially rich in these territories, which includes Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Transnistria, along with two more recently established shadowy entities in eastern Ukraine.

In the Soviet Union the concept of a border was ambiguous. The Soviet borders were both very open and very closed. Since the fall of the Soviet Union 25 years ago, however, the concept of the border has emerged to reinforce the nationalities of the new republics. Yet, these were borders based on the nationality policies of Lenin and Stalin, the consequences of which persist today.