A Most Significant Geopolitical Development

The November 10th, 2020, trilateral agreement signed by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Armenian Prime Min­ister Nikol Pashinyan, and Russian President Vladimir Putin could be­come the most significant geopolit­ical development in the South Cau­casus since the collapse of the Soviet Union—perhaps even more than the establishment of the Baku‑Tbili­si‑Ceyhan oil and Baku‑Tbilisi‑ Erzurum natural gas pipelines. But it is not yet clear that key actors in the Transatlantic community appreciate this opportunity, especially Wash­ington and Paris, who along with Moscow, comprise the Co‑chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, the sup­posedly impartial mediating body of the Nagorno‑Karabakh conflict.

The trilateral agreement could become the most significant geopolitical development in the South Caucasus since the col­lapse of the Soviet Union. But it is not yet clear that key actors in the Trans‑atlantic community ap­preciate this opportunity.

The trilateral agreement defines a peace settlement in line with the framework unofficially agreed by the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan over a decade ago, and thus stands a good chance to hold. The so‑called “Basic Princi­ples” or “Madrid Principles” were originally tabled by the American Russian, and French Co‑chairs of the Minsk Group in November 2007 at a meeting of OSCE foreign ministers in Madrid.

Land for Peace

The Madrid Document con­sists, inter alia, of the fol­lowing elements: the return of the Azerbaijani territories surrounding Nagorno‑Karabakh and occupied by Armenia to Azerbaijan’s control; an interim status for Nagorno‑Karabakh providing guarantees for secu­rity and self‑governance; a corridor linking Armenia to Nagorno‑Kara­bakh; future determination of the final legal status of Nagorno‑Kara­bakh through a legally binding vote of Nagorno‑Karabakh’s residents; the right of all internally displaced persons and refugees to return to their former places of residence; and international security guarantees that would include a peacekeeping op­eration.

The underlying bargain was that Azerbaijan regains its seven occu­pied districts in exchange for se­curity guarantees for the Armenian residents of Na­gorno‑Karabakh and a temporary legal status for Nagorno‑Karabakh other than being unambiguously part of Azerbaijan. The Madrid Document thus strikes a balance among three key principles of the 1975 OSCE Helsinki Final Act: territorial integrity of states; non‑use and non‑threat of force; and self‑determination of peoples. The final legal status of Nagorno‑ Karabakh is left to be determined in the future, with Armenians im­mediately able to claim the region is no longer part of Azerbaijan and Azerbaijanis able to claim the oppo­site. In this way, constructive ambiguity is used to enable agreement on the above important elements despite irreconcilable differences between the two sides on final legal status.

Though not initially embraced by either Azerbaijan or Armenia, this general approach was unofficially accepted by the t hen‑Pr e s ident of Armenia Serge Sargsian and Pres­ident of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev in January 2009, fol­lowing a year of fine‑tuning by the Minsk Group Co‑chairs. I personally witnessed their oral agreement in my capacity as the U.S. Co‑chair of the Minsk Group at the time.

This “land for peace” formula remained the framework for ne­gotiations in subsequent years, as the Minsk Group strove to help the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan resolve their differences on several details, which were not serious.

Those specific issues were never fully worked out, however, be­cause the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia realized they were willing to accept compromises that their general publics were not yet pre­pared to embrace. The Minsk Group nevertheless came close to finalizing modified versions of the Basic Principles during meetings with the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia in Prague in June 2009 and Kazan in June 2011; Putin then offered a promising refinement following a resurgence of fighting in April 2016.

It is therefore not surprising that throughout the Second Karabakh war, both Aliyev and Putin repeatedly called for negoti­ations to resume according to the framework of the Basic Principles. Indeed, Aliyev and Putin compelled Pashinyan to recommit to the Basic Principles in their October 10th ceasefire agreement, though that truce lasted only a few hours.

