The dust has barely settled on the battlefields and the ink has hardly dried on the recent ceasefire agreement, but the clear winner of the brief, but bloody, conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh is already apparent: great power politics.
Certainly, political and military victory clearly belong to Azerbaijan. Their armed forces, with ample Turkish support, successfully defeated the outnumbered and outgunned forces of the Artsakh Defence Army and their Armenian backers. Azerbaijani forces made innovative and widely publicised use of Turkish- and Israeli-made drones to target Armenian air defences, armour and troops in a cost-effective alternative to conventional air power. After weeks of heavy fighting, Azerbaijani troops captured the strategically important town of Shusha (Shushi in Armenian), severing a vital supply route to the Armenian-held territory. With the capture of the Shusha, Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital Stepanakert now lay within striking distance. While popular will may have favoured continued resistance – news of the ceasefire agreement prompted crowds to storm the parliament building in Yerevan – Armenia’s political and military leadership recognised the dire situation on the ground. Within days of the fall of Shusha, the ceasefire agreement signed by Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia was concluded.
Under the terms of the ceasefire, Azerbaijan would keep its territorial gains within the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Armenian forces would further be required to evacuate all Azerbaijani territory that had been under their control since the end of the original conflict in 1994 by December 1, 2020. A detachment of some 2,000 Russian peacekeepers is to be deployed to the frontline between the combatants. These Russian troops will also guard a small corridor connecting the remnants of Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia proper. All in all, the terms of the ceasefire agreement clearly reflect the military successes enjoyed by Azerbaijan since the early days of the conflict in late September.
Russia, the third signatory to the ceasefire agreement, proved itself to be an indispensable player in the conflict, and especially so in its eventual resolution. It is no secret that the Russian leadership regards the post-Soviet space – euphemistically known in Russia as the ‘near abroad’ – as its sphere of influence and endeavours to maintain a leading position in regional affairs. Some recent analysis has explained Russian involvement in the conflict as an attempt to undercut Turkish influence in the region, undeniably strengthened by large-scale and overt Turkish support for Azerbaijan. This competition for influence is reflected in the minimal role afforded to Turkey in the Russian-sponsored ceasefire deal. Indeed, Turkey is not a signatory to the agreement and the terms of the agreement make no provisions for Turkish troops to be stationed in the conflict zone, despite contradictory statements made by President Ilham Aliyev. Later statements suggest that Turkish involvement will be limited to a joint monitoring centre with Russia.
In any event, Turkish influence in Azerbaijan is unlikely to decrease in light of what both countries view as a spectacular victory for their brotherly peoples. Economic links between the two countries will certainly increase – article 9 of the ceasefire agreement provides for the construction of a road through Armenian territory linking the exclave of Nakhchivan on the Turkish border to Azerbaijan proper.
It is, moreover, unlikely that Russia’s leadership truly believes that they can banish Turkish influence from the region entirely. Russia is far from a regional hegemon in the true sense of the word and has not been since the collapse of the USSR. Russia was certainly not in control of events during the build-up to the conflict or the conflict itself. Indeed, it is unlikely that Russia sees it as practicable to regain its Soviet-era position as regional hegemon (and one must understand that ‘sphere of influence’ and ‘hegemony’ are not the same). Eugene Rumer, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has argued that Russia’s political leadership is keenly aware of the limitations of Russian power: Russia’s leaders are not oblivious to the shortcomings of the national economy and its limited capacity to support prolonged interventions, having learned a hard lesson from the Soviet Union’s geopolitical overextension and collapse. Instead of hegemony in the Soviet or American fashion, Russia’s geopolitical manoeuvring is aimed at setting itself up as an “indispensable nation” – an integral part of any solution of the issue at hand.
In this respect, the Russian involvement has been a success. While the future of the region and the specifics of the ceasefire agreement remain uncertain, it is undeniable that with Russian troops on the ground any future developments will necessarily require Russian acquiescence. Through hard-nosed diplomatic wrangling and military force, Russia has gained that which its membership of the multilateral OSCE Minsk Group could not – a final say on the outcome of the conflict.
It is from this that one may glean some of the wider significance of the conflict: from start to finish, the conflict has dealt a blow to the principles of rules-based liberal internationalism and harkens back to an older form of great power politics. Multilateral action and international institutions, the great staples of the rules-based order, have played (at best) a marginal role. The multilateral OSCE Minsk Group, established under the co-chairmanship of France, Russia and the US for the explicit purpose of resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, was side-lined by Russia and the warring parties in agreeing the ceasefire. Nor did the United States, the world’s so-called sole superpower, play any meaningful role in the conflict.
Rather, the conflict followed an entirely different script: what ‘won’ the conflict for Azerbaijan was hard power; what settled it was the local great power’s desire keep order in its back yard and enhance its influence in the bargain. It is hard to say what the future may hold; it may yet be the case that the ceasefire deal flounders, and Moscow will need the aid of Washington and Brussels to build a lasting peace. For the moment, however, Moscow has shown no inclination to formally involve any other powers, and thus the conflict represents a striking failure for multilateralism. Great power politics delivered results – such is the unglamorous reality.