Latest / Prof James Ker-Lindsay / 008. Can Armenia and Azerbaijan Finally Make Peace?

Transcript

008. Can Armenia and Azerbaijan Finally Make Peace? · Prof James Ker-Lindsay

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that we see this peace agreement just left hanging, it's just left hanging in limbo, it does suggest that for Baku, the signing of this agreement doesn't solve any urgent problem.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: If Azerbaijan insists on raising thresholds and the hoops that the Armenian government has to jump through, they may end up with the kind of more nationalistic uh regime in power that these hoops are designed to avoid.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: You're listening to me, James Kerlinsey.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: In each episode, my guests and I go beyond the headlines to bring you a central commentary on international relations and global affairs.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: After more than three decades of conflict, Armenia and Azerbaijan appear closer than ever to lasting peace.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Following two wars that fundamentally transformed the balance of power in the South Caucasus, the two countries have taken important steps towards a final settlement.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: But significant questions remain.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Can they overcome decades of hostility?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: What does peace mean for the people of Nagorno-Karabakh?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: And how is the changing situation reshaping relations between Russia, Turkey, Iran, and the West?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: To discuss all this, I'm delighted to be joined by Dr.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Lawrence Brewers, one of the leading experts on the South Caucasus and author of the forthcoming Armenia and Azerbaijan Anatomy of a Rivalry Revisited.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: So hi, Lawrence.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for joining us.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, this is a huge subject, and I know that many people who are watching the interview will probably be fairly familiar with the background to the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, especially over Nagono-Karabakh.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: But perhaps it's worth giving a little bit of a background for those who might not be so familiar about the nature of the conflict, how it emerged, the war in the early 1990s.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: But I think also what would be very interesting is that there was a long-running peace process that had been held.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, that all came crashing down in 2020.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: And we saw a new war between the two countries.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe just to give a little bit of an overview, if you like, of the nature of the conflict and how we've got to where we are today, where we're engaging, we're seeing the sides engage in quite serious peace talks.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks very much for having me on the show.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: The Karabah conflict, the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, was one of several conflicts that came uh with the collapse of the Soviet Union, um, was framed very much as a self-determination conflict, uh, pitting a uh local Armenian majority in the region uh of Nagorna-Karabakh, meaning mountainous Karabakh, which was an autonomy within the boundaries of Soviet uh Azerbaijan.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: There is a longer history of Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict going back to the early 20th century, um, but it sort of escalated through the final years of Gorbachev's Soviet Union, uh, resulting in a major war that uh Armenia won in a very asymmetric victory, and the conflict resolution process was then placed within the conflict resolution norms and infrastructure of the post-Cold War security order.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so the conflict passed from the United Nations to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which was the uh emerging and the leading uh security organization uh for the post-Cold War area.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And there followed uh essentially a kind of uh nearly 30-year mediation process, which is actually a fascinating case study of unsuccessful multilateral mediation.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the process was led by this entity called the Minsk Group, which was a grouping of states, uh, some 11 states, which was led by France, uh, Russia, and the United States uh from the late 90s.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: So this was really a collective effort, and we forget now just how many uh different options were discussed uh for the resolution of this conflict, from a renegotiated autonomy within the boundaries of Azerbaijan for the Karabakh Armenians to a kind of legitimated secession through a territorial swap.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I think already from, I would say, from the early 2000s, we start to see a number of trends uh coming into place that that basically make it unlikely uh that we would see uh a resolution negotiated by the Minsk group.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: We see, first of all, well, receding unipolarity, uh increasing challenges to liberal norms of conflict resolution crises in multilateral organizations with regard to other conflicts uh in uh uh in the wider world.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um we also see uh reducing uh European and American interest uh in uh resolving the conflict, and they basically default within the Minsk group mechanism to Russia, and Russia has always seen conflicts in its neighborhood as a source of leverage to be maintained rather than conflicts to be resolved.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we also see the conflict uh embedded within uh the legitimacy formulas of elites uh across the Armenian-Azerbaijani divide.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: We also see Azerbaijan's rearmament uh through its oil revenues.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: And from 2014, we see a new normal of violence uh along the front line.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um that pauses briefly in 2018 when there is a uh a sort of a civil uprising and a velvet revolution uh in Armenia.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there are, I think, great expectations uh in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, that there will be a more accommodating position from Armenia.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: But the new uh leadership uh in Armenia, I think, um, and this is a characteristic tendency of uh fragile recent democratic transitions, I think he rather leans into nationalism uh rather than uh using his credibility and his legitimacy to make concessions.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And there is uh a resumption uh of uh there's a major uh sort of incident uh in July 2020, uh, which is then followed by the Second Karabakh War, which is uh a major uh Azerbaijani offensive taking advantage of a very auspicious moment in global politics, uh US elections, pandemic, Belarusian uh protests, very distracted community.