Azerbaijan’s foreign policy towards Russia since independence : compromise achieved

Discussions of post-Soviet countries’ policies towards Russia have
been largely dominated by two mainstream neorealist approaches
on states’ alignment choices – balancing and bandwagoning.
While the first pattern entails allying against the primary source
of threat, the second one opts for allying with the source of
principal danger. By means of a case study, this article argues
that the balancing-bandwagoning dichotomy is too simplistic in
the case of Azerbaijan, which represents another possible paradigm. The research addresses the following question: what is the
foreign policy model undertaken by modern Azerbaijan in its
relations with Russia? To do so, it refers not only to the neorealist
and neoclassical realist theories but also to the notion of national
role conception. The article concludes that since 1993 Azerbaijan
has pursued a middle-ground foreign policy orientation – strategic
hedging – vis-à-vis Russia. Such a multi-tiered hedging behavior,
which encompasses elements of both balancing and bandwagoning, has been driven mainly by national security concerns.
Meanwhile, the country’s vast oil and gas resources, as well as its
non-bloc geopolitical identity, have determined the somewhat
‘distant-from-Russia’ foreign policy orientation of post-Soviet
Azerbaijan.