Welcome to the new Geopolitics Rundown! We are back after our brief hiatus with a new, unscripted format and some new topics to discuss. Today’s topic: The recent conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan which has killed hundreds and re-ignited a fight over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh. We’re going to walk you through where this conflict is, who is involved, and why it could have serious implications for Russia, Turkey, and the future of NATO.*
*NOTE: This episode was recorded before the announced Russia-brokered ceasefire. However, the same concepts stated in the episode still apply.
HUNTER:
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. When we started this podcast in the thick of the pandemic, we were using barebones equipment, makeshift studios and recording remotely. But we’ve grown considerably and we need to restructure our show. So we took a brief hiatus to use that time to figure out how to run things in a way that would work with our team and most of all, work for our listeners and our fans. So I Hunter, I’m going to be the producer for this show. Ryan and Ramya are going to focus on the research and putting together content for you guys to enjoy. And we’re bringing the podcast back. With that said, let’s get going with today’s episode.
RAMYA:
All right. So today’s episode is about the tense situation between two countries that we don’t really hear about in the mainstream news – Azerbaijan and Armenia. Now listeners, I know exactly what you’re thinking. You’ve probably barely heard of these countries, if at all. But here’s the thing. These countries form the crossroads between Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. These two countries are now embroiled in a war over disputed territory. It’s an age old problem in an arena that you don’t often hear about. And by the end of this episode, I hope that you’ll understand that like many wars, the states on the periphery matter just as much as the ones in the spotlight. So let’s get into it.
HUNTER:
I think we should start with the basics. Where exactly are these countries?
RYAN:
So. Well, these two countries, Azerbaijan and Armenia are located in the Caucasus region. So that’s an area in Central Asia. You’ve got Russia and Georgia in the north. Armenia and Turkey to the west, Azerbaijan in the east. And then Iran in the south. So that’s pretty much where this conflict is happening.
HUNTER:
And what’s been going on with the conflict? When did it start?
RYAN:
So this conflict started around September, earlier this year. So both countries have been exchanging blows in and around this disputed area called Nagorno Karabakh, also known as the Republic of Artsakh, for the sake of this episode, we’re going to call it Nagorno Karabakh. So what is Nagorno Karabakh? In theory, it’s an autonomous state that lies between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but in actuality it’s a puppet state of Armenia.
RAMYA: Yeah. And if you guys don’t know, just check out the map that we’ve provided. This will probably make it more understandable for you guys.
HUNTER:
I know I had to look at a map when I was first learning about it.
RYAN:
Oh, yeah, we all did.
RAMYA:
We did, too.
HUNTER:
And is there an ethnic component to this conflict?
RYAN:
Absolutely. Mainly, there’s a huge ethnic cleavage between the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis. Armenians are predominantly Orthodox Christian and they’re their own ethnic group, whereas the Azerbaijanis, or Azeris as we’ll also refer to them on the show – Ethnically they’re Turkic people and they’re predominantly Shia Muslim. So there’s some big differences between these people. And it definitely plays a role in why they’re fighting right now.
HUNTER:
And how has the fighting played out so far?
RAMYA:
So in the past few years, there have been skirmishes pretty frequently, but this round of skirmishes started in July of this year, 2020. They died down and then reignited in late September. And so both sides say that the other initiated fighting on, I would say around September 27. And they both say that the other bombed civilian settlements along the line of contact between Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan. Again, guys, look at your map. It will be very helpful. If I had to guess, I would say that Azerbaijan actually initiated it. And this is based on their goals, which we’ll talk about later in the episode.
HUNTER:
So has any territory switched hands, or has it mostly just been low level conflict?
RAMYA:
So both Azerbaijani and Armenian sources are saying that, well, the Azeri military has captured multiple villages and strategic locations within Nagorno Karabakh, and we see that with Armenian and Nagorno Karabakh sources as well. And they’re also stating that the Armenian military has recovered territory. But here’s the thing. It’s very hard to tell what’s going on because there aren’t very many sources that are reporting on this without some kind of bias. But whatever the case is, hundreds have died so far with both civilian and military casualties.
HUNTER:
These conflicts rarely occur in isolation. Can you guys talk a little bit about the other powers that are involved?
RYAN:
So Turkey is incredibly involved in this conflict. As of right now, a Turkish F-16 shot down an Armenian SU 25 in Armenian airspace. And that’s a significant escalation and not at all in line with how these skirmishes between Azerbaijan and Armenia typically go. They typically don’t see another country getting involved to this degree. But that’s because Turkey is a strong and open ally of Azerbaijan. And, of course, an Erdogan spokesperson for Turkey said that they didn’t bomb or blow up an Armenian jet, and they have no idea what you’re talking about.
HUNTER:
So let’s talk about why Turkey openly supports Azerbaijan to this degree.
RYAN:
Well, like we said before, the Azeris are ethnically Turkic. And so there’s that shared ethnicity between the two peoples. As well as we can get into this later, too. But Turkey has a lot of goals in the region,and Azerbaijan is a great starting off point.
RAMYA:
And also, Turkey and Armenia have a very, I would say bad relationship and I would say this because of the Armenian genocide. So essentially between 1915 and 1923, I would say during World War One, basically, the Ottoman Empire ended up committing the Armenian genocide. And this was very bad. And that’s an understatement. They ended up killing 1.5 million Armenians. And the problem is to this day, Turkey refuses to acknowledge it as a genocide. Yeah, Armenia and Turkey pretty much despise each other.
