Winners and losers of Karabakh War
After more than six weeks of hard fighting, a 27-year-old frozen conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh was brought to an end last week. The roots of the conflict lie in the chaos that surrounded the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Armenia had designs on an ethnically Armenian region of Azerbaijan’s NagornoKarabakh. Many of the ethnic Armenians living there wanted to join Armenia or create an independent state. One thing led to another and a bloody war broke out. It ended with a shaky cease-fire in 1994 that left Armenia victorious and occupying huge chunks of what was internationally recognized as Azerbaijan’s territory.
For the most part, the ceasefire held. There was a small, four-day skirmish between the two sides in April 2016, during which Azerbaijan took back a small amount of territory. However, until the most recent fighting began in September, the front lines had remained mostly stable since 1994.
So who are the winners and losers of the Second Karabakh War? Without a doubt, Azerbaijan is the biggest winner because it liberated its internationally recognized territory, which had been under Armenian occupation since the early 1990s.
Russian peacekeepers will be stationed in some parts of Nagorno-Karabakh with sizable ethnic Armenian populations, and this must have been a bitter pill for Baku to swallow. However, it is expected that Azerbaijan will enjoy the trappings of sovereignty in the region, including the use of the manat as currency, responsibility for law enforcement, and the Azerbaijani flag flying over government buildings. Russia is also a winner because it will deploy that small peacekeeping force in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is something it has wanted to do since the ceasefire in the early 1990s. Turkey is a winner because the balance of power in the South Caucasus has shifted away from Moscow and closer to Ankara. Georgia is a winner, too — not in the outcome of the war, per se, but in the sense that Tbilisi succeeded in walking a diplomatic tightrope during the conflict and remained neutral. This prevented the fighting from spilling over the border.
Iran is a loser because it has a new geopolitical reality on its northern border, in the form of an emboldened Azerbaijan and a weakened Armenia. The latter has enjoyed cozy relations with Tehran over the years. Relations between Iran and Azerbaijan are cordial but there are tensions beneath the surface about the sizable number of ethnic Azeris living in northern Iran. Although this has not escalated into a mass movement for independence, it still makes some in Tehran nervous.
Also, Iran will have to devote time, resources and troops to adjust to the new geopolitical reality along its border with Azerbaijan. This could mean less focus on other places, such as the Gulf and Syria.
Armenia, of course, is the biggest loser in the conflict, after suffering a massive military defeat. It is estimated that the country lost 40 percent of its military equipment, which was either destroyed or captured by Azerbaijan.
Luke Coffey is director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation.