The Aug. 8 assembly in Washington between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev marked a watershed within the decades-long wrestle between the South Caucasus neighbors. The 2 nations signed a framework settlement that would result in the top of a battle that predates their independence from the Soviet Union, unlock regional commerce and funding offers, and insert america as an essential actor right into a area lengthy dominated by Russia, Turkey, and Iran.
Months within the making, the preliminary deal represents one in every of Washington’s greatest forays into the post-Soviet sphere. Its signing complicates the favored narrative that the Trump administration seeks to drag america again from worldwide commitments or cede a sphere of affect to the Kremlin. On the similar time, the deal stays incomplete and holds actual dangers—each for the area and america.
The Aug. 8 assembly in Washington between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev marked a watershed within the decades-long wrestle between the South Caucasus neighbors. The 2 nations signed a framework settlement that would result in the top of a battle that predates their independence from the Soviet Union, unlock regional commerce and funding offers, and insert america as an essential actor right into a area lengthy dominated by Russia, Turkey, and Iran.
Months within the making, the preliminary deal represents one in every of Washington’s greatest forays into the post-Soviet sphere. Its signing complicates the favored narrative that the Trump administration seeks to drag america again from worldwide commitments or cede a sphere of affect to the Kremlin. On the similar time, the deal stays incomplete and holds actual dangers—each for the area and america.
The framework settlement means that either side acknowledge that the time is ripe to hunt a long-lasting peace that would not simply finish the battle between Baku and Yerevan, however overcome the geographic and political fragmentation that has lengthy bedeviled the South Caucasus. In response to an official who’s concerned within the effort, the Trump administration expects {that a} closing peace treaty will be signed and ratified by the top of 2026. For that ambition to succeed, nevertheless, all events—together with america—have to comply with by way of on their commitments whereas addressing some still-unanswered questions.
The battle between Armenia and Azerbaijan has been a permanent explanation for the South Caucasus’ fragmentation and strategic marginalization. It has additionally enabled Russian domination of the area, as Moscow has sought to dam any closing decision because the Nineties, forcing each Baku and Yerevan to look to the Kremlin as a referee and safety supplier. Russian involvement prevented the battle from escalating, but it surely additionally prevented a long-lasting decision that may permit the 2 nations to take cost of their very own futures.
Azerbaijan’s crushing victory within the Second Nagorno-Karabakh Warfare in 2020, adopted by its re-conquest of the remaining bits of Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh in late 2023, created a essentially new actuality. To his immense credit score, Pashinyan understood that overwhelming army defeat, the lack of Nagorno-Karabakh, and the flight of its ethnic Armenian inhabitants created not simply the necessity for peace, but additionally a possibility to hunt a everlasting finish to the battle. Whereas Yerevan was looking forward to a peace settlement, Baku lengthy appeared hesitant. The Azerbaijani management acknowledged that it held the stronger playing cards and will press maximalist calls for.
Nonetheless, the outlines of a peace accord have been clear for a while: mutual recognition of territorial integrity (together with Azerbaijan’s management of the previous Nagorno-Karabakh), demarcation of borders, renunciation of authorized claims, and diplomatic normalization. Baku and Yerevan introduced in March that they’d agreed on the outlines of a deal on these phrases. Now Armenia and Azerbaijan—with American assist—have to maneuver past the framework settlement to forge a long-lasting peace treaty.
Nonetheless, many key issues stay to be addressed. Two points that lengthy bedeviled the negotiations had been Baku’s demand for a hall throughout Armenian territory connecting the primary a part of Azerbaijan to the Nakhchivan exclave and for modifications to the Armenian structure that may be certain that future Armenian governments accepted the lack of Nagorno-Karabakh. Nationalist mobilization towards Armenia additionally stays an essential supply of Aliyev’s political legitimation technique.
The hall subject was notably tough. Neither facet wished Russian forces to safe the transit route, as they had been imagined to do beneath the phrases of the 2020 cease-fire. Armenia rejected any outdoors presence that compromised its sovereignty, whereas Azerbaijan demanded unimpeded entry to Nakhchivan. Azerbaijani threats to seize management of the route and surrounding Armenian territory didn’t assist issues. A key aspect of Washington’s behind-the-scenes diplomacy was a proposal for america to assert unique growth rights over the hall.