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um and um Azerbaijan uh succeeds in retaking uh substantial parts of the territories that it lost in the 90s, but it's still an incomplete victory.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Russia sweeps in at the final, uh the 13th hour with a peacekeeping mission.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but then what really changes uh the situation is Russia's full-scale invasion uh of Ukraine in 2022.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that basically unties Azerbaijan's hands to openly defy and to challenge Russia's strategy to impose a new frozen conflict situation.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it it mounts an offensive on the 19th of September, 2023, uh, that basically disbands the residual uh uh Armenian uh structure, the the Nagorna-Karabach Republic, this unrecognized republic that still existed in residual form.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so um that brings to an end uh an Armenian-populated uh Karabach and opens the door to a return to diplomacy.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the two sides uh have been negotiating uh intensively ever since.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much for what was a masterful overview of what is a very complex conflict.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think you know, I I'd like to return a little bit later to talking about the effects uh of that final Armenian defeat on Armenian society and what it's done to the peace process.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: But um, I I think what has been so interesting to see is even after that decisive you know win by Azerbaijan, that we saw what has been a relatively quick move into a peace process.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it seems to have made quite a lot of progress.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: But where where exactly do we stand at the moment?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, how did that process start and what do we know about the negotiations that have been taking place?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: What have been the main areas uh that they've focused on, and and what are some of the sticking points that we're seeing?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: So uh in the immediate uh post-war era, so I'm talking post-2020, uh, we saw the emergence of what I would call a kind of competitive mediation dynamic, uh, where Russia was leading one negotiation track and where the European Union stepped in uh from uh December uh 2021 uh and opened a new uh process that essentially sought to re-establish a more normatively oriented um resolution process.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we have that classic dynamic where you have competing mediation tracks and you have the parties basically hedging uh between them, particularly uh, you know, Azerbaijan, I think, very skillfully uh hedging between these two processes.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you have a multiple principles problem uh where the parties uh are uh you know they have alternatives and are able uh to um uh basically to shirk their responsibilities or their commitments uh within one process by leaning in into the other.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this setup is basically uh uh collapsed, is disbanded, swept away uh after Azerbaijan's uh offensive of September 2023.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And what we see emerging is a bilateral uh uh negotiation process, which just involves Baku and Yerevan.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And this is pitched uh by the parties as a kind of um uh a release from the interfering agendas of external uh mediators.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: They move relatively quickly uh on negotiating uh a peace treaty, and they announce in March 2025 that they have completed uh the text.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um so what's been negotiated is is not really a comprehensive peace agreement.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: It is more of a framework agreement.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: It consists of 17 articles, and it essentially consists of the measures needed to restore diplomatic relations uh between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what's essential to understand is that almost all, many of the issues that had been contested between Armenia and Azerbaijan had been resolved by force.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the entire set of claims and counter-claims uh around the self-determination of the Karabahmeni, uh, what provisions there might be for their governance and rights uh within uh Azerbaijan, all of that was just swept away with the mass force displacement uh of the Karabahmenians uh that followed uh Azerbaijan's offensive um in September 2023.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so what you have left is really a kind of uh, it's a very formal short uh document.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: It prescribes um interference in each other's affairs, it prescribes uh territorial claims on each other.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um what it doesn't deal with, and the the outstanding issue uh that really uh was was holding up the process and that was actually decoupled from this agreement was this issue of connectivity and uh transit uh across Armenia in particular.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so the geographic setup is very complicated.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: You have mainland Azerbaijan, you have its exclave in Nakchivan, and and part of the discussions ever since 2020 has been around the establishment of a right of transit uh for Azerbaijani transit between uh its mainland and its exclave and what the modalities of this transit would be.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the two sides had not been able to agree on that.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Azerbaijan has uh at times suggested that it would like something along the lines of an extraterritorial right of transit, so no customs checks because transit is passing from one part of the country uh to the other.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And Armenia has said that this is a red line and we want to have sovereignty uh over the transit route.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so the two sides, I think, still very much needed a third-party intervention to provide that security, to provide that kind of um support to resolving this, and neither wanted Russia uh to be playing that role.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is where the United States came in.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: And in what I would say was really quite a sensational meeting in the White House uh on the 8th of August uh last year, um, the three leaders uh agreed to the Washington Declaration, uh, which um basically stipulates uh a United States uh role in supporting uh this uh connectivity route, which has been named the Trump Route uh for international peace and prosperity.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the two foreign ministers, um uh Jehun uh Bayramov and Ararat Mirzoyan uh initialed the peace agreement that they had negotiated.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that means that we're in this kind of rather strange situation today where the peace agreement is effectively in limbo.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: It has been initialed, but it hasn't been signed.