In a remarkable November 17th interview with the Rossiya 24 televi­sion channel, Putin recounted how on October 19th and 20th—in the wake of Azerbaijan’s dramatic mil­itary breakthrough along the Ira­nian border—he tried to convince Aliyev and Pashinyan to end hos­tilities in accordance with the Basic Principles. According to Putin, Aliyev was willing to stop, with Azerbaijan’s forces remaining out­side Nagorno‑Karabakh itself, as long as internally displaced Azerbaijanis could return to their former homes inside Nagorno‑ Karabakh, especially to the town of Shusha, which is of great cultural importance to both Azerbaijanis and Armenians. Putin said he was surprised when Pashinyan said he perceived the return of displaced Azerbaijanis as a threat, explaining,

I do not quite understand the essence of this hypothetical threat, I mean, it was about the return of civilians to their homes, while the Armenian side was to have retained con­trol over this section of Na­gorno‑Karabakh, including Shusha, and meaning that our peacekeepers were there, which we have agreed upon both with Armenia and Azerbaijan. At that point, the prime minister told me that his country could not agree to this, and that it would struggle and fight.

Pashinyan’s refusal to accept this deal proved to be extremely costly for Armenia. Azerbaijan im­mediately resumed its offensive, regaining control of its districts of Qubadli and Zengilan, then moving into Lachin District and onward to Nagorno‑Karabakh itself. Azerbaijan’s main goal was to regain Shusha, whose population before the First Karabakh War was over­whelmingly Azerbaijani and which is situated on the commanding heights above Nagorno‑Karabakh’s capital, Khankendi (or Stepanakert, for Armenians). By regaining Shusha, Azerbaijan would cut off the road connecting Armenia to Nagorno‑Karabakh, enabling Baku to end the military phase of the war from a position of extreme negoti­ating strength.

And this is exactly what happened.

Drifting Back to War

Following four days of intense fighting in the forested hills surrounding Shusha—often in­volving hand‑to‑hand combat— Azerbaijani special forces scaled the cliffs beneath the city and re­gained control of it on November 8th. Despite popular sentiment for the Azerbaijani mil­itary to carry the fighting into Khan­kendi/Stepanakert and then beyond to liberate all of Nagorno‑Kara­bakh by force, Aliyev exercised strategic restraint, realizing that Azer­baijan had won the war and could consolidate its vic­tory at the negotiating table with no further loss of life.

Despite popular senti­ment for the Azerbaijani military to carry the fighting into Khankendi and beyond to liberate all of Nagorno‑Karabakh by force, Aliyev exercised strategic restraint, realiz­ing that Azerbaijan had won the war and could consolidate its victory at the negotiating table with no further loss of life.

The trilateral agreement followed two days later. It incorporated most of the Basic Principles, including the return of Azerbaijan’s occu­pied districts to Baku’s control, as well as the right of return of all dis­placed persons and refugees, but with three significant changes to Armenia’s severe disadvantage: first, the omission of any mention of a possible change in Nagorno‑ Karabakh’s legal status; second, a new transit corridor connecting Azerbaijan’s exclave of Nakhchivan with the rest of Azerbaijan via Armenian territory; and third, the return of Shusha to Azerbaijan’s control.

The No­vember 10th trilateral agree­ment has been met with violent pro­tests in Yerevan. In one instance, a mob stormed the Armenian parlia­ment and severely beat its Speaker. Days later, the country’s secu­rity services an­nounced they had foiled an alleged plot to assassinate Pashinyan. And President Armen Sarkissian has called for snap elections.

At the time of writing (early De­cember 2020), thousands of dem­onstrators continue to gather daily in Yerevan, blocking streets and demanding that Pashinyan resign. Whether Pash­inyan is able to survive politically is unclear. What is certain, however, is that his reckless ap­proach to relations with Azerbaijan— including his abandonment of the Basic Principles—precipitated a war that produced Armenia’s greatest strategic defeat in over a century.

Pashinyan’s reckless ap­proach precipitated a war that produced Armenia’s greatest strategic defeat in over a century.

Pashinyan’s premiership did not begin this way. His rise to power via Arme­nia’s “velvet revolution” in May 2018 initially generated wide­spread hope that he might rein­vigorate the Nagorno‑Karabakh peace process. This was true even among my interlocutors at the highest governmental level in Baku. After all, Pashinyan had ousted Armenia’s old polit­ical regime, which had been led for 20 years by former leaders of Nagorno‑Karabakh.

And this appeared to be hap­pening in late 2018 and early 2019, thanks to three constructive meet­ings between Pashinyan and Aliyev. These discussions produced a new communications channel and an unprecedented joint commitment “to prepare the populations for peace.” This latter point was particularly sig­nificant, given the aforementioned reluctance of Pashinyan’s pre­decessor, Serge Sarkissian, as well as that of Aliyev, to confront public opposition to almost any compromise in their re­spective countries.

