…I generally like talking to students about my work; graduate, undergraduate, heck I’ve even done the odd high school group in the past. But sometimes I wonder why I bother.

This guy came in this morning to tell me about his thesis work on the South Caucasus. He thinks that the entire politics of the region can be explained as a competition for hegemony between the United States, Russia, Turkey and Iran; except that Turkey and Iran are not powerful enough to be real actors, and Turkey is anyway under the control of the United States.

Well, I said, I think there are three fundamental flaws with that analysis; first, there might just possibly be some part played in the politics of the region by indigenous actors, such as the Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani governments, as well as the various other armed factions and quasi-statelets on the ground; secondly, in my personal experience, neither the United States nor Russia are monolithic in their foreign policy and any analysis that starts by assuming that they are is deeply flawed; and thirdly, it’s news to me that Ankara’s policy is weak unless determined by Washington; I don’t recall, for instance, that the Americans told the Turks to close their border with Armenia in 1993, and that’s a policy that clearly does have an effect on the ground.

He replied by restating his position and adding in some half-baked obervations from newspaper articles he had read; he clearly had not absorbed a word I said. We parted as friends but I don’t see a glittering career in international relations ahead for him.