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the main precondition uh for its signature uh is Azerbaijan's insistence that uh Armenia's constitution is revised in order to remove some indirect references to an act of unification between Armenia uh and Nagurna-Karabach dating back to uh December 1989, January 1990.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that reference is in the preamble to the constitution, which cannot be amended, uh, and so a whole new constitution needs to be adopted in Armenia, and that's a very complicated process.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: It requires a referendum, uh, and there's no guarantee uh that that referendum will pass easily.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Nikol Pashignan, the Prime Minister of Armenia, has won two consecutive elections.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but a big part of why he has won them is the opposition, which are associated, which are uh basically the former, the former uh elite that ruled Armenia uh prior to the Vulver Revolution in 2018, who are deeply unpopular.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in a referendum on adopting a new constitution, you wouldn't have that government opposition polarity.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and there's a a lot of people in in Armenia who feel that this uh insistence on a new constitution is uh a procrastination tactic, that it's a leverage tactic.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um and yeah, I mean I I think conflict parties can expect um adversaries in the event of a peace agreement to adopt a legislation confirming uh what they've agreed.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And when we think of Macedonia, for instance, legislated to change its own name uh in order to facilitate uh a resolution of its dispute with Greece.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I think the fact that we see this peace agreement just left hanging, it's just left hanging in limbo, it does suggest that for Baku, the signing of this agreement doesn't solve any urgent problem.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: It is satisfied, it is happy with this kind of rather ambiguous, unresolved uh situation, it certainly does uh create uh leverage in the sense that Nicole Pachignan's whole political brand is predicated on peace being real, um, and so he needs it to move forward.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I do wonder, and you know, I think there are legitimate concerns that this may become a self-fulfilling prophecy, that if Azerbaijan insists on these very, you know, raising thresholds that uh and the hoops that that the Armenian government has to jump through, they may end up with the kind of more nationalistic uh regime in power that these hoops are designed to avoid.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um so to sum up, it it is a very liminal situation that we're in.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, that it's an unprecedented situation, and the two the two leaders of the two countries do affirm their commitments to peace, but this is still not uh this is still very far from being a broadly institutionalized and publicly owned uh uh peaceful agreement.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: What I think is is is particularly interesting, and and you you sort of raised this point uh about Armenia itself and Armenian society, um how has it been affected by these wars?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: You you sort of suggest that um Pashanyan obviously has has, well, he's been at the very much at the forefront of efforts to sort of promote the idea we need peace.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: But how have you picked up on society as a whole?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what are some of the debates going on there?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: How have they come to terms with, you know, having been in the the the stronger position, or so it seemed for such a long time, and then suddenly to have all that turned on its head?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, you know, that there has been a huge influx uh of um Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: We'll talk a little bit about what may be their future um, you know, in in in in the next question, but certainly, you know, how have you seen this affect Armenia?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because as you say, I mean, in many ways it seems Azerbaijan is fairly clear about its one as it sees it.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a very simple, if you like, um, you know, overview of the situation.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: We won a decisive victory, we control the show.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Armenia, it's a very, very different situation, surely.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't think one can underestimate the depth and the scope of the existential crisis uh that Armenia has been going through in recent years.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: The entire edifice of its trajectory towards national independence has collapsed.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: The Karabakh movement was the vector, was the driver uh of uh Armenia's uh national revival in the late 1980s.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was widely seen and perceived as a movement that addressed the long-standing trauma uh and grievance uh of the Armenian genocide um in the early 20th century.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um it was uh uh, as um uh a colleague in Armenia used to say, uh, you know, the first war that Armenia had won uh in centuries, um, and uh yeah, it Armenia has been through a profound uh what you might call an ontological shock with this entire uh thing collapsing.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: It it is a huge period uh of readjustment and it's you know it's multiple uh multiple crisis transitions.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: It is, you know, the the very understanding of what and where Armenia is has changed.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Armenia has never existed in the de facto borders that it now exists in.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there has long been a conception of Armenia as being uh augmented uh by uh Nagurna-Karabach and the occupied territories that were occupied by Armenian forces during the First Karabakh War in the 1990s.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: There has also been a huge uh process of disenchantment and rethinking uh of uh Armenia's alliance with Russia.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there had been expectations that Russia would uh protect Armenia, that Russia was in fact uh enacting an Armenia-first policy um in its strategy towards the Karabah conflict, which was uh uh uh an erroneous uh understanding.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um and as you say, uh there has been a huge humanitarian crisis, as um, well, first of all, you had the multiple impacts uh of first the uh the six-week war in 2020, a series of subsequent uh escalations and and military incidents, uh, and then Azerbaijan's offensive, which resulted in uh more than 100,000 people uh being displaced and becoming refugees uh in Armenia.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, how how has society sort of uh uh responded to this?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think what we've seen is uh a surprisingly rapid pivot uh by the Armenian leadership and by the Civil Contract Party, that's the ruling party of Armenia, to this notion of real Armenia.