During the first half of 2019, however, Armenia’s pop­ular prime minister began to shift his approach. In March 2019, Pashinyan declared that Nagorno‑ Karabakh’s ethnic‑Armenian au­thorities must participate in nego­tiations. Couching this demand in conciliatory language, he claimed to seek a fresh approach in pursuit of a settlement that was accept­able to the peoples of Armenia, Nagorno‑Karabakh (the unrecog­nized “Republic of Artsakh”), and Azerbaijan. In reality, however, this demand would undermine the logic of the Madrid Principles by granting Armenia up front the primary concession it sought from Azerbaijan—namely a changed legal status for Nagorno‑Karabakh equivalent to that of Azerbaijan and Armenia—but without giving any­thing in return to Azerbaijan.

Pashinyan’s shift seemed to result from political weakness. Lacking a strong political organization of his own, the new prime minister struggled to consolidate his polit­ical authority and implement his promised reforms. He faced se­vere opposition from the previous political elite, comprised of the former “Karabakh Clan” and busi­ness oligarchs based in Yerevan and Moscow, supported by vocal and wealthy diasporas in Russia, France, and the United States. Armenian nationalists—espe­cially the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (or Dashnak­sutyun)—rejected the “Basic Principles” and the notion of surrendering any land to Azerbaijan, dreaming instead of recreating antiquity’s “Greater Armenia” by carving out terri­tory from present‑day Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. Thus, in January 2019, Dahnaksutyun’s U.S. chapter, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), urged Yerevan to repudiate the Madrid Principles as an empty formula of “land for paper.”

Pashinyan’s drift away from the Basic Principles accelerated in the spring and summer of 2019. In May, he and his minster of defense, David Tonoyan, declared that the Madrid Principles’ approach of “land for peace” had been replaced by a new doctrine of “new wars for new territories.” That same month, Pashinyan publicly repudiated the Basic Principles. Finally, in August 2019, Pashinyan traveled to Stepa­nakert/Khankendi and announced, “Nagorno‑Karabakh is Armenia. Period,” leading public chants calling for Nagorno‑Karabakh’s unification with Armenia.

Clearly Not A Peacemaker

After the Armenian leader walked away from the long­standing framework for a Na­gorno‑Karabakh settlement, the Minsk Group process was effec­tively dead. During the first half of 2020, however, the COVID‑19 pandemic froze the deterioration of Armenia‑Azerbaijan relations, as both countries struggled to contain the new coronavirus.

As the rate of COVID‑19 infec­tions flattened in summer, ten­sions between Armenia and Azer­baijan heated up again. In July, the two countries exchanged heavy artillery fire along the Armenia‑ Azerbaijan border, relatively far from Nagorno‑Karabakh but close to the hydrocarbon pipelines, rail and road links, and fiber­optic cables that are essential to Azerbaijan’s independence, eco­nomic vitality, and strategic signif­icance. Because part of the fighting spilled from Azerbaijan onto Arme­nian territory, Pashinyan eyed an opportunity to invoke the Russian‑led Collective Security Treaty Or­ganization (CSTO) pledge that an attack on one member state is an attack on all.

Yerevan therefore requested an emergency session of the CSTO, which it then quickly withdrew in response to an evenhanded CSTO statement, issued on July 14th, that criticized the “violation of the ceasefire agreed by the leaderships of [both] Armenia and Azerbaijan.” This failure to elicit a statement of support from Armenia’s mili­tary allies should have served as a warning to Pashinyan that Putin would not allow Russia to be drawn into fighting on the territory of Azerbaijan. Yet the Armenian leader continued to ratchet up tension with Azerbaijan.

Russia and Turkey filled the diplomatic vacuum left by the U.S. and France following the July clashes: Moscow called a snap mili­tary drill with Armenian forces and Russian troops stationed at Rus­sia’s 102nd army base in Gyumri, Armenia; Ankara reciprocated with joint Turkish and Azerbaijani mili­tary exercises in Azerbaijan. As ten­sions rose, many observers feared Turkey and Russia could be drawn into a regional war on opposing sides.

