Geo-Economic Corridors of the South Caucasus (2010–2025): Competition Between the USA and Russia for Critical Infrastructure

This article is dedicated to a comparative analysis of the investment activity of the United States of America and the Russian Federation in the critical infrastructure of the South Caucasus from 2010 to 2025. The author examines energy, transport, and digital corridors as tools for consolidating the influence of great powers and applies panel regression and event-study methods to identify the relationship between "investment shocks" and armed incidents. It has been found that an increase in the share of American capital by 10 percentage points is associated with a 4.2% decrease in the number of clashes, whereas a similar increase in the Russian share leads to a 3.9% rise in conflict. The article offers a three-scenario forecast until 2030 and recommendations to reduce infrastructure risks. It employs panel regression with fixed effects, event-study for key infrastructure "shocks," the Mann-Whitney test, and Markov switching scenario modeling, which allowed for the identification of a causal relationship between the structure of investments and armed incidents. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that, for the first time in the South Caucasus, three types of infrastructure—energy, transport, and digital—are integrated into a single panel database, where each object is digitized by quarters from 2010 to 2025. This has empirically shown that the "structure" of the investor, rather than just the amount of capital, determines the dynamics of conflict: a 10 percentage point increase in the share of the USA statistically reduces the number of armed incidents, while a comparable increase in the Russian share, on the contrary, increases the risk of clashes. The work also identifies an institutional factor: DFC loans with an ESG filter tend to be more resilient to sanction shocks than intergovernmental loans from the Russian Federation. Scenario Markov modeling demonstrates that the launch of TANAP-2 and the Digital Silk Way can reinforce a "US-lead" regime, while the completion of the northern segment of the "North-South" corridor increases the likelihood of a "RU-lead." The findings deepen the understanding of geoeconomic competition, confirming its direct impact on security, and form practical recommendations for diversifying corridors and reducing path dependence.

South Caucasus, geoeconomics, critical infrastructure, corridor, United States, Russia, pipeline, railway, optics, conflict