Following fierce clashes that erupted over the weekend in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, Azerbaijan and Armenian forces announced a ceasefire on Tuesday — but tensions remain high.
Dozens were killed in the worst violence that Nagorno-Karabakh, formally a part of Azerbaijan that has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military since 1994, has seen in decades.
As the Soviet Union collapsed, the two former Soviet republics fought a six-year war over the region in the South Caucasus mountains. The ethnic conflict between predominantly Christian Armenians and Muslim Azerbaijanis left thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced before a ceasefire halted the war in 1994. There have been sporadic border clashes over the years, but this recent fighting marked the bloodiest escalation since the truce.
For some insight, The Cipher Brief turned to Matthew Bryza, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who formerly served as U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan. Bryza took the time to answer a few questions from Istanbul, Turkey, where he is now based.
The Cipher Brief: What was your reaction to the ceasefire, and what do you expect post-ceasefire?
Matthew Bryza: I expected the ceasefire to emerge quickly, since I am convinced neither Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev nor Armenian President Serzh Sargsian wanted this latest and unprecedented uptick in violence to occur. When this latest round of fighting broke out, both presidents were in Washington, having just met Vice President Joe Biden in an effort to reinvigorate the U.S. Administration’s interest in the conflict. Having met with both presidents dozens of times, I can say confidently they both realized that to attract top-level U.S. interest, they would have to come off as reasonable and committed to peace in their White House meetings.
TCB: What kind, if any, deterrence is in place to stop this from happening again?
MB: No deterrence is in place to prevent this from happening again. But, practical disincentives exist. For Azerbaijan, the practical disincentive is that each outbreak in violence will impose further economic stress at a moment of low oil prices, which have led to a major devaluation of the Azerbaijani currency over the past year, with a knock-on effect of job losses, and failures of small business and loan defaults.
For Armenia, the greatest concern with regard to Nagorno-Karabakh is Azerbaijan’s growing military strength. And, for Russia, which may have just stirred the pot, open warfare between Azerbaijan and Armenia is dangerous and goes beyond Moscow’s desire to keep both countries off balance.
TCB: How does this breakout in fighting matter against the backdrop of Russia-Turkey tensions?
MB: I don’t think Russia-Turkey tensions are playing a significant role in this latest Nagorno-Karabakh crisis. Turkey will always feel compelled to provide full-throated support to Azerbaijan. A popular slogan in Turkey with regard to Turkish-Azerbaijani relations is indeed, “One nation, two states.”
At the same time, Russia will always seek to keep tension between Azerbaijan and Armenia on a slow burn, which allows Moscow to maximize its regional influence without the unpredictably and high risks to regional stability (including in southern Russia) of full-scale war.
TCB: What do you think the United States’ role should be going forward?
MB: First, the United States should fill the strategic vacuum it created in the South Caucasus with its “Russia Reset” policy. Though the Obama administration has officially declared this policy finished (and failed), the United States has not taken significant diplomatic steps to fill this vacuum.
So second, the U.S. should fill this strategic vacuum by placing resolution of the NK conflict on the agenda of Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama in their relations with Russia and with the U.S.’s allies. In the wake of this current and unprecedented wave of violence, the official reaction of the State Department has been a business-as-usual condemnation of violence, while the White House has been silent.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been vocal, and his ministers of foreign affairs and defense have been active with their Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts. This leaves the impression among the leaders and citizens of Azerbaijan and Armenia that they are alone with Russia to manage this crisis. The ramifications of this perception could be devastating for U.S. interests in Ukraine, Syria, and beyond.
TCB: What is your biggest question from the weekend's events, or the biggest problem you think it raises for any of the actors or the international community?
MB: My biggest question is, how could a huge uptick in violence that neither President Sargsian nor President Aliyev wanted have happened? Or, put differently, who provoked or encouraged one side or the other to initiate attacks with heavy weapons? The timing is suspicious. As mentioned above, the violence erupted just one day after Presidents Aliyev and Sargsian met separately with Vice President Biden in a meeting many observers hoped would reenergize the Minsk Group, the international body tasked with mediating the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
But, rather than reinvigorating the peace process, this important meeting was followed by the worst clashes since the war in the early 1990’s, all of which occurred on the margins of a larger gathering of international leaders for the Nuclear Summit hosted by President Obama, whose invitation Russian President Putin refused to accept.
Perhaps all this timing is just coincidental. Perhaps the current situation is fundamentally different from August 2008, when Russia took advantage of world leaders being distracted by the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics to invade Georgia, or when Putin did the same in February 2014 during the opening of the Sochi Olympics and launched military operations in Ukraine. In any case, it is essential that the presidents of the Minsk Group Co-Chair countries—Russia, France, and the U.S.—work together to help de-escalate the current violence and invigorate the peace process.
Matthew Bryza is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who formerly served as U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan. Before that, Bryza was the U.S Co-Chair of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's Minsk Group, mediating the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict from 2006-2009. He also served as the Director for Europe and Eurasia at the National Security Council from 2001-2005.