Rather than seeking to calm ten­sions, Pashinyan instead reopened a deep historical wound in Turkey. On August 10th, he publicly com­memorated the centennial of the Treaty of Sèvres—the agreement between the Allied Powers of World War I and the Ottoman Empire that signaled the start of the Ottoman Empire’s dismemberment. That accord called for the transfer of several regions of eastern Anatolia to the new, independent state of Armenia. Though never fully implemented and eventually sup­planted by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, any mention of the Treaty of Sèvres stirs nationalist emotions and fears of irredentism in Turkey to this day. Ankara thus viewed Pashinyan’s move as reckless and hostile, and raised its political and military support to Baku to unprec­edented levels.

This string of provocations led Steven Sackur, the host of the BBC’s “Hardtalk” program, to observe during his August 14th interview with Pashinyan, “You came to power talking about finding a path to peace but [...] your nationalist position on Nagorno‑Karabakh [...] doesn’t seem to have a meaningful peace element.” Sackur further noted that Pashinyan’s visit to Stepankert/ Khankendi one year earlier, coupled with his abandonment of the Basic Principles, led him to conclude, “you clearly are not a peacemaker.”

Pashinyan nevertheless con­tinued barreling toward armed confrontation with Azerbaijan. In late August 2020, the prime minis­ter’s wife, Anna Hakobyan, partic­ipated in a military training course in Nagorno‑Karabakh with 15 fe­male residents of the region. This occurred just after their son, Ashot, had completed his two‑year mili­tary service in Nagorno‑Karabakh

Finally, on September 19th, the de‑facto leader of Nagorno‑ Karabakh, Arayik Haratunyan, an­nounced plans to relocate the leg­islature of Nagorno‑Karabakh to Shusha. At this point, Baku con­cluded that any chance to recover its occupied territories via negotia­tions had evaporated.

The Second Karabakh War began eight days later. Azerbaijan relied heavily on Turkish (and Israeli) unmanned aerial vehicles, coupled with innovative, battle‑tested Turkish military tactics, to decimate Armenia’s army and bypass its heavy fortifications. By mid‑October, Azerbaijan’s battlefield victories were so dramatic and so rapid as to sur­prise even the country’s top leaders.

What Went Wrong

Looking back at my own ex­perience working with his predecessors, Pashinyan’s approach to the Nagorno‑Karabakh conflict was disturbing. Though conven­tional wisdom held that previous Armenian presidents Robert Kocharian and Serge Sarkissian were hardline leaders of the “Karabakh Clan,” in practice they and their foreign ministers were constructive and creative. For ex­ample, during my first visit to Yerevan as the U.S. Co‑chair of the Minsk Group in June 2006, then‑Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian proposed a tradeoff involving Nagorno‑Karabakh’s legal status and the return of the Azerbaijani territories surrounding Nagorno‑Karabakh, which I had in­dependently been thinking about in Washington and believed Baku might accept.

During the next three and a half years, my fellow Minsk Group Co‑chairs—Russia’s Yuriy Merzlyakov and France’s Bernard Fassier— and I built on this constructive Armenian proposal. Oskanian’s successor, Eduard Nalban­dian, and his Azerbaijani coun­terpart Elmar Mammadyarov, worked with us in a collabora­tive albeit competitive spirit. We also enjoyed active support from Russian Foreign Min­ister Sergey Lavrov and then‑ Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev. During a lunch for the Minsk Group Co‑chairs hosted by Lavrov in September 2008—a month after Russia in­vaded Georgia—I observed that, as misaligned as Wash­ington and Moscow were on Georgia, we were equally aligned with regard to the Nagorno‑ Karabakh conflict.

Our joint efforts culminated in the unofficial agreement to the Ma­drid Principles by Aliyev and Koch­arian’s successor, Serge Sarkissian, in January 2009.

Seen in this context, Moscow was understandably unim­pressed by Pashinyan’s rejection of the Madrid Principles. Compli­cating matters further was the fact that he had come to power via popular protests and, having overthrown an entrenched regime, made promises to undertake sweeping democratic and anti‑corruption reforms—a sce­nario that represents Putin’s worst political nightmare. In response to Pashinyan’s repeated pleadings for direct Russian military support, Putin thus made clear that Mos­cow’s CSTO obligation to defend Armenia was valid only if Armenia’s territory was attacked, whereas the Nagorno‑Karabakh war was being fought on the territory of Azerbaijan.

