Conflict & Conflict Resolution

When Azeri and Armenian forces started to fire at each other in the early hours of April 2, it seemed that this exchange would enter the history of the decades-long conflict as just another of many routine violations of the ceasefire, which the parties to the Karabakh conflict clinched in 1994. However, rather than subside, as many of the previous violations did, the initial clashes spread and escalated, lasting four days and leaving dozens dead on both sides in what became the worst outbreak of hostilities since the 1994 agreement. Intended or not, this escalation substantially increases probability that Armenians and Azeris may stumble into an all-out war even though the latter would not be in the current interests of either Baku or Yerevan or those great powers, which have traditionally played important roles in the South Caucasus.

Armored personnel carriers engulfed in flames on city streets, where combatants maneuver, in between charred skeletons of burned vehicles, exchanging shots as the wounded are rushed away from the frontline behind a screen of thick black smoke produced by burning tires. This may sound like a scene from your kid’s new urban warfare computer game, writes Simon Saradzhyan, "but these were real episodes of street violence that gripped the Ukrainian capital of Kiev this week. Almost 80 people have been killed, and 570 people have been injured, in the kind of violence that this beautiful city has not seen since World War II."

The Spring 2011 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This issue highlights the Belfer Center’s continuing efforts to build bridges between the United States and Russia to prevent nuclear catastrophe – an effort that began in the 1950s. This issue also features three new books by Center faculty that sharpen global debate on critical issues: God’s Century, by Monica Duffy Toft, The New Harvest by Calestous Juma, and The Future of Power, by Joseph S. Nye.

Terrorism has recently staged a deadly comeback in Russia after a lull of several years, writes Belfer Center fellow Simon Saradzhyan. "Escalatory logic and rivalry among leaders of the North Caucasus-based terrorist networks combined with landmark events planned in Russia and the dynamics of violence in the greater Middle East may fuel further spikes in organized political violence..."