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so this was an idea that was uh first floated in early uh 2025.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the idea is that um real Armenia is the uh foregrounding and uh protection of the real Armenia that exists rather than all the other Armenias that have uh existed historically.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it sort of presents as a kind of very pragmatic commitment to a more civic form of nationalism, an emphasis on citizenship, um, and a rejection of.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Of more ethno-cultural, ethno-nationalist types of identity, and of the claim that extraterritorial communities have on the Armenian state's politics and policies.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it in a way it is very much about cancelling the Karabakh Armenian claim on Armenian politics.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there is definitely a realism and a pragmatism to this.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think it also plays on what has been, I think, a very difficult, a very uncomfortable reckoning with the legacy of the Karabakh movement.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's, you know, this is a this is a difficult topic to discuss, but I think for many years, uh the Nagorna-Karabach Republic, the unrecognized republic that emerged in in Karabakh uh in 1991, was framed as you know uh uh a young, fledgling democracy embodying all the positive values of uh the national revival, democratization, the exit from totalitarianism in the Soviet Union.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, uh that same entity also represented a kind of uh dark space, a more um patrimonial, a more sort of feudalistic politics uh based on uh sort of regional informal networks that spread from Karabakh and eventually captured uh the state of Armenia.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as I as I mentioned, there is no love lost uh for the former leadership.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: So uh between 1998 and um 2018, uh Armenia was ruled by presidents uh who were natives of Naburna Karabach.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh that is a period that is associated with uh divergence and decline, backsliding from Armenia's early democratic promise, uh, and with major uh incidents uh of uh protest and uh government repression.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's easy to forget that actually the worst post-electoral violence in the history of the uh the post-Soviet South Caucasus uh took place in Armenia in March 2008 when uh 10 people were killed uh in protest following elections uh uh uh in that country.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we see this combination of you know pragmatism, a reckoning uh with the real multiple legacies, good and bad, of the Karabakh movement.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: But there are also limits, and it's it's this is a fragile reckoning.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, we we saw in elections in June that the opposition, despite the fact that they are associated with the formers from Karabah, who are widely detested, um, the opposition wins 37% of the vote.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that shows just how fragile uh this pivot to a more realistic, to a more realist policy actually is.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there are three, there are at least three key variables that are affecting uh where this might, where this might go.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: The first is Azerbaijan's own actions and discourse.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the more that Azerbaijan, if Azerbaijan leans back into conflict narratives and really sort of openly activates its leverage and you know plays the part of the victor uh in in the situation, the more that Nicole Pachinyan uh can be portrayed as capitulationist uh and uh enacting a policy of appeasement.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: The second variable is whether peace dividends appear, because you know, it it has been uh traumatic, I think, to abjure the Karbach movement.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: But if there are concrete peace dividends that come through, uh I think you know one can start to see that, you know, people see that, okay, that this is this is going somewhere uh we are actually getting something in return uh for giving up on this thing.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the third thing is actually uh carelessness and communications blunders um by the leadership of Armenia itself, which has at times been extraordinarily insensitive um to uh wider public feeling.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, one example is the public TV uh station uh showing a pop concert uh on the sixth anniversary of the beginning of the Second Karabakh War.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Other examples are allegations of hate speech uh directed at Karabahmenians and basically the scapegoating of the Karabahmenian community, which is you know uh completely traumatized, is uh recently arrived as refugees and uh are basically being blamed um by key figures uh in the administration.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so you know, I think there will be uh a politics of backlash uh in the future.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: What we don't know is what form that would take.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think, you know, we hear a lot about Armenian revanchism in Azerbaijani discourse.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think that is very far away from uh military capacities uh today, which Azerbaijan very much still has uh the advantage.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: But what I think could be really more worrying in a way uh is if um Armenia, uh if backlash takes the form of a rejection of Nicole Pachinian's wider orientation towards democracy, uh I mean he's a he's far from a perfect democrat, but his brand uh is around uh sustaining the revolution in Armenia's democratic transition and its orientation towards uh uh a multi-vectoral foreign policy, including a commitment to integration uh with Western partners.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, if Backlash takes the form of a sort of you know much more introspective, conservative, nationalist future, uh that that wouldn't that wouldn't be good for Armenia.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: I I'd like to pick up a little bit more on that that question of the Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh and what their future could be.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because you know, you were talking about the the nature of the agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, between Baku and Yereban, very much focused on the corridor.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um it seems as though, certainly at the leadership level, the whole question of Nagorno-Karabakh has just been pushed to one side that it's it's lost that Armenia needs to focus on where it stands within its own borders.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, you do have this large community.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um many would ask, is there any hope of return for them?
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, where would any discussions focus on that?
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: Would Baku be open to discussing um uh a right of return and under what sort of conditions?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: What do we know about this?
