The East in the West: South Caucasus Between Russia and the European Union

This article examines identity production and reproduction discourses in the era of post-liberal order from the perspective of the countries located in the common neighborhood of Russia and the European Union. It goes beyond traditional geopolitical and security approaches to investigate Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan from a multidisciplinary framework, analyzing how their ontological selves are reproduced vis-à-vis the West-East nexus. Based on case studies of these three states, I claim that since the European Union does not play the role of region builder in the South Caucasus, the extent to which a discourse on one’s belonging to Europe is reproduced depends on the concrete short- or long-term incentives provided by the West. With no existing liberal regional institutional framework, the politics of the South Caucasus should be viewed through stigma theory, which helps to shed light on how the normative power of the European Union is perceived.