Washington and Paris, in con­trast, did not share Moscow’s ap­preciation of the threat to peace posed by Pashinyan’s provocations and his stated policy of “new wars for new territories.” Pashinyan’s dire warnings that Turkey and Azerbaijan aimed to “continue the Armenian genocide” proved to be false but nevertheless resonated among many U.S. and European analysts.

Some prominent U.S. experts continue to argue that Azerbaijan and Turkey will conduct ethnic cleansing in Nagorno‑Karabakh in the future, even if not yet. Se­nior U.S. officials seem to share this disdain for Turkish and Azerbai­jani actions. For example, during a December 2nd video conference of NATO’s foreign ministers, out­going U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly denounced Turkey for what he viewed as ag­gressive behavior with regard to the Second Karabakh War.

Top French officials have been even more vocal in sup­porting Armenia at Azerbaijan’s expense, rather than remaining impartial as required of a Minsk Group Co‑chair. Just after the trilat­eral agreement was signed, French Foreign Minister Jean‑Yves Le Drian issued a one‑sided statement in which he noted,

France reaffirms its whole­hearted friendship with the Armenian people in light of our close human, cultural, and historic ties with Armenia. In these tragic circumstances, we stand alongside it. In particu­lar, we will work to lend it all the humanitarian support it needs, especially for those Ar­menians who were displaced by the fighting.

Le Drian failed to mention, how­ever, that the November 10th agree­ment clears the way for Azerbaijanis to return to their former places of residence from which they were displaced during the First Karabakh War. Instead, he warned Baku, “We expect Azerbaijan to strictly uphold the commitments that it has made and to put an immediate end to its offensive,” adding, “In this context, we call on Turkey not to do anything that goes against this key priority.”

The French Senate went ever further than Le Drian in tilting toward Armenia, issuing a resolu­tion on November 25th suggesting that France recognize the inde­pendence of the “Republic of Art­sakh.” Although riddled with fac­tual errors and having prompted a clarification from the French For­eign Ministry’s Secretary of State, Jean‑Baptiste Lemoyne, that the Government of France had no inten­tion to recognize the independence of Nagorno‑Karabakh, the Senate res­olution accurately reflects deep bias among many French authorities against both Turkey and Azerbaijan. The document thus “Condemns Azerbaijan’s military aggression, carried out with the support of Turkish authorities” and declares “the expansionist policy led by Turkey is a major factor of desta­bilization in the Eastern Mediter­ranean, the Near and Middle East, and now in the South Caucasus.”

Four Strategic Benefits

While such biases can be ex­plained by the influence of France’s Armenian diaspora in do­mestic politics, it is more difficult to understand how Paris, as well as Washington, fail to see four stra­tegic benefits to the Transatlantic Community from the November 10th trilateral agreement.

First, the agreement settles the fun­damental elements of the Nagorno‑ Karabakh conflict according to a general framework that was pre­viously agreed by both Armenia and Azerbaijan, albeit unofficially, which means it is essentially just. The trilateral agreement is there­fore likely to endure, and thereby eliminate a regional flashpoint for the foreseeable future. While the Armenian side may eventually in­sist on a new round of negotiations on the legal status of the portion of Nagorno‑Karabakh over which it retains control, the conflict has now been transformed into a nettlesome political and legal dispute—one in which military force is unlikely to play a role. The Nagorno‑Karabakh conflict has therefore become more akin to the Cyprus Question than to “a frozen conflict.”

Second, by mandating the re­opening of all transit links in the region, the November 10th agree­ment clears the way for the eventual normalization of Armenia‑Turkey relations. Having actively partic­ipated in negotiations of the pre­vious normalization agreement be­tween the two countries in 2009, it was clear to me then that Turkey’s parliament would ratify the so‑called Zurich Protocols only if there was a breakthrough in settling the Nagorno‑Karabakh conflict. That breakthrough is now a reality. New and positive vectors of coopera­tion could therefore soon emerge, potentially catalyzing new trade and investment flows and joint infrastructure projects—as well as new forms of political coopera­tion—that would benefit Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey.

