The history of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh ended with the old method of conflict resolution: siege, conquest, and expulsion. After a 10-month blockade, Azerbaijan launched an offensive on September 19 and captured the enclave within the same day, with nearly the entire Armenian population fleeing. As the saying goes, give war a chance.
The Armenians are a classic ethnic minority whose Christianity and distinctive writing date back to an epic struggle between the Romans and the Parthians, which was yet another genocide. It’s a huge victory for Azerbaijanis, who speak Turkic and are historically Shiite Muslims. However, contrary to appearances, this conflict is not a Samuel Huntington-style clash of civilizations. Rather, emboldening traditional regional powers like Turkey to scramble for geopolitical spoils after the superpowers withdraw is a harbinger of coming global anarchy.
Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous region in the South Caucasus that is subject to ongoing conflict. It was ceded by Persia to Russia in the 19th century, but with the advent of the Soviet Union, it fell into conflict and is now claimed by Armenia and Azerbaijan. In 1921, Stalin annexed the enclave to Azerbaijan, home to oil resources and a flourishing intellectual culture. But Azerbaijan’s thin layer of modernist intellectuals was eliminated in Stalin’s purges in the 1930s and replaced by corrupt officials overseen by the feared KGB general Heydar Aliyev. (His son, Ilham Aliyev, is the president of the Azerbaijani dynasty.)
In 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev’s dream of a more rational and humane Soviet Union encouraged Armenian intellectuals to create a huge plan to unite Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh with mainland Armenia. A popular movement was started. This seemed easy at first glance. It involves the transfer of a state from one Soviet republic to another. However, Armenia’s demands were met with protests in Azerbaijan, which quickly turned violent. Gorbachev seemed helpless in the face of the disaster he had caused. From there to the end of the superpower it took only three years.
In the aftermath of the post-Soviet chaos, Armenians pledged to defend Nagorno-Karabakh by force. Instead of poetic intellectuals, Armenian leaders of the wartime generation became militia commanders. They became more earthy and soon proved brazenly rotten. Defending the country became their only means of legitimacy, precluding concessions necessary for peace. By 1994, Armenians rallied around the traumatic memories of the genocide and succeeded in expelling large numbers of Azerbaijanis from the enclave. Last month, Azerbaijan achieved more than parity.
The project had a strong supporter in Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a master of visionary vision, has already experimented with Islamic liberalism, joined Europe, led an Arab uprising, challenged Israel and negotiated peace in Ukraine. He now has another dream. It is about opening a geopolitical corridor from Europe through Central Asia to China. This is the “Zangezur Corridor,” a 40-kilometre-long stretch of land that will be cut across Armenia as part of a peace deal imposed at gunpoint.
Surprisingly, Iran is not satisfied with Azerbaijan’s victory. As openly as ever, the Iranians have threatened to use force against any changes to Armenia’s borders. Iran, a millennia-old civilization at the heart of an entire continent, cannot tolerate being walled off behind a series of Turkish dependencies. India is likewise an ally of Armenia, regularly supplying it with arms. There is no doubt that Pakistan’s participation in the Azerbaijani-Turkish alliance is spurring this support. In American lawyer jargon, this opens up a whole new can of worms.
Then there is Russia, whose absence from the Nagorno-Karabakh grand finale was striking. Even after the 1990s, Moscow remained the largest supplier of arms to both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Their economies and societies, especially their elites and their corrupt networks, were integrally formed until very recently. What we may be witnessing now is a second round of Soviet collapse as both countries fall out of Russia’s orbit.
Once again Armenia began to change. In the spring of 2018, a highly hopeful uprising reminiscent of 1989 broke out in Central Europe, forcing post-communist elites to relinquish power. President Vladimir Putin was clearly uncomfortable with his meeting with Nikol Pashinyan, an anti-corruption journalist and street rebel who was overwhelmingly elected Prime Minister of Armenia. It is true that Mr. Pashinyan had neither a political team nor experience. He learns the qualities of a statesman in his work, often at great cost to the nation. Yet he succeeded in significantly reducing corruption and helped unleash Armenians’ legendary entrepreneurial spirit. Amidst all the grim news, Armenia’s economy is recording impressive growth, especially in the IT sector.
For Moscow, it’s all punishable. In September 2020, when Azerbaijan launched a major offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh that lasted 44 terrifying days, Russia used the pretext that Karabakh was not covered by the mutual defense treaty to force Azerbaijan and Turkey to He effectively allowed his ally Armenia to be nearly wiped out. But with Azerbaijan on the brink of victory, Mr. Putin personally brokered a ceasefire and ordered an elite force of peacekeepers into the enclave.
As a result, almost the entire border of the former Soviet Union entered Russia’s sphere of influence. Rebellious Belarus, a dictator dependent on Russian support, was holding its hand. So is the war-torn Caucasus. Vast and oil-rich Kazakhstan itself requested the deployment of Russian peacekeepers in the midst of an embarrassment of street violence in January 2022. Strangely enough, Russia’s elite forces soon left Kazakhstan. A month later, the whole world learned that they had been sent to Ukraine, Mr. Putin’s last major project after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And there his plan fell apart.
History has a habit of changing variables to provide the same lesson. In 1988, it was Gorbachev, the dreamer who stumbled in Nagorno-Karabakh, who unwittingly shattered the world order. Today, Mr. Putin could become a second, darker incarnation of a Kremlin expansionist who is failing on every front. The consequences will be severe, from the emboldening of international aggression to the resurgence of the West under the banner of NATO. As events in Nagorno-Karabakh demonstrate, the fragile post-Cold War order is being replaced by something entirely different.
The Caucasus may seem strange and far away. However, it may become a wedge that changes the fate of the world order. Trieste, Smyrna, Sarajevo, Danzig and Crimea were all such places. Let us not have to relearn history at the expense of further ethnic cleansing.
George Darghian is a professor of social research and public policy at New York University Abu Dhabi and author of Bourdieu’s Secret Admirers in the Caucasus.
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