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: And how much do you think um that community would want to return, even if it were feasible?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: One of the academically interesting uh uh and with real practical consequences uh uh aspects to the peace treaty that's been agreed between Armenia and Azerbaijan is it's Article 15, um, which mandates the proscription of interstate pursuit of justice claims and transitional justice.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: So Armenia and Azerbaijan have got a number, had opened a number of cases against each other at the European Court of Human Rights, at the International Court of Justice, and some other uh legal mechanisms.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: And yet the agreement that they have initialed prescribes the pursuit uh of uh those uh those claims.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I I think what we see is that this is part of a broader uh strategy to enact a kind of amnesia uh with regard to the key uh justice uh issues uh and claims that have been uh put forward uh by the parties.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, I think that has uh uh a lot of different implications.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um with regard to the Carabahmenias, one has to remember that their displacement is only the latest um in uh a series of mass force displacements that have characterized this conflict um uh right back uh to uh the late 1980s.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so uh you know what what we see is that uh their claim uh is met with competing claims uh for Azerbaijani refugees uh who were displaced from uh Armenia uh in the late 1980s, and there were also hundreds of thousands of Armenians displaced from Azerbaijan uh in the late 1980s.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so we get this dynamic of mirroring claims that are put forward.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: And given that this treaty prescribes international justice mechanisms as a route to reconciling uh these different claims, uh the these ideas around transitional justice and the right of return, preservation of cultural heritage remain kind of floating signifiers out there in the political context, which could be colonized and filled with content by political actors rather than being arenas for the implementation of actual uh legal remedies of different kinds.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one could argue that uh the remedies mandated by international courts of justice can be very disappointing.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: They can be, you know, far too little, too late, they can be ignored and neglected.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, Armenia and Azerbaijan did have cases uh that received uh decisions uh from the European Court of Human Rights back in 2015 relating to forced displacement.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and those, the recommendations uh of those decisions were simply ignored uh by the parties.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: But what legal uh processes can also provide is a kind of validation of facts and the establishment of a kind of internationally triangulated and authorized version of record as to what actually happened.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I almost see this as a a very potentially insidious cost to this prescription of transitional justice uh mechanisms, because uh, as I suggested, it it leaves these very sensitive issues out there as uh political discourses that can become claims and and counterclaims.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: And this is in fact exactly what we are seeing uh today.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um we see uh the continued vibrancy of some of the key conflict narratives.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so one of them is uh the denial of the Armenian character uh or identity of heritage in Karabakh that was resurrected in the month of September by senior Azerbaijani officials.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Another is this idea of Western Azerbaijan.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a uh uh uh a discourse that packages a claim to the right of return for Azerbaijani refugees from Armenia in the late 1980s within a kind of irredentist aesthetics that sort of suggests that Armenia is actually part of Azerbaijan.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: So it is it's a sort of very ambiguous and it's deliberately strategically ambiguous, combining a claim to um uh to a to a basic human right, the right of return, with a kind of territorialized uh um uh framing uh of Armenia as as part uh of Azerbaijan.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that that discourse has actually escalated and is actively promoted in conferences and um events of different kinds.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: And this is intended, I think, to cancel uh any filing of Karabahmenian claims to return.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: So this is all this is all the politics around uh the right of return.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think there is a a distant reality, uh, which is very far away from that politics, uh, which is that uh I've I don't believe that there are any Karabahmeni who would wish to return um to uh their homes under the current administration uh in Azerbaijan.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: The conditions simply aren't there.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: There is uh you know uh a vast legacy of trauma, of securitization, of fear.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm not aware uh that there are people who seriously are considering uh the prospect of return.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: The landscape in Karabakh is being very rapidly developed and transformed by uh new construction.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there there is also a sense that you know that that reality is no longer physically going to be there uh in in the same way.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you know, people are also very much in shock.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I would suspect that we might see a mobilization of Caribbean perhaps in in some years to come, in another generation, uh rather than uh in the immediate future.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and that will be, I think, a mobilization around that original injustice of their forced displacement and the inability uh to pursue that justice claim uh and to and to find remedy.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I I fear that that may just lead in in the future to mirroring discourses of uh between different displaced communities from different periods uh and basically sustaining that conflict narrative rather than a route to reconciliation and to and to justice.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think um something you touched on earlier, which uh has been fascinating, is the way that Russia and the United States' position has evolved in this situation.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: That um you you talked about how uh there was a you know a mistrust amongst many Armenians towards Russia, that they felt that Moscow had let them down, uh that they were banking on Putin to help them retain Nagorno Karabakh, and that didn't happen.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: You also talked about sort of Trump's role.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe talk a little bit about how this in a bigger picture does seem to have affected Moscow and Washington's position.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, the other question, if it's not putting too much near in one go, is where does Europe stand in all of this?
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned about Armenia now looking towards EU accession.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that has been a very, very interesting development.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, how how do we understand this sort of broader, if you like, geopolitical element?
