New Visitors in the Caucasus
Thoughts in and around geopolitics.
By: George Friedman
With all that’s happening in the Middle East, it’s easy to forget about what’s happening in the Caucasus, which careful readers will recall I wrote about a while back.
The Ukraine war was moving toward its non-conclusion, and Russia was neglecting its other frontiers (and, frankly, the wider world).
The Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict was a case in point.
The situation was this: Azerbaijan and Armenia had been enemies for some time, intermittently clashing over Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnically Armenian enclave located entirely inside Azerbaijani territory, and fighting an all-out war over the area as recently as 2020.
Azerbaijan is the more powerful of the two, thanks in part to the money it has made off its considerable energy reserves, but Armenia had historically been buoyed by Russian support.
Moscow even helped broker the cease-fire that nominally ended hostilities three years ago.
But Russia’s interests in the Caucasus are broad, extending well beyond any supposed allegiance to Armenia.
It has since broken faith with Armenia and backed Azerbaijan so that it could keep its southern border secure and, hopefully, gain access to some of the country’s energy resources.
This left Armenia with no outside supporters to supply weapons.
And in September, Azerbaijan launched a full-scale invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh, effectively “winning” the decadeslong conflict.
It seems as though the United States noticed Russia’s shift from Armenia to Azerbaijan and has tried to take advantage accordingly.
Along with France, the U.S. has said it would support the country militarily.
Washington has been vague about what it will provide, but the important thing here is that it has announced its intention to have a presence in a region traditionally in Russia’s sphere of influence.
Russia’s “defection” had undercut what influence the U.S. had in Azerbaijan and, given Armenia’s weakness, strengthened its position in an area critical to its interests.
The U.S. and French response gave Russia exactly what it didn’t need: a source of more vulnerability rather than control.
In a broader context, this is going to be part of the peace negotiations, public or otherwise, over Ukraine between Washington and Moscow.
In any negotiation, it is useful to hold cards that threaten an opponent, cards that can be used to gain concessions or, at the very least, make the opponent nervous.
Since the Caucasus matters more to Russia than it does to the U.S., pledging military aid to Armenia creates the possibility, however remote, of American action.
It’s a potent play, especially considering Russia already had more at risk.
Washington has said nothing of this, of course, but there’s a precedent: In 2008, Russia went to war with Georgia in a conflict that the U.S. helped resolve.
But Washington’s relationship with Georgia was important to the U.S. only while the Russians were attacking Georgia; when Russia lost interest, so too did the United States.
American (and French) involvement in Armenia, then, should be seen as an effort to enhance their positions for future Ukraine talks.
If Ukraine is significantly weakened before then, the U.S. will need as many levers as it can get.
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