South Caucasus in the Struggle of Transit Projects: The Politics of Competition between the “East — West” and “North — South” Routes

Abstract

The article examines the political consequences of rivalry between two connectivity axes — “East — West” and “North — Sou th” — in a regional environment where infrastructure governance becomes a tool of foreign policy, risk management, and resource redistribution. Aim and tasks. To identify how control over critical connectivity nodes (ports, border crossings, rail junctions) changes bargaining power among Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia and deepens external involvement under post-conflict uncertainty and sanctions-related constraints on Eurasian flows. To clarify when infrastructure choices support stabilisation and when they reproduce disputes over the status of communications, guarantees of passage, and acceptable forms of external mediation. Methods. The study combines comparative political analysis with a geoeconomic perspective, comparing regional states and external centres of power through access to flows and the rules that administer them. It applies the concept of infrastructure politics and focused case studies of corridor bottlenecks, including admission regimes, tariff coordination, digital cargo tracing, and security standards. Results. The findings show that corridorisation shifts part of competition from declarative diplomacy to the governability of flows: tariff settings, customs practices, and security requirements become bargaining objects and channels of external leverage. Typical external tools are identified — financing, technological standards, and digital requirements — that lock in dependency through “entry rules”, deepen asymmetries among participants, and increase the political value of bottlenecks as sources of rent and leverage. Conclusion. Connectivity rivalry can stimulate pragmatic cooperation, yet it also raises escalation risks when transport arrangements are interpreted as a redistribution of sovereignty rather than a technical compromise. A more resilient strategy for regional states is to manage a connectivity portfolio by diversifying partners, standardising procedures, reducing tariff politicisation, and linking infrastructure choices to trust-building, verification, and predictability mechanisms.