Emil Avdaliani：A New Era in the South Caucasus as the Conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh Ends

【明報文章】With the renewed short military operation initiated on September 19 Azerbaijan has effectively ended the decades-long conflict with Armenia around Nagorno-Karabakh exclave. The Armenian population has accepted Baku’s terms of abiding by Azerbaijan’s laws. Thus ends the longest ethnic conflict across the territory of what once was the Soviet Union.

The reasons behind the latest escalation vary, but they overall highlight the shifting balance of power on the ground where Azerbaijan gained the upper hand over much embattled Armenia and the latter has much fewer foreign policy choices to influence the situation on the ground. Moreover, the end to the conflict will also test Armenia’s state resilience as political situation within the country will heat up with parts of the population being increasingly antagonistic to the ruling party.

First and foremost shift on the ground is reflected in Russia’s increasingly transactional strategy toward the South Caucasus countries. Given its dependence on the North-South corridor that partially passes through Azerbaijan, Moscow’s benevolent approach to Azerbaijan has been visible since 2022 when the war in Ukraine began.

Moreover, Azerbaijan also enjoys a favorable view from the West. Its burgeoning energy relations with the European Union have made Brussels cautious about openly criticizing the Azerbaijani government. Additionally, Azerbaijan has managed to ease its previously strained relationship with Iran through a series of high-level meetings and a softening of antagonistic rhetoric.

Simultaneously, the relations between Armenia and Russia have also reached an all-time low, as a series of political maneuvers and public statements from Yerevan have questioned Russia’s security commitments, the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and the activities of Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh.

As a result, the regional dynamics have not been favorable for Armenia. Iran is likely to intervene only if Azerbaijani actions pose a direct threat to Armenia or aim to establish the so-called Zangezur corridor through Armenia’s southernmost province of Syunik. Given the low likelihood of this happening, for the moment Iranian intervention seems improbable.

Russia is also unlikely to take decisive action. Its military involvement in Ukraine has already sapped its willingness to engage. Furthermore, the ongoing situation is likely to exacerbate the rift between Yerevan and Moscow. Personal enmity between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan adds another layer to the complex relations but is often overlooked by the outside public. Moscow’s prevailing sentiment is that, despite any challenges, Armenia remains much beholden to Russia and is unlikely to completely or in a short timeframe reverse its close institutional ties.

In this new geopolitical setting, the only relatively neutral player, albeit with currently limited influence in the South Caucasus, is the collective West. As both the EU and the US are seeking to extend their reach in the South Caucasus as a counter to Russian influence, they could use the emerging power vacuum as a result of Moscow’s continuous distraction with Ukraine. Indeed, in the grand scheme of things, the end of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can be viewed as a symptom of the slow but steadily continuing weakening of the Russian empire.

This also means that the South Caucasus, much like other regions across Eurasia experience a new age of multi-alignment when multiple actors vie for power. In previous decades and in fact centuries, the dominant actor in the South Caucasus was Russia. Present geopolitical trends indicate the region will evolve into a highly congested space where Russia will only be one of the powers along with Turkey, Iran, the EU, US and potentially China. In a way, this new reality might portend the future world order where the domination by a single power will be impossible to achieve, while multiplicity of actors will be welcomed. As argued, this major trend is not only peculiar to the South Caucasus, but is also clearly seen in Central Asia, parts of the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia.

Emil Avdaliani is a professor at European University and a scholar of silk roads.

[Emil Avdaliani]