Politics & Governance / International Politics / Great Power Competition & Geopolitics

The Cold Machine: How the Caucasus Became the World's Testing Ground

Ordres et désordres au Caucase

Aude Merlin; Silvia Serrano

Think the Caucasus is just a forgotten mountain region trapped in ancient blood feuds? Think again. For decades, this sliver of land between the Black and Caspian Seas has served as a brutal laboratory for modern geopolitics—a testing ground where international law, borders, and human rights are weaponized in real time. This breakdown dissects the landmark academic work Ordres et désordres au Caucase (Orders and Disorders in the Caucasus), edited by renowned political scientists Aude Merlin and Silvia Serrano. Drawing on field investigations, leaked budgets, classified archives, and demographic forensics across Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, this presentation exposes the hidden mechanics behind endless regional warfare. Key reveals include: - The 1922 Bolshevik map trick: How Soviet bureaucrats fabricated ethnic borders out of thin air, building the geopolitical time bombs that detonated South Ossetia. - The Ergneti Black Market paradox: Why a multi-million-dollar cross-border smuggling ring created over a decade of stable peace—and why Western-backed anti-corruption reforms accidentally sparked war. - Information warfare in 2008: How real-time satellite imagery was scrubbed from public platforms while casualty numbers were inflated tenfold to justify military invasion under the pretext of international law. - The Chechen franchise: How Moscow outsourced violence to Ramzan Kadyrov through grey amnesties, hostage-taking, and massive un-audited shadow budgets. - Weaponizing the Kosovo precedent: How humanitarian intervention arguments were turned into tools to dismember sovereign states. Aude Merlin is a specialist in post-Soviet politics and lecturer at the Université libre de Bruxelles. Silvia Serrano is a professor of contemporary Russian and post-Soviet studies at Sorbonne Université. Their collective work deconstructs lazy media tropes of ancient hatreds to reveal a hyper-rational, chilling system of power politics—a blueprint now being deployed across the globe.