This is CBSI on the world.

I'm John Batchel with my colleague and friend Gregory Copley, Defense and Foreign Affairs.

The South Caucasus.

Yeravan is the capital of Armenia.

Baku is the capital of Azerbaijan.

Both states were part of the Soviet Empire once upon a time.

Since then, they've gone in different directions in terms of capitalism,

in terms of relationship with Moscow,

and certainly in terms of the dispute.

Both of them have fought several wars over since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.

That is a region that was cross-claimed by Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, it's called, and Azerbaijan. I've traveled in this region

extensively. It's beautiful country. Has various climates, many different climate zones in small countries.

At the same time, Nagorno-Karabakh is almost like a perfect battlefield

because there weren't a great deal of development there in these last decades where

Armenia occupied.

Azerbaijan, with the help of Turkey, overran Armenia's defenses at the end of

1990. And I visited right afterwards the end of the conflict zone. Missiles had been tossed

into Azerbaijan cities, and the Turkish forces had aided, Turkey forces had aided Azerbaijan to

overrun what defense that Armenia put out there. Russia did not come to Yerevan's assistance,

despite the fact that there were two Russian bases in Armenia at the time. Turkey quite boldly supported the

Azerbaijan offensive, which was also using equipment that it had acquired from Israel an ally

in the region. So there were lots of red lines crossed in a few months. Now, these years later, Gregory's reporting, there's been an

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