REGIONAL STABILITY IN THE SOUTH CAUCASUS

The PfP Consortium Study Group “Regional Stability in the South Caucasus” (RSSC), through the activities of the Austrian Ministry of Defense and Sports and Austrian Ministry of European and International Affairs has set its aim at positively influencing security decision-making in the South Caucasus by meeting the following goals:

• Multinational participation in the RSSC Study Group, building on experts from all dimensions of the security-political spectrum in the three core countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. This will be paralleled by bringing in experts on regional stability issues from the main partner countries and institutions to the region, namely the European Union (Member States), the Russian Federation, Turkey, the United States as well as NATO, the OSCE and the UN. Building ownership and trust from within is the utmost goal.
• Building a constructive network of academic and policy-making influence by identifying and involving civil society, think-tanks and defense institutions in the work of the Study Group.
• Alteration of the conflicting narrative in the region to enable the examination of security challenges from a regional point of view.

Based on the model successfully employed with the Regional Stability in South East Europe Study Group (RSSEE) and to maintain the pace of work, RSSC will operate on a two-meeting schedule per year. One of the Study Group’s two meetings will be held in Austria, and another will be held close to or in the region.

From these workshops, supported by the Austrian National Defense Academy, will come concise yet comprehensive policy recommendations oriented towards more than 800 decision makers in the US, European governments, NATO, the EU External Action Service and OSCE as well as to national and local governmental and non-governmental institutions. In addition, academic papers will be published in the Study Group Information Series of the Austrian National Defense Academy for each workshop.