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I guess I would kick off by saying that geopolitics tends to swamp and overwhelm all discussions uh of the South Caucasus.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think that's not really surprising because on the one hand, we tend to think of the South Caucasus as a geopolitical periphery, but geographically, it's in the absolute epicenter of Eurasia and at the meeting point of different regional systems.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh it shares that geography with Central Asia.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: And um, at the risk of a cheesy portmanteau, I like to call them centrifies.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they are peripheries, uh central peripheries, which is actually a concept put forward by Marlène Laroelle.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think what's what's central to understand about uh the West, if I could still use that rather obsolete term, uh, and Russia, is that the era that followed the Second Karabakh War has seen the decoupling of the South Caucasus from the post-Cold War security order, from its conflict resolution uh infrastructure, and from the assumption that Russian Western polarity is the deal, is the main frame for understanding the region.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: And what we've seen in recent years is the collapse and failure of both the liberal peace, so the conflict norms put forward by the United States uh until recently, and uh and Europe, and the frozen conflict strategy, the more sort of authoritarian uh uh sort of power projection model uh put forward and which Russia attempted to enact with its introduction of a peacekeeping mission uh in Lagorna-Karabach.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think both uh the liberal West, uh if I could use that term, and Russia have been in retreat.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think it certainly has been uh a humiliating experience uh for Russia.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: There was briefly a narrative in the aftermath of the Second Karabakh War that Russia was actually the winner of this war.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: It appeared to be the indispensable Eurasian security actor coming in at the 13th hour and uh imposing a peacekeeping mission, which had long been uh a goal uh for uh Russian uh foreign policy uh with regards to the Karabakh conflict.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and yet within just uh three years uh we see that mission uh in tatters basically and withdrawn uh from Karabakh uh in April 2024, if I'm not mistaken.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh let's not forget that uh I think it's eight Russian peacekeepers lost their lives uh due to Azerbaijani fire uh during its offensive um uh on uh 19th of September uh 2023.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it it really is quite extraordinary.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Azerbaijan is the only parent state uh facing a secessionist challenge, apart from Russia itself in Chechnya, that has been able to restore its territorial integrity and to basically resolve the situation according to its interests.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that is is is quite extraordinary.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think for the EU, the situation uh also ended in humiliation.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: The EU sort of stepped up to try to fill uh the gap left by the Minsk Group and the OSCE uh and to reintroduce uh a more normative approach, uh, that was also left in in tatters um uh in September.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so you know that Russian Western polarity uh I think uh has uh very much receded.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Europe and Russia are playing very different roles uh now.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um European Union does have the EU mission to Armenia, so it is playing a harder security role as well as uh trying to uh basically support and accompany Armenia through its own decoupling from Russia.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think Russia uh is adapting very quickly to a different modus uh in the South Caucasus.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's perhaps not so much around the security linkages, but it's about influence uh operations and um uh capitalizing on these some of these cleavages that we were previously discussing within Armenian society as a way to recoup influence uh within within Armenia.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it is really the United States that has kind of won out in this situation, and that that reflects the fact that the United States has also changed very considerably, and very much along the same lines.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, uh the United States no longer depicts itself, no longer represents itself uh as the champion of the liberal international order or of unipolarity, this global system uh or understanding of the system that it uh set up uh itself.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um it has shifted to a very different model of uh stabilization, a much more transactional model that basically uh involves a kind of technical commercial insertion into uh conflict settings as a means to stabilize them.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the the United States under President Donald Trump has a key asset that no other external power has, uh, and that is a kind of positive consensus from both Baku and Yereban that they want uh American presence there.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, previously there were uh I think uh a lot of issues between uh Azerbaijan and uh kind of Joe Biden's administration and sort of the more the more democratic end uh of the US political spectrum.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think with Donald Trump uh there has been uh sort of a recalibration.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and if if the if Baku and Yerevan share a negative consensus on wanting to restrict the scope of Russia's insertion into uh the regulation of their relations, I think they were happy uh to see uh uh the US intervention.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the United States is prospectively going to be in situ uh in southern Armenia along this trip uh Trump route for international peace and prosperity uh for a very long time, uh for decades.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that is that is what has been agreed.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I think it's it's fascinating in the sense that uh after 2020, we had this discourse around uh South Caucasus finally coming into being as a region, this dynamic of regionalization that we see growing uh intensity and density of connections within the region, um, uh and finally this you know notoriously.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Fractured region coming into being and achieving regionhood.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, we see that this is still dependent and contingent on interventions from extra-regional actors.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: So the EU with its EU mission to Armenia, the United States with the TRIP and Washington Declaration.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so it is still, I think, very much a fractured region, but the constellation has changed.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: And there is no, and I'll finish on this, there is no single successor.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I think what we what we really need to move away from is this idea that Russian Western polarity captures the scope of the South Caucasian geopolitics.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: We see a much wider caste of actors, including China, including Turkey, Iran, Arab Emirates, Israel, India, Pakistan, European states, and so on, that are all actors with key, important interests in the region.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: So hence we see the emergence of these omnidirectional, multivectoral foreign policies, which has actually always been Azerbaijan's modus, and Armenia is in a sense converging with that.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it is a foreign policy that makes complete sense given the geography of the region.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: This brings us really nicely on to the next question, which is to look at some of those other actors.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think two really stand out to me.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's Turkey and Iran.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, for anyone who might not have the mental map of it, of course, you know, Turkey has a very short border with Azerbaijan in Nagchaban, but obviously a much longer border with Armenia.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: And they have had a difficult relationship.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: Turkey broke off diplomatic relations with Armenia in the early 1990s.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, one of the things that Pashanyan seems very keen on, and one gets a sense in Ankara that they're also keen on it, is opening up that border to normalize diplomatic relations.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: Where do we stand on that in relations to a, if you like, a settlement, a final sort of peace framework agreement with Baku?
