The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: What is at Stake?

Three questions to Richard Giragosian

Director of the Regional Studies Center

Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous and landlocked disputed territory between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The region is ethnically Armenian, and run by self-proclaimed authorities, but part of Azerbaijan, both countries claim the region as their own. After going to war over the enclave, a ceasefire was reached in 1994, but the issue has remained unresolved since and caused fighting to break out over the years, the last one being in 2016. The eruption of violence a week ago has been cause of great concern: over 200 people have died and both sides blame each other. Heavy fighting continues and Ganja, in Azerbaijan, is the latest city to have been hit after the shelling of Stepanakert, in Armenia, over the past week. The region is of key strategic importance as well, surrounded by Turkey, Iran and Russia, and the hydrocarbon deposits of the Caspian Sea. In this interview, Richard Giragosian, Founding Director of the Regional Studies Center (RSC), a Yerevan-based think tank (Armenia), provides his analysis of the conflict and the potential geopolitical spillover effects it may have.

Heavy fighting broke out on Sunday, September 27, on the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In what context did this escalation happen and what were the immediate causes?

In what seems like a coordinated Azerbaijani offensive against Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) early Sunday morning, weeks and months of mounting tension has manifested into outright fighting, with a serious potential for expanded combat operations that would surpass the April 2016 escalation. Although that earlier round of fighting in 2016 was the most serious and intense since the fragile ceasefire of 1994, the current order of battle includes much more serious offensive weapons systems, with the use of artillery, tanks, multiple launch rockets, combat helicopters and military-grade drones of UAVs.

Despite a sometimes confusing war of words over who started the fighting, the military reality on the ground does suggest that the strongly defensive force posture for the Armenian and Karabakh sides greatly reduces any offensive threat. Moreover, from a military perspective, the Karabakh defenders would be unlikely to cede their advantage by launching a risky offensive that negates or diminishes tactical advantages inherent in their entrenched fortified defensive positions. Although to be clear, unlike the political and diplomatic context, in terms of military logic, it is less important and largely irrelevant who started the fighting, as once engaged, combat operations follow their own logic and operational tempo.

Despite the global public health crisis from Covid-19 pandemic, Azerbaijan chose this especially vulnerable time to attack. This is not an isolated incident, however, as this new offensive follows a similar attack in July, now seen as part of a more pronounced pattern of using the military force of arms to attempt to impose a "resolution" to the Karabakh conflict by force rather than through diplomatic negotiations.

Despite the global public health crisis from Covid-19 pandemic, Azerbaijan chose this especially vulnerable time to attack.

Moreover, the coordination and logistical preparation necessary to conduct this latest offensive by Azerbaijan only demonstrates that this latest round of fighting was a calculated and planned act of aggression. This may also stem from the failure of the initial offensive, which as was seen in the case of the July 2020 fighting, was quickly halted and decisively repulsed due to the tactical advantage of the defenders in terms of terrain and topography, and as a result of the quick loss of the tactical element of surprise in the location and intensity of the attack.

The Divergence of Democracy

An important additional driver or factor motivating this Azerbaijani attack stems from the "divergence of democracy," as the authoritarian nature of the Azerbaijani government has exposed its dangerous lack of legitimacy, both in contrast with Armenia and in the wake of a "national awakening" in Belarus, as a vulnerable and isolated authoritarian hold-out on the European neighborhood. Moreover, while Armenia has emerged as a fully respected and legitimate democracy since its 2018 revolution, the political power in Azerbaijan is derived from family, with power passing from father-to-son through the rule of the Aliyev dynasty.

An interesting and undeniable aspect to this latest Azerbaijan attack is the fact that each and every modern Azerbaijani leader up until current President Ilham Aliyev has either come to power or fallen from power solely due to events on the Karabakh battlefield. This only shows that resorting to force and resuming war is a risky gambit for the Aliyev family dynasty in Baku. Yet the use of military force and an appeal to nationalism by the Azerbaijani leadership has served as a convenient, although temporary distraction from domestic problems, as seen in the 2016 fighting.

