Baku, Azerbaijan, June 11-12, 2014

we arrived in Baku late on Wednesday (June 11). Wow, driving into town by taxi the city welcomes you with an impressive modern highway, high rise buildings and soon an impressive skyline. What a contrast to Tbilisi which is architecturally a much more modest but perhaps also cosier and warmer city. The traffic in both Baku and Tbilisi is crazy and the two cities, perhaps Baku even more so, are dominated by oversized luxury cars. In particular Mercedes seems to do a thriving business with their most high-end vehicles in both Tbilisi and Baku. While the money in Baku for the purchase of these expensive cars clearly comes from the oil business, where the money in Tbilisi comes from is less clear. But there are also plenty of older Mercedes cars; the make seems to be the favorite one in the Caucasus (which, of course, I can fully understand). BMW and Audi are much less represented for some reason.

Our hotel room in the old town contrasted unfavorably with the luxury in the streets and after some hesitation we moved to a different hotel which was fine but way out from the city center. Thus another move to a better one the next morning (Thursday, June 12).

My talk at the Caucasus Research Resource Center (part of Kahzar University) and a meeting with the Deans and Vice-Rectors beforehand went very well. The university administrators tried to convince us that Kahzar Univ, a private university of some 2000 students, is an excellent place to cooperate with (and they may well be right).

My talk on Obama's foreign policy toward Russia at a different campus in the city center afterwards created a most lively discussion with some people in the audience being either strongly pro- or anti-Russian. There were also a number of visiting students from Princeton University who like myself were a little more neutral (as of course we are much less directly affected by Putin's activities in Ukraine and elsewhere). It was a very good and for me at least very enlightening discussion about the Russian influence in the Caucasus. We continued it over a beer with a visiting very well informed US student studying at UCD in Ireland. It's a small world indeed.

A subsequent phone interview with the Voice of America about the situation in Georgia and why Georgia is unlikely (in my view) to be offered MAP, the membership action plan to eventually join NATO, at the next NATO summit in Wales, went well I thought. Even the phone line was decent enough.

Wandering about the impressive and extremely well maintained (almost too sanitized looking) old town later on, George and I caught the first world cup match between Brazil and Croatia on a huge screen on the patio of a local bar. The Croatians lost, not unexpectedly. The atmosphere in the bar was excellent with quite a few Croatian supporters among the customers. There were huge screens showing the world cup match all about the old town with a fairly large number of well distributed policemen unobtrusively (well sort of) standing at various corners to make sure nothing untoward would happen among the various crowds assembled to watch the match.

Three Russian tanks, the BBC reported in the same night, crossed the border from Russia into eastern Ukraine and participated in some local fighting. This, I believe, does not augur well at all. Obama is distracted by the chaos which has erupted again in Iraq (the storming of Mosul and Tikrit) by al qaeda ISIS forces. Europe/the EU is focused on the world cup and the world's 'most important' question who is going to be the new President of the European Commission (who really cares all that much apart from Juncker and Co.?). Thus, Putin may well be tempted to 'check out' if anyone in the western world does anything if he moves more directly into eastern Ukraine.........let's hope I'm wrong.