Geopolitics and Foreign Policy

In a corner of the former Soviet Union, overshadowed by the catastrophe in Ukraine, a blockade backed by the government of Azerbaijan has cut off an estimated 120,000 Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh from the rest of the world. Since December 12, a group of activists, with support from Azerbaijani government officials and military forces, have blocked the free movement of traffic along the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, known as the Lachin Corridor.[1] The Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh have endured a relentless winter, with just a trickle of humanitarian supplies allowed in, along with intermittent gas and electricity cuts.[2] The United States and its partners have warned of a humanitarian catastrophe,[3] with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken repeatedly calling on Azerbaijan to open the Lachin Corridor.[4] Last month, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered the Azerbaijani government to do the same.[5] But the blockade continues into its fourth month, threatening to derail Western-led peace efforts and to spark a new round of conflict, with the risk of ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh. With or without violent confrontation, the Azerbaijani government can coerce the Armenian population to leave the land by making their lives and livelihoods increasingly difficult to sustain. The issue is more than a regional territorial squabble; it has become part of a larger contest, with notable U.S. interests at stake. For the past three decades, Russia’s hard power presence in the South Caucasus and its influence over former Soviet republics provided Moscow with enough leverage to maintain peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Now Russia’s influence is receding, and its weakened capacity has been laid bare. The U.S. has its first opportunity since the fall of the Soviet Union to gain significant standing in the South Caucasus, by rewriting the security architecture of the region. At the 2023 Munich Security Conference in February, Blinken addressed the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. Sitting at a table with Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders on each side, he stated America’s commitment to the peace process, along with European partners. The surge of Western diplomatic engagement began after the Ukraine conflict and saw a major uptick after Azerbaijani attacks on Armenia proper in September 2022.      Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin Corridor is a pivotal moment in the conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis over the future of Nagorno-Karabakh. The two have been in tension since the late years of the Soviet Union, though the seeds of the conflict were planted long before that. In the 1920s, Josef Stalin, then the Commissar of Nationalities for the USSR, placed the Armenian-majority region of Nagorno-Karabakh within the boundaries of Soviet Azerbaijan,[6] but granted Armenians of the region a high degree of cultural autonomy and self-rule. The resulting creation of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast in 1923 was a move designed to create conflict, keeping Armenians and Azerbaijanis in a state of perceived vulnerability that would require Moscow to regularly intervene.[7] That strategy succeeded. Beginning in the 1960s, after complaints of cultural repression and demographic policies designed to dilute their presence, the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh began to petition Soviet authorities for reassignment to the Armenian SSR. Emboldened by the reforms of glasnost and perestroika, Armenians held a referendum in 1991, with a vast majority of the population voting for Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence.[8] But the poll was rejected by Baku as illegal and the disagreement sparked pogroms against the Armenians of Azerbaijan and interethnic violence, culminating in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. The conflict killed roughly 30,000 people between 1991–94 and pushed hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. Azerbaijanis were forced to leave lands captured by Armenians and Armenians fled from Baku and other parts of Azerbaijan.[9] In Nagorno-Karabakh, local Armenians prevailed over Azerbaijani forces. For nearly 30 years, they built a self-proclaimed independent republic with democratic elections, a free press, and a range of public institutions. Officially, it remained within the territorial boundaries of Azerbaijan, unrecognized by any foreign country, though international mediators made reference to the right of self-determination for local Armenians as part of ongoing peace talks.  The government of Azerbaijan has long wanted to bring Nagorno-Karabakh under the federal control of Baku; the land controlled by Armenians before the 2020 war constituted 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s officially recognized territory. In September 2020, leveraging its superior military resources and direct support from Turkey, Azerbaijan launched an offensive to retake Nagorno-Karabakh and made significant territorial gains. After 44 days of war, a cease-fire brokered by Moscow, known as the trilateral agreement, was signed by Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia in November 2020.[10] The agreement guaranteed free passage of people and goods through the Lachin Corridor. Baku’s stated goal is the full reintegration of Nagorno-Karabakh into Azerbaijan, by force if necessary. Under its proposal, Armenian residents would be treated as Azerbaijani citizens, with no special cultural or administrative status and rights. Armenians want to continue the internationally led negotiations that have long included notions of special status and civilian protection. The history of violence against Armenians in Azerbaijan, including the recent execution of Armenian prisoners of war and the sexual mutilation of female soldiers, give Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh little confidence in their safety. Internationally led confidence-building measures would need significant time to generate the conditions for interethnic peace. Also at issue is Baku’s treatment of ethnic and religious minorities already living under its control; while Azerbaijan runs showpiece initiatives on interfaith relations for an international audience, it has received the lowest possible rating from Freedom House for the treatment of women and ethnic minorities at home.[11] According to Freedom House, Azerbaijan’s government “has worked to stifle public expressions of Talysh and Lezgin identity, among other targeted groups.”[12] The Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh are not interested in following the same fate. For most of the past 30 years the U.S., France, and Russia worked as partners to help solve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, serving as co-chairs of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group.[13] It was a project that captured the geopolitical zeitgeist of the 1990s: the new Russia working with leading countries of the West to solve problems in the former