The Second Karabakh War (September 27–November 9, 2020) has resulted in an Azerbaijani national triumph, a self-inflicted Armenian trauma, geopolitical gains for Russia, another debacle of Western diplomacy, and Turkey’s reassertion as a regional power in the South Caucasus. The significance of Azerbaijan’s military victory... MORE

On November 11, a day after he signed the trilateral accord with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan ending the Second Karabakh War, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan declared that “almost 99 percent of the liberated territories had been destroyed” (Azernews,... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. *To read Part Two, please click here. *To read Part Three, please click here.   Over the past two decades, the main international mechanism for resolving the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Karabakh—the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. *To read Part Two, please click here. Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the issue at stake, mediators are expected to be impartial between two parties to a conflict. Yet the Minsk Group’s co-chairing Western governments—those of... MORE

The November 10 declaration that instituted a ceasefire between Azerbaijan and Armenia also established new east-west and north-south transportation corridors across this corner of the South Caucasus, thus complicating and intensifying the “railway wars” that have gripped the region at various periods since the turn... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. The second Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan (September–November 2020) has conclusively discredited the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Minsk Group, the instrument of multilateral diplomacy mandated 28 years ago to mediate a solution to... MORE

The 44-day war between Armenia and Azerbaijan (September 27–November 9) has resulted in an Azerbaijani national triumph, a Russian geopolitical and diplomatic victory over the West, and a conclusive discrediting of multilateral diplomacy as an instrument for conflict-resolution in and around the post-Soviet space (see... MORE

Almost from the moment he came to power (2018), Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian rejected the “Basic Principles” worked out by the Minsk Group’s co-chairs (the United States, Russia, France) for resolving the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Karabakh. Tabled by the three co-chairing countries in 2009... MORE

Like a number of other regional neighbors and global powers, Turkey has been expanding its attention to and involvement with the countries of the South Caucasus in recent months. That growing focus has, of course, been driven most immediately by the latest round of fierce... MORE

The impression that Russia has behaved uncharacteristically passively in the face of multiple unexpected foreign crises over the last few months is somewhat misleading. It is true that Moscow’s attempts at managing these crises—from Belarus to Kyrgyzstan to Moldova—proved limited at best, and President Vladimir... MORE