The Bloody Little Azerbaijan-Armenia War: Scoresheet For Russia, Turkey, Iran And Israel

The great question during the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict that lasted 44 days – who will win – has now morphed into who really won behind the scenes and why that matters. On the ground, clearly, Azerbaijan mostly triumphed by regaining much of the coveted territory of mountainous Karabagh (aka Nagorno-Karabagh), the enclave inside its borders that it had originally lost to separatist Armenians some 30 years ago. Now that the Russian-sponsored ceasefire has finally held, with the territorial dispositions frozen, the question is how will the outcome affect the overall balance of power in the region and therefore in the world. That is what people are debating. It’s not really about Armenia-Azerbaijan anymore. (The rights and wrongs, origination and morality, of the conflict are another issue for a different column altogether.)

Some argue that since Turkish military support for Azerbaijan tipped the balance so decisively the role of Russia as undisputed regional hegemon is much diminished. There’s a new force in the equation and that’s Erdogan’s Turkey. Turkish drone-bombers, advisors and sustained training over years (along with some Israeli hi-tech hardware) destroyed Armenian defenses. It’s alleged that Erdogan even had the gall to transfer mercenaries from Syria to fight on the Azeri side. Russia therefore can no longer strut around as sole and ultimate kingmaker of its post-Soviet space. The bubble has burst. Other former Soviet republics may even be emboldened to defy Moscow in various ways. Against that scenario is the argument that Ankara was not formally included as a signatory to the trilateral ceasefire deal signed between Azerbaijan-Armenia-Russia. The Kremlin still presided over the peacemaking and got to station its guarantor-troops along the line of control, namely inside Azerbaijan, for the first time. Here is one expert’s Solomonic division of the issue in an article titled “Did Russia Win The Karabakh War? where he argues that Moscow both gained and lost. Ingenious and unconvincing.

One thing is for sure – the West also lost. The previous guarantors of the peace dating from the 1990s denominated as the Minsk Group included France and the US. This time around, neither had any part of the resolution either on paper or on the ground. At first glance, this might not seem very relevant other than as a marker of the Trump administration’s withdrawal from cohering the West’s global engagement. We will return to this. In the question of who won strategically, those that argue Erdogan gained leverage at Putin’s expense, overlook a central point – what kind of polity and what kind of leaders did best. Armenia certainly didn’t. Armenia’s premier, Nikol Pashinyan, lost badly and came close to losing power altogether as popular resentment spilled onto the streets once the military debacle became undeniable.

Back in 2018, Pashinyan had ascended to office at the head of a kind of ‘Color Revolution’ rather akin to Georgia’s Rose Revolution that brought Mikheil Saakashvili to power in that country. In both cases, a great deal of defiant rhetoric against Moscow accompanied the people-power demonstrations that unseated the corrupt previous regimes. Another such phenomenon occurred in Ukraine in the Maidan demonstrations where the pro-Moscow Viktor Yanukovich was overthrown. There’s nothing that Putin hates more than a theatrical triumph of people-power explicitly framed by the new leader as a rebellion against Russian domination. We all know what happens next: Russia launches an invasion to humiliate the country and in particular the new popular leader. In Georgia, we saw Moscow help separatists to kick out Georgia from its Abkhaz and South Ossetian provinces. In Ukraine, it was Crimea and the Donbas region. The message was clear – you either choose Moscow or lose big chunks of territory. Now you know who’s boss. Find a leader that behaves in the required way.

Something oddly similar happened in Armenia where Pashinyan came to office after leading popular demonstrations and accusing the former regime of corrupt practices not least in its dealings with Russia. Putin was not amused. This time though, Moscow didn’t invade Armenia as it did in Georgia and Ukraine. It didn’t have to. Azerbaijan and Turkey did the work by moving on Karabakh and humiliating Pashinyan. For a month and a half, the duration of the war, Moscow resolutely looked away while Armenia slowly lost the war, which is a significant sin of omission considering Moscow has always acted as Armenia’s protector. Technically, of course, this was a war within Azerbaijan. Armenia proper didn’t come under attack. So Putin was within his rights to look away. And just in case anyone thought the Kremlin had gone soft on Turkey, a highly notable incident occurred down in Syria where Russian bombers attacked a Turkish-backed militia stronghold killing some 80 Syrian militants. So it’s not as if Putin was shy about confronting the Turks if and when he wanted.

Meanwhile in Washington, actually throughout the whole of America, nobody had any attention to spare from the election chaos followed by Donald Trump’s odd and unprecedented refusal to concede. Perfect timing for a little war to be launched and resolved – with Moscow’s mediation – while no one in Washington or the US media was likely to heed the Armenian diaspora’s cries of anguish. The whole thing smells of a well-planned, precisely-timed, fully pre-consulted demarche. The three leaders left empowered resemble each other in their attitude to democracy – Putin, Erdogan, Aliyev of Azerbaijan – and illustrate the kind of polity that Russia likes to foster in its neighborhood, not to say around the world. Putin likes a world where he deals with a top man in full control of a country rather than system to system relations. For Erdogan it couldn’t have happened at a more critical time, as his popular support collapses due to economic implosion and Covid chaos.

With the price of oil plummeting, the economy of Azerbaijan too has contracted but it’s also true that Aliyev has, on balance, presided over an unprecedented era of stability and prosperity for his country. He has handled international relations adroitly, somehow maintaining close ties to Israel and Turkey simultaneously, no small achievement considering the hostility between those two countries. Retaking Karabakh from the Armenians has certainly bolstered his rule. But it has also included a little-known but crucial strategic bonus – the redrawing of its southern border so it now has a direct overland link to Turkey and a much-extended border with Iran.

This latter is highly important and touches on why Israel has courted Baku so assiduously in recent years. Iran has a huge province of Azeris. It worries that sooner or later they will want to secede and join with their ethnic kin across the border in Azerbaijan proper. The extension of that border increases the chances with enhanced trade, tribal contact, and hard-to-police porousness. Israel would like to encourage the process, or at least the threat of it, as a counterweight to Iran’s anti-Israel activities in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

So at the end of the brutal conflict in Karabakh seemingly so remote and isolated, we can see the outline of far broader strategic implications. They’re not insignificant. Putin teaches another condign lesson to its near-abroad – you benefit if you don’t defy Moscow, lose if you do. Your future flows through the Kremlin. Despite the misleading noise about how Turkey has dealt itself a place at the regional power-table, nothing happened that didn’t benefit Russian power. Erdogan gained a new lease on life politically because Putin ignored Armenia’s cries for help. Now Pashinyan has learned his lesson, Moscow has launched a charm offensive, sending top officials to Yerevan to calm things down. Azerbaijan ended up more than ever grateful to Moscow, probably with the added knowledge that what Russia gives it can take away. All this happened in part because the West was AWOL at a crucial moment, illustrating perfectly what Russia has always argued – that too much democracy based on the Western system is not a healthy model for the world to emulate, especially if Moscow has any say. Which it now has even more than before.

EurasianetPerspectives | Did Russia win the Karabakh war?