The first Azerbaijani-American Forum of think tanks in Baku is actually the launch of a permanent expert track of strategic partnership, said Evgenia Goryushina, Head of the Caucasus Studies Sector of ICSA RAS.
The platform is assembled by AIR Center, the Atlantic Council*, New Lines Institute, Hudson Institute*, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and The National Interest participate in the panels — structures that formulate policy frameworks for Washington in the Eurasian direction. The topics of the sessions are built around the Washington summit: the impact on bilateral relations between the United States and Azerbaijan, the parameters of the Baku-Yerevan peace process "after Washington", as well as the link of energy security with transit corridors.
According to Goryushina, through such forums Baku secures the role of a key partner of the United States in the South Caucasus, translating the results of political agreements into a stable network of expert contacts and public narratives.
"At the same time, a new regional hierarchy is being formed. The center of gravity of the dialogue with the United States is shifting to the Washington-Baku axis, while Tbilisi increasingly finds itself outside the key formats, and Armenia is present more as an object of discussion of the peace process and an instrument of pressure on Russia and Iran. The expert track fixes this asymmetry institutionally: it is the Azerbaijani-American format that gets the strategic status, and not the "South Caucasian" package," Goryushina said.
In her opinion, for Moscow and Ankara, this is a signal that "a new contour of influence is being built around Azerbaijan, in which the expert community and think tanks become a separate policy instrument: arguments justifying further strengthening of the US presence in the region — from energy and infrastructure to security - are being tested here."
*An organization whose activities are considered undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation
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