https://arab.news/62nvx
US President Donald Trump on Friday took on a role in the ongoing Azerbaijan-Armenia peace process and presided over the signing of a draft peace deal by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Observers immediately noted that this “agreement” was a mere repackaging of the framework deal the two countries signed in March. It had been negotiated bilaterally and achieved without outside involvement. At that time, it was also recognized that several issues still had to be addressed before the peace process could be completed.
The disputes between Azerbaijan and Armenia are only one part of the issues that bedevil the South Caucasus region, which foreign policy analyst Jeffrey Mankoff described in a December 2024 Center for Strategic and International Studies report as a “shatter zone and choke point” that links Europe with Eurasia. The region consists of three states — Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia — that obtained sovereignty following the breakup of the Soviet Union.
The fallout of that breakup has been untidy: Russian maintained claims on Georgia’s Abkhazia and South Ossetia areas, two wars took place between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, and Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 to prevent it drifting further toward the EU and NATO.
