The United States have suddenly lost interest in the Caucasus, political scientist Nikolai Zlobin said in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza, speaking about the Caucasian direction of Washington's foreign policy under President Donald Trump.
"New American foreign policy has not even formulated its initial principles yet. It should be noted that American foreign policy elite has suddenly lost interest in the Caucasus," he said.
According to Zlobin, only republics of the South Caucasus themselves can correct this. "I think this is the task of all countries that are located in this region: to once again enter the American political market and discuss their interests, including whether they want changes in the US policy in the region or not," he noted.
"The thing is that Trump administration won't have much time to deal with the Caucasus. Without republics' active position, changes in Washington's behavior should not be expected," he believes.
He explained that Trump's team still does not even understand why it needs the Caucasus: "Right now the United States have quite bad relations with Russia, and if those countries can influence these relations in one way or another, perhaps interest in them will finally appear," he said.
He also talked about the development of relations in Russia-China-USA triangle. "American-Chinese relations are developing surprisingly well: a common, unified economy has been created, in which a huge number of people earn money. This helped Washington and Beijing to somewhat put political differences aside, since both countries have powerful lobbying groups that calm politicians and don't let them act like they want. That is why Russia should be careful while building relations with China, because its economy is still too weak compared to Chinese," he warned.