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then tied to that is the fascinating question of Iran.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, notwithstanding the position Iran finds itself at the moment, but the Iranians uh have tended to have very good relations with Armenia, uh a more difficult relationship with Azerbaijan.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: For anyone who might not necessarily be familiar, again, Azerbaijan has a border with uh Iran, but there is also a larger Zeri population that enters into the picture.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: How do these two countries factor in?
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, point well taken that there are others like China and Israel and and things, and we get into a huge area.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: But I think Turkey and Iran are the two which I think um closer, if you like, to home for the countries are the biggest influence.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that to study the South Caucasus today is really to study the world.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it is a real struggle to to keep up and to to basically jump jump the walls of standard rubrics of area studies.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I would uh I would suggest that um one of the things that became clear or that was you know exposed by the Second Karabakh War was the extent to which a lot of expertise, and I put myself in this same category, um, was coming to the region very much through a Eurasian prism.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um what I what I would refer to as a Eurasian gaze on the region.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: People who had you know studied uh Russian uh language, uh, who had perhaps focused on uh Soviet nationalities policy and its consequences, who were looking at the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in conjunction with the conflicts in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, and so on.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: And what the Second Karabakh War, I think, really exposed was the disruption and sweeping away of all of this by Middle Eastern dynamics and the alignment of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, not with those other post-Soviet conflicts, but with the various encounters uh and conflicts, uh, particularly those between Russia and Turkey in the Middle East.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: With regards to Turkey, being uh somebody that has come to this region via a Eurasian route, I always try to preface any remarks I make about Turkey and Iran by saying that I'm not a Middle Eastern specialist.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but my perception for what it's worth is that uh and I that that occurred to me right from the beginning when we when we first saw the publication of the ceasefire statement bringing the Second Karabakh War to an end um on the 10th of November 2020, um that Turkey uh was the implicit winner uh of this uh situation.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if if all of the connectivity uh infrastructure is set up and you know comes into being, uh Turkey is ideally placed to move and to transition from having pursued a kind of patron-client, a segmented relationship in the South Caucasus, uh having that very close relationship uh with Azerbaijan, that could transition from that to really being a regional power that could have a regional policy uh with diplomatic relations with all three of the region's states, and would be very well positioned to fill space that had been vacated uh by Russia.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the the the obstacle, the key obstacle to this uh has been the Karabah conflict.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Ankara has predicated uh the opening of its border with Armenia, which was closed in in 1993 uh in solidarity uh with Azerbaijan, on the conclusion uh of the Karabakh conflict on Azerbaijan's terms, which has, to all intents and purposes, happened.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a key window of opportunity because, as we've been discussing, there is uh a significant uh disenchantment uh with Russia uh in Armenia.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh many Armenians uh, and this has been an accumulating thing.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just uh from 2023.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think it goes back all the way to 2016 and the four-day war that took place in that year, that Russia has abandoned uh the terms of the rescue fantasy that has been the underpinning of the Armenian-Russian security alliance, i.e., that Russia will rescue Armenians who are threatened, uh whose security is is in peril.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it hasn't done that.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so there is today, I think, you know, a real window of opportunity uh for uh Turkey to, you know, to become that regional power, open its border, and uh for these this whole constellation of relationships uh to be transformed.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um there is a perception, I think, in Ankara that unlike previous uh Armenian leaders, Nikol Pashinian is willing to walk the walk.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh yeah, there have been a number of incremental steps.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, border infrastructure has been modernized, uh, Turkey has lifted its uh ban on trade.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um there have been provisions for uh um diplomatic uh passports holders of third countries to be able to cross the border, but nothing has actually physically happened in terms of the opening of that border.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, people in Armenia are saying the policy in Ankara is everything but the border.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's very interesting to speculate on why that is.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it it seems to be that Azerbaijan still wants to preserve this sense of control over the situation, and and uh you know, the formal reasoning is that the peace treaty is not yet signed.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I think there is a tension, and you know, we're seeing tensions at the moment between Turkey uh and Azerbaijan about you know who who calls the shots uh in this relationship.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, is there a perception in Ankara that you know uh a major opening for Turkish foreign policy, regional policy, is kind of hostage to this very close uh uh relationship uh with Azerbaijan?