Thus, despite commitment to diplomacy and concern for peace talks, Armenia and Karabakh now stand alone, with no partner for peace and little hope for sincere or serious negotiations with Azerbaijan. The imperative now is to focus on a "back to basics" diplomacy, aimed less at substantive peace talks, and more on preventing a further escalation of renewed hostilities and pressuring Azerbaijan as the only party to the conflict that undermines a diplomatic resolution to the Karabakh conflict.

Who are the main geopolitical stakeholders in this conflict, and what is the role of this particular disputed territory in the wider geopolitical tensions? What could be the consequences?

Despite its localized nature with no foreign presence on the ground, the Karabakh conflict has serious geopolitical implications for sudden spillover. It has the potential to become a pivot for a much wider confrontation of competing interests of larger, more powerful regional actors, such as Russia, Turkey and Iran. For Russia, the Karabakh conflict offers the most effective leverage for maintaining its power and influence, over both Armenia and Azerbaijan, especially as it now serves as the primary arms supplier to both of them.

Despite its localized nature with no foreign presence on the ground, the Karabakh conflict has serious geopolitical implications for sudden spillover.

As a key external actor, Russia is now seen and generally accepted as having a legitimate interest in the conflict, mainly due to its diplomatic engagement and initiative as a co-chairing nation, along with France and the United States, of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) "Minsk Group," the sole diplomatic entity empowered to mediate.

At the same time, however, the conflict is also a challenge for Russia, as it has only revealed and deepened the weakness and inherent limits of its "strategic partnership" and security alliance with Armenia. More specifically, even beyond the Karabakh conflict, from an Armenian perspective, there has been a profound crisis in Armenian-Russian relations for several years, with deepening dissatisfaction not with the relationship itself, but over the unequal terms of the relationship, marked by frustration with the asymmetry and disrespect afforded to its alliance and exacerbated by a sense of betrayal by Russia.

On the other hand, Turkey has adopted a much more active and assertive policy response. In this context, even before this most recent outbreak of fighting, Turkey has been seen as a more potent threat to Armenia, since its response to the July 2020 escalation between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Turkey’s vocal defense of Azerbaijan, which is also driven by a desire to regain its past role as Azerbaijan’s primary military patron that was lost to Russia and Israel, is seen in Armenia as a "destabilizing and destructive" stance.

Moreover, the Turkish response in support of Azerbaijan, then and now, has been immediate and harsh, blindly endorsing Azerbaijan’s version of events even well before the true state of affairs on the ground was determined. Although this position can be viewed as a natural reaction by Turkey, the sudden and swift backing of Azerbaijan was more of a premature and reflexive reaction than as a result of any prudent well-considered strategy. And in terms of the recent fighting over Karabakh, Turkey is seeking to regain its former role as the leading military patron for Azerbaijan, an objective that has only intensified in the wake of Turkish frustration of having been supplanted by Russia and Israel in arms sales to Azerbaijan.

Where does this leave EU diplomacy in the region?

For the European Union, the past several years have been marked by a series of unexpected challenges in the security sector. From a broader perspective, the sheer size and depth of the EU have greatly hindered its capacity for either rapid reaction or robust response to these security challenges. As many of these emerging challenges graduated into an evolving crisis, the institutional momentum has been slow and lumbering. However, these inherent limitations in the EU security response and crisis management have largely been obscured by the absence of American engagement or commitment.

The unresolved Karabakh conflict is emerging as a pressing and urgent crisis for European diplomacy.

Against that backdrop, despite a deepening of diplomatic experience and an expanding exercise of engagement in recent years, the security challenges to the EU have neither waned nor abated. Rather, they have only worsened and accelerated in 2020, as the rush of three consecutive security crises threatened to overwhelm any effective response.

This "triad of threats" comprised a daunting and diverse set of challenges, including the sudden and startling onset of the global Covid-19 pandemic, an unexpected yet positive "national awakening" of activism in Belarus struggling for democratic change, and more recently, the outbreak of open warfare over Karabakh, with a real risk of conflict spillover triggering Russian, Turkish or even Iranian intervention. And it is this latter danger of wider escalation that has elevated the Karabakh conflict to the forefront, as an urgent and immediate crisis now seen as a "kinetic crisis" rather than as a "frozen conflict." Thus, the unresolved Karabakh conflict is emerging as a pressing and urgent crisis for European diplomacy.

Copyright: Davit Ghahramanyan / NKR Infocenter / AFP