Armenia is facing its most dangerous moment in the last three decades. In an extensive article entitled “Armenia’s Existential Moment”, Thomas de Waal, an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, addressed the interests of the superpowers in the region.
“The loss of Karabakh, as a region with a centuries-old history of Armenian residence and heritage, will have a great impact on generations, it is the biggest trauma for Armenians since the fall of Kars in 1920,” he writes.
The analyst presents the new lightning war in Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan on September 19, as a result of which more than 100,000 people left their homes. He notes that the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev gave a speech in the empty city of Stepanakert, the city was renamed Khankendi.
“Today, the entire people of Azerbaijan are sincerely happy. All the people of Azerbaijan glorify Allah,” Aliyev said, leaving open the prospect that the Christian Armenians of Karabakh can be citizens of Azerbaijan… The entire visit to the deserted city was a one-man show,” writes the analyst, noting that today Azerbaijan is busy rewriting an entire century-old scenario.
Thomas de Waal makes a historical reference to the era of the formation of the South Caucasus and notes that the intervening history is an almost uninterrupted conflict in the entire region.
“Moscow’s failure to protect Karabakh Armenians dramatically accelerated a process that was already underway. In recent months, the ties that kept the two countries together have started to collapse,” writes the analyst, noting that the Russians have drawn their own conclusions, condemning Pashinyan as reckless and ungrateful. According to the article, a difficult winter awaits Armenia. it gets more than 80 percent of its gas and 90 percent of its wheat from Russia and still has thousands of Russian soldiers and border guards on its territory.
“Russia will try to mobilize the discontent of many constituencies, which accuse Pashinyan of handing over Karabakh to Azerbaijan,” writes Thomas de Waal, and at the same time notes that Russia’s South Caucasus axis from Armenia to Azerbaijan is part of a major structural restructuring of its foreign relations.
“Surrounded by the economic war of the West, Russia is changing its trade and energy policy from the west to the south and east,” he writes, also noting that for Moscow the “Zangezur Corridor” is part of its escape route to the south.
Western actors are also interested in the path and find that open borders and trade contribute to peace, regional security, East-West connectivity and have leverage here in the form of major financing institutions such as the World Bank.
The analyst writes that Turkey and Iran are also interested in the road.
“Thus, Zangezur has returned to the politics of great powers, the sleepy and sparsely populated Syunik region of Armenia has gained geopolitical significance again. The flags of Russia, the EU and Iran (which has opened a consulate there) are now flying in Little Kapan,” he writes.
The author of the article notes that Azerbaijan certainly knows what a risky step it would be to capture the land bridge in the south of Armenia, the “Zangezur Corridor”.
“A major military operation to seize the territory of sovereign Armenia will be a huge escalation, which will put Azerbaijan in the same category of aggressor in Armenia as Russia in Ukraine. In addition, it is difficult to plan the construction of a major international railway route in the territory you occupy by force,” he writes, noting that it is more likely that Azerbaijan will use all the coercive tactics it can without military intervention. to force Armenia to agree to his plans.
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