A full peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan would deliver monumental advantages to individuals within the area—above all by guarding towards one other conflict. It could defend Azerbaijan towards any revival of the Karabakh downside whereas securing Armenia from the specter of Azerbaijani aggression to grab the transit path to Nakhchivan. As a part of the general deal, Azerbaijan will acquire a nearer strategic partnership with america that guarantees investments in vitality and infrastructure—together with a proposed trans-Caspian fiber-optic cable—and elimination of restrictions on protection cooperation that would strengthen the nation’s hand towards regional rivals Russia and Iran. Armenia will even profit from nearer safety cooperation with america and the eventual opening of its borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey, which have been closed because the First Nagorno-Karabakh Warfare within the Nineties.
With the opening of borders, Armenia may benefit from integration into regional commerce and transit networks which have lengthy bypassed it. Normalization of the Armenia-Turkey relationship may shortly comply with, regardless of tensions with roots courting to the late Ottoman period, notably over the mass homicide of Armenians by Ottoman forces throughout World Warfare I.
Opening borders and facilitating transit would assist overcome the South Caucasus’s long-standing fragmentation, making the area extra engaging as a hyperlink between Europe and Asia. Additional advantages would accrue from the flexibility to increase commerce and funding alongside the so-called Center Hall from China by way of Central Asia and throughout the Caspian Sea to Europe. Constructing out the Center Hall, which, amongst different advantages, would diminish Russia’s leverage throughout post-Soviet Eurasia, has been one in every of Washington’s long-term aims.
Regardless of the clear profit {that a} everlasting deal would deliver for Baku, Yerevan, and the broader area, the trail forward stays fraught. Holding each Armenia and Azerbaijan on board till a treaty is signed and ratified would require fixed tending. Baku may balk if it believes that promised advantages are usually not forthcoming—for example, if the envisioned elimination of present restrictions on U.S.-Azerbaijan safety cooperation run into bother on Capitol Hill. Whereas Pashinyan’s authorities is dedicated to the settlement, political volatility in Armenia—together with an alleged coup try by opponents of the deal—may trigger issues in Yerevan as effectively.
The framework settlement additionally leaves a number of Armenian considerations unaddressed. These embrace implementing the framework settlement’s provisions on territorial integrity, which would require Azerbaijani forces to drag out of slivers of Armenian territory they nonetheless management, a closing settlement over the standing of Karabakh Armenian refugees, and Baku’s demand for constitutional change. Belief between Armenians and Azerbaijanis is low, the product of three-plus a long time of battle and demonization. The peace course of has been very top-down thus far; getting bottom-up help from civil society and odd individuals can be a for much longer course of in each nations.
One other problem stems from Washington’s determination to insert itself into the area in a bigger manner. Each Russia and Iran see even a business U.S. presence there as unfriendly. Russian strikes on Azerbaijani-owned vitality property in Ukraine following the White Home signing ceremony seem to sign the Kremlin’s displeasure. Iran has additionally served discover that it’ll not tolerate a U.S. presence within the area.
For now, Russia’s debilitating conflict in Ukraine has supplied america and different outsider powers a window of alternative to alter information on the bottom in a area that Moscow nonetheless considers its yard. Native observers stay nervous on the thought that Russia’s aspirations for regional hegemony have not pale and that an more and more militarized, belligerent Kremlin will search to settle accounts within the Caucasus (and elsewhere) as soon as its forces are free of combating in Ukraine.
Moscow has been concerned in a confrontation with Baku in current months following the downing of an Azerbaijan Airways passenger flight by Russian air protection, which killed 38 individuals. In the meantime, Pashinyan’s supporters accuse Moscow of getting a hand in plots to topple the Armenian chief. Russia retains different levers in Armenia as effectively, together with a commanding place within the nation’s financial system, management of essential infrastructure (such because the nation’s solely nuclear energy plant), and networks of affect within the Armenian Apostolic Church.
The White Home is hoping that a mixture of U.S. enterprise and enhanced safety cooperation for each Baku and Yerevan will present a adequate deterrent to stop both Moscow or Tehran from difficult the brand new dispensation. That gamble might repay; if not, it stays an open query whether or not Washington will threat a battle with Russia or Iran within the Caucasus.
Even with these considerations, the Armenia-Azerbaijan framework settlement is a major step towards ending one of many area’s bitterest conflicts. Getting up to now required political braveness in Baku and Yerevan, in addition to persistence and creativity from america (and from France, which helped ameliorate Armenian safety considerations all through the method). A technique or one other, the settlement signifies the beginning of a brand new period within the South Caucasus.
The views expressed on this article are these of the writer and are usually not an official coverage or place of the Nationwide Protection College, the Protection Division, or the U.S. authorities.
