The Zero-Sum Game in South Caucasus; Emphasizing the Karabakh War 2020

The Karabakh crisis remained in a state of neither war nor peace for tens of years, but with the Second Karabakh War, it came out of the state of "frozen conflict" and the South Caucasus, especially the Karabakh region, underwent deep changes. Since this war is not a random thing but rooted in the historical developments of the region, the main question of the article is “how did the course of historical developments in the South Caucasus affect the geopolitics of that region in the 2020 Karabakh war?” In response, this hypothesis proposes that the zero-sum situation was the principle governing the geopolitical developments of the South Caucasus region and its lasting legacy. This article has evaluated the complex history of the South Caucasus its geopolitics and its economic and cultural components, Geo-economics, and Geo-culture, and examined its consequences for the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020. The findings of the research showed that the Second Karabakh war was an ethnic-territorial war and the economic components played an essential role in its formation. Also, the sum of zero is the ruling principle in this region. In this article, a deductive research approach has been used, which is with the application of the geopolitical study model in the framework of regional studies. The data analysis was descriptive-analytical and the data of this research was collected using internet and library sources.