No Peacemakers for the New / Old Caucasian War: Understanding the Armenia-Azerbaijan Clash
A full-blown war erupted in the South Caucasus last Sunday, September 27, and as the two belligerents — Armenia and Azerbaijan — mobilize their forces under martial law, no international authority is trying in earnest to stop the hostilities. The conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region ignited 30 years ago as the Soviet Union was collapsing and has never effectively “frozen.” The cease-fire Russia negotiated in May 1994 was not backed by a peacekeeping operation, and clashes have kept occurring, most notably in April 2016.
Amidst propaganda salvos on both sides, it’s worth exploring: Why is the flare-up occurring now? What are the new features? And what might be next? The answers are only tentative, but they may help in lifting the fog of mutual accusations and misleading reporting.
Pavel Baev is a Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO). He is also a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC, and an Associate Research Fellow at Ifri, Paris.
Read the whole publication on the Brookings website.
Available in:
Regions and themes
Share
Related centers and programs
Discover our other research centers and programs
Security Studies Center
Heir to a tradition dating back to the founding of Ifri, the Security Studies Center provides public and private decision-makers as well as the general public with the keys to understanding power relations and contemporary modes of conflict as well as those to come. Through its positioning at the juncture of politics and operations, the credibility of its civil-military team and the wide distribution of its publications in French and English, the Center for Security Studies constitutes in the French landscape of think tanks a unique center of research and influence on the national and international defense debate.
Find out more
Discover all our analyses
Europe at the Crossroads of DefTech: Rethinking the European Defense Innovation Ecosystem
“The way I look at Iron Dome is as the ultimate manifestation of the future of the United States’ role in future conflicts, which is not to be the world police, but to be the world gun store,” said Palmer Luckey in November 2023. Luckey is the founder of Anduril, one of the most prominent DefTech companies. The ambition is clear: to participate in global rearmament by capitalizing on the quality of American innovations and to dominate the arms market—at least in the West—through technological mastery.
Taking the Pulse: Is France’s New Nuclear Doctrine Ambitious Enough?
French President Emmanuel Macron has unveiled his country’s new nuclear doctrine. Are the changes he has made enough to reassure France’s European partners in the current geopolitical context?
Macron Offers a Promising Vision for Nuclear Deterrence in Europe
Macron’s concept of ‘forward deterrence’ offers a distinctly European approach to nuclear deterrence.
Multiple Launch Rocket Systems Europe’s Long-standing and Enduring Dependence?
The war in Ukraine has underlined the importance of multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) in modern conflict, especially a war without clear air superiority and hence a reduced potential for air-launched deep strike. In 2022, the European MLRS fleet was split between a variety of Western platforms developed at the end of the Cold War and specialized in precision strikes.