Third, the trilateral agreement mandates a new transportation link between Azerbaijan’s exclave of Nakhchivan and the rest of Azerbaijan via Armenian territory. This new road will significantly re­duce Nakhchivan’s dependence on Iran for the transport of energy and other vital goods.

Fourth, the November 10th agreement provides NATO a mil­itary presence in Azerbaijan by virtue of Turkey’s participation in peacekeeping operations. From Moscow’s perspective, Turkish peacekeepers mean NATO troops, which can now open new geostra­tegic opportunities for the Atlantic alliance. Moreover, Turkey’s peace­keepers balance those of Russia, constraining the extent of destabi­lizing actions Russian peacekeepers can undertake, as they have often done in Georgia and Moldova.

While the presence of Rus­sian peacekeepers is a geostrategic setback for both Azerbaijan and NATO, as a prac­tical matter, these troops fulfilled an urgent requirement to separate Azerbaijani and Armenian troops on the battlefield and enable the ceasefire to take hold. Addition­ally, given Russia’s historical role as a protector of Armenia against its Turkic neighbors, only Rus­sian peacekeepers could provide Armenian residents of Nagorno‑ Karabakh a sufficient sense of security to allow them to return to their homes, and indeed, thousands of Armenians now appear to be re­turning to Stepanakert/Khankendi.

Azerbaijan, meanwhile, seems committed to encouraging as many Armenians as possible to return to and remain in their homes. As Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jayhun Bayramov stated on November 27th, “We are entering a new stage, a stage of reconstruction and rehabilitation, a stage of resto­ration and coexistence.”

Maintaining Strategic Focus

As the Government of Azerbaijan now formulates its reconstruction plan for its re­gained territories, its estimate of the damage caused by recent mili­tary operations and destruction by former Armenian residents is over $100 billion. Rebuilding tasks in­clude demining (with three years required before the region’s former residents can safely return), shelter, longer‑term housing, and the full range of physical infrastruc­ture (including electricity, natural gas, water, sanitation, and roads). Azerbaijan will need to rely heavily on help from the international community to meet these needs. International goodwill and exper­tise will also be crucial to reducing enmity and restoring a sense of trust required to rebuild communi­ties psychologically, as Armenians and Azerbaijanis eventually be­come neighbors again in Nagorno‑ Karabakh.

Azerbaijan can increase its chances of achieving such interna­tional support if it maintains the moral high ground. Baku’s recent agreement to allow ten extra days for Armenians to depart Kelbajar District and the announcement by Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General of investigations into alleged war crimes by both Azerbaijani and Armenian troops should help at­tract such assistance.

For now, however, Azerbaijan should expect continued mis­understanding from Paris and Washington, given that time will be needed for a positive post‑conflict track record by Baku to be recognized. Meanwhile, Armenians and members of Armenian dias­poras will endure a painful period of soul‑searching as they struggle to come to terms with their shocking de­feat. Some of these will be thoughtful, as those of Jirair Li­baridian, the wise former Nagorno‑ Karabakh advisor to Armenia’s first post‑Soviet president. Others will be provocative and disturbing, such as the recent call in a prom­inent Armenian‑American news outlet for Armenia to harvest the radioactive materials from its Met­samor nuclear power plant for a “dirty bomb” to be dropped on Baku.

Throughout this turmoil, Azerbaijan should main­tain its strategic focus, as when it stopped its offensive after capturing Shusha, having realized it had won the military phase of the war and could now spare hundreds of Azerbaijani and Armenian lives. While unpopular among Azer­baijanis who wished to see their army regain all of Nagorno‑ Karabakh by force, this show of stra­tegic restraint re­flected the wisdom of the great nine­teenth century Prussian military strategist Karl von Clausewitz, who taught the world that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” In other words, wars are fought to achieve political goals, with victory ultimately won at the negotiating table. Military force is a diplomatic tool used to reshape the political space of a peace agree­ment, rather than as an end in itself.

The trilateral agreement transformed the great­est military victory in Azerbaijan’s history into its greatest diplomatic victory.

The November 10th trilateral agreement transformed the greatest military victory in Azerbaijan’s history into its greatest diplomatic victory. It is now the responsibility of all Azerbaijanis to consolidate these national triumphs into a pros­perous and peaceful future, with Azerbaijan recognized interna­tionally as restoring the chance for Armenians and Azerbaijanis once again to live side‑by‑side.