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Scenario I is fairly likely to materialize. Fearing a loss in the next war, Armenia’s de facto leadership may preemptively surrender liberated territories and sign a peace deal mediated by the Minsk group. This, however, will not lead to a permanent solution. Armenian concessions on the eastern front are unlikely to contain the Azeri appetite to regain NK in its entirety, making a peace arrangement temporary. Having weakened NK and Armenia— both militarily and in terms of the population’s morale (as a result of concessions), Azerbaijan will attack once it feels it has the capacity to retake NK by force. A weaker Armenia or a stronger Azerbaijan will continue to remain dependent on the major powers in a new no war, no peace state of affairs that will ensue, since neither one will be allowed to win the war. The ongoing standoff will require constant foreign mediation to remain in check.
The consequences of this for Armenia as well as Iran and the West—Washington, in particular—will
be wholly negative. With Armenia almost certainly brought to its knees, there will be little, if anything, in the way of Turkish expansion eastwards, its virtual consolidation with Azerbaijan and almost certainly further plans for regional domination.
Scenario II is the likeliest one of all three to take place. While it will preserve the de facto sovereignty of Armenia perhaps the region. It will use its in uence with Armenia and Azerbaijan to limit the joint US-Iran advances and Turkey’s regional aspirations. Given how predictable this scenario and its consequences are, we skip the discussion and move to the next scenario.
While appearing to be the least likely, Scenario III offers the most promise for all sides. A stronger Armenia that can consolidate its domestic economic and international position and offer security guarantees to Azerbaijan against more imminent threats from Russia, Iran, and its own minorities via a security arrangement (that has integrated markets as an added bonus) offers a positive direction to all. If Armenia maintains a suf cient degree of independence from Russia and builds strong relations with the West, Georgia may join this Armenian-Azerbaijan alliance by expanding both its economic market and security arrangements.
Armenia has an interest in strengthening its position in the region. Russia’s continued meddling in the Caucasus is not in the best interest of Armenia in the long run as this relationship unavoidably assumes a subordination of the interests of Armenia to those of Russia. An ability to replace the reliance on Russia with an arrangement that has a stronger Armenia anked by Georgia and Azerbaijan might be more bene cial for Armenia in the long run.
If Scenario I can be credibly eliminated (by helping Armenia regain its potential strength), the Azerbaijani leadership too might be interested in Scenario III. This is because Aliyev—with a long expected tenure and virtually unchallenged ability to transfer his power to someone from his family or a close clan member—is likely to be tempted
by the promise of future economic development in his country and the region. The likelihood of this outcome is considerably higher for Aliyev than Sargsyan, whose decision-making must be in uenced by the expectation of a much shorter tenure in politics and a lack of ability to pass power in an unchallenged fashion to hand-picked successors.
In conclusion, we see the solution based on the scenarios above as follows. It is in the West’s best interest to wrestle Armenia from under the Russian sphere of in uence and assist it with creating an unambiguous superiority over (or at a minimum parity with) Azerbaijan. This will allow Armenia to maintain the current status quo as the basis for the NK solution, which could include its commitment to allowing a gradual return of Azerbaijani refugees to NK and the creation of a joint security umbrella in the Caucasus.54 This will pave the way for the creation of a common Transcaucasian economic market, with major possibilities for building truly competitive sectors/economies and—in the case of a successful US-Iran rapprochement—energy transit and Europe-Asia infrastructure projects.
A meaningful regime change in Armenia is a prerequisite for the country to regain the upper hand in the con ict to provide what is likely to amount to the most credible guarantee against the restarting of the war and for long-lasting peace in the region.55 To unlock the potential of regional integration, the process has to be led by a leadership in Yerevan that is clean and enjoys the support of its people, but also understands the risks and pitfalls involved. To prevent Scenario I from materializing and to jumpstart Scenario III, the change in regime needs to take place before the start of a new war. together with most, if not all, liberated territories, the implications of this scenario are easy to predict: one can simply project forward the economic and demographic trends of the past 5-7 years to see what the future may bring to Armenia in such a case. Declining living standards, growing poverty, rampant corruption, and absence of the rule of law will further reduce Armenia’s population (perhaps below 1.5 million within the next 3-5 years) and bury the dreams of economic recovery and progress. In terms of the distribution of geopolitical in uence under this scenario, Russia will continue to call the shots in
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