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that is a that tension somehow needs to be resolved uh for uh that that the border to be opened.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but opening that border is the game changer, it will transform uh the South Caucasus.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh yeah, um with regard to Iran, um I see Iran uh as a kind of anxious onlooker, uh, which is uh its traditional role um with regard to the South Caucasus.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, Iran faces uh a number of issues that are very closely associated with threats.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um it sees the very close relationship between Azerbaijan and Israel, it sees the United States basically stepping in and inserting itself.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_00: And as you mentioned, there are fears of irredentism uh with regard to its very substantial ethnic Azerbaijani minority uh that live in um northwestern uh Iran.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so uh Iran also stands to lose uh from the implementation of the TRIP because it has been a beneficiary of the blockage uh of the South Caucasus.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um but ultimately I think for this whole thing to work, Iran needs to be a part of this system somehow.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh yeah, how how that is achieved, I think, is uh a challenge for the future.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it definitely needs to happen because otherwise Iran is just left as a spoiler um for this uh along along with Russia.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, that that those are real risks.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: It it's been a tumultuous time.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: We have seen war in the region, we have seen real moves to a peace process.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um if I were to say to you, where do you think we would be, all other things being equal and recognizing the complexity of the world we're in at the moment, in in maybe five to ten years' time, do you see a real peace, a real transformed region?
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: Or would it more likely be uh a period, you know, an extended period of lack of conflict, if you see what I mean, that they're still in a certain limbo and not having really made the real gains that many people feel that they could do, and you just outlined uh in terms of opening up this connectivity and Turkey's role and remembering its key link between Turkey, between Europe and Central Asia.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, in my book about the Karabakh conflict, about Armenia and Azerbaijan, I basically posit a key difference between the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, meaning the territorial claims and counterclaims that were contested violently in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the Armenian-Azerbaijani rivalry, which is this superstructure of uh of military strategies, of political strategies, of political legitimacy and international relations and foreign policies that built up around the conflict over that time.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think the question that we we we face today is whether the rivalry will continue without the uh sources of the conflict still existing in the in the way that they that they had.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the jury is still very much out uh on that.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think, you know, what I see is that yes, the situation is unprecedented.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: There are discursive commitments to peace.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but what we've got is a negative piece, is the absence of violence.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the positive peace part that is still missing.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_00: Connectivity has been very much and very aggressively promoted as filling that positive peace vision, which is ironic given that we've learned in Europe that that strategy with Russia failed.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there are plenty of examples of states that are engaged in strategic rivalries and even ones that are engaged in militarized conflict, such as India and Pakistan, uh, China and India, uh, that trade and that that have segmented sectoral uh um uh uh interactions and commerce.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: So very a lot depends on the the nature of the connectivity, to what extent does it become systemic and dense at different levels of society, or is it simply compartmentalized around major commodities and major routes?
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I think you know where I would where I really see the key is uh political legitimacy.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: The the key issue with one of the key issues with the Karabah conflict is that it has become the ultimate arbiter of elite uh um longevity, of elite um legitimacy of the of the route to and out of power.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the key threshold for uh for the the rivalry to end as well as the conflict is to see elites that no longer feel uh tempted to lean into this really traumatic history uh of atrocities, um mass displacements, and so on, um, as a bolster to their political uh legitimacy.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I fear that we're not there yet.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think we have that uh to some extent uh with Nicole Pachignan, although his uh discourse towards the Carabahmenians and leveraging of threats of war if he doesn't win still shows that that rivalry option is there.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I think uh yeah, uh that would be the key threshold.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm not talking about the democratic peace.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think you know that is an artifact of an earlier era.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_00: The democratic peace kind of hangs over rivalry termination literature as the ultimate way to um uh to resolve these long-term conflicts.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that the future for Armenia and Azerbaijan will look more like Greece and Turkey than France and Germany.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um but the the looking at the next sort of five, ten years, what what I fear is that we may see a protracted limbo where uh the two countries are interacting.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_00: They do have quite limited and and very controlled interactions, but if there are problems with the referendum, the agreement may remain unsigned.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: So technically they're still in a state of conflict.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and this piece isn't more widely embedded uh and institutionalized uh beyond uh the elites.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think then uh you know we're looking at quite a fragile, uh fragile future.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_01: Lawrence, um, thank you so, so much for for appearing and and talking to us in such detail about this.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it has been uh an incredible um past five or six years to follow what's been going on uh in in the region.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think you're so right.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it it is such an important region, and yet it does feel for many people very peripheral that it doesn't get the amount of focus uh that it does.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_01: But things could be transformative.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_01: But I think you know, you you you've clearly highlighted some of the problems that that you know we're we're facing when we're looking at it.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you so much.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_01: I know that you're working on uh a new edition of your book, uh Armenian Azerbaijan Anatomy of a Rival Revisited.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um should hopefully be out next year, if I'm right.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, yes, uh, end of April next year.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_01: We'll keep a we'll keep a close eye on that.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: So in the meantime, thanks so much for joining us.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, James.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for listening.
• 1:00:22
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• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_01: It really makes a difference and helps me invite new experts onto the show.
• 1:00:35
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• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'll put the links in the show notes below.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: Many thanks again for joining me and catch you in the next episode.