HUNTER:
And it’s my understanding that Turkey is sort of skirting admitting that it was a genocide because technically it happened before the word genocide became a real term that was commonly used.
RYAN:
Exactly. That’s pretty much what’s happening.
RAMYA:
I mean, they’re not even skirting it at this point. They’re just denying it as if it never happened.
HUNTER:
So besides shooting down fighter jets, what else is Turkey doing in this conflict?
RYAN:
Well, they’re also flying in hundreds of Syrian fighters from, sources say they’re from jihadist groups, to fight for Azerbaijan. But I’m – I’m not really sure they’d be jihadists because, well…
HUNTER:
They’re more likely mercenaries.
RYAN:
Yeah, they’re more likely mercenaries because jihadists are generally Sunni fundamentalists and they’re not a big fan of Shia Islam. And most Azerbaijanis are Shiites by that denomination. So it’s not really… It doesn’t really make sense that a bunch of jihadists will take very little money from the Turkish government to go fight for some Shiites. It doesn’t make sense. So they’re most likely mercenaries.
HUNTER:
Let’s talk a little bit about why this conflict is erupting now, because everything that I understand about it is that this has been a conflict that’s been simmering on some level for years. Why in the fall of 2020 did this suddenly explode?
RAMYA:
So you’re right and that this conflict has been simmering for a very long time. But I would say that this conflict has particularly erupted because of all the economic problems that followed after Covid hit. You see this a lot with other countries, like we’ve talked about Hungary with Viktor Orban. We’ve talked about the border skirmishes between India and China in the Galwan Valley. And so we see leadership of these countries essentially using conflict against other countries as a way to both stabilize internal dissent, and also to gain more power in a way that basically diverts all the anger that the citizens of these countries feel towards another country, especially in a border conflict about disputed territory.
HUNTER:
And to take it from another economic angle. It’s my understanding that there’s a large economic difference between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Can you guys talk a little bit about why that difference exists?
RYAN:
Well, basically, the difference is that Armenia is three times smaller than Azerbaijan in terms of population. And it has a much smaller economy. That’s because Azerbaijan has, by its location near the Caspian Sea, has a lot more oil reserves. And with that oil money comes a lot more options, meanwhile, Armenia is saddled with embargoes and sanctions because it has a very close relationship with Russia, and this very disputed region, Nagorno Karabakh.
RAMYA:
Yeah, we often see this with oil economies where they’re more liquid, in that the leadership is able to gain access to much more capital to go towards these kind of nationalistic…
HUNTER:
And to fight wars.
RAMYA:
And to fight wars. These kind of nationalistic motivations. And, yeah. Essentially to fight wars.
HUNTER:
So is there any clear winner right now? Is either side really doing better than the other?
RYAN:
I’d say right now that, if you were looking at it, Armenia is definitely on the defensive and that their goal right now is to just keep a hold of everything that they possibly can at this point. That would be a huge victory for Armenia. Whereas Azerbaijan, they’re looking to seize any amount of land that they can repopulate it with Azerbaijanis and then foist that up as a huge political victory. That’s their big thing. It reminds me of this Clausewitz quote, “war is the continuation of politics by other means”. I think that’s what we’re seeing here right now.
HUNTER:
Speaking of politics, I don’t want to go too deep here, but I do want to get a little bit of an understanding of the background to this conflict and how these ethnic, political and economic tensions formed in the first place.
RAMYA:
Right. So I would say that this particular conflict traces back to around World War One where, you know, I just talked about the Armenian genocide. That’s when that happened. But the issue with Nagorno Karabakh, this region that is hotly contested between the two, goes back to World War One. But then the rise of the Soviet Union, if you guys recall, the Soviet Union had no religion and it did not care about ethnicities or anything. You were a Soviet number one. That was the whole deal about being a part of the Soviet Union. So what happened was with the rise of the Soviet Union, all of these ethnic and religious cleavages were quelled. They were put down and they were not addressed for years and years. And so I would say that the first cracks, you know, after the Soviet Union quelled all these issues, the first cracks showed in 1988, and this was three years before the Soviet Union collapsed. And at this point in 1988, Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh wanted the region to become a part of Armenia, whereas the Azerbaijanis essentially tried to ethnically cleanse Armenians out of Nagorno Karabakh. But in 1988, Soviet troops came in and shut it down. But within three years, the Soviet Union collapsed. And that’s when things got, I would say, hot and heavy.
HUNTER:
So what you’re saying basically is that in 1991, the simmering pot boiled over.
RYAN:
So, yeah, exactly. The pot boiled over. As soon as the Soviet Union fell, Armenia and Azerbaijan realized they’re independent countries who could do whatever they wanted. So they went to war over Nagorno Karabakh. Now, this war was pretty crazy for being so forgotten about. Since the USSR had dissolved, there were tons of Russian mercenaries going around. They were former Soviet soldiers and they had nowhere to be. So they decided to fight in these wars and they were switching sides like crazy to whoever could pay them the most. And, evidently the Armenians could pay them the best because the Armenians, after three years, won the conflict and they got to take over Nagorno Karabakh. In the meantime, 20 thousand people died and over a million more were forcibly displaced, most of which were Azerbaijanis who had settled in the region during the time of the Soviet Union.
HUNTER:
And it sounds like that’s a big source of Azerbaijan’s anger and its drive to reclaim Nagorno Karabakh.
RYAN:
So absolutely, this is definitely the biggest source of Azeri anger and drive to reclaim Nagorno Karabakh. And it’s interesting because the outcome of this war led to Nagorno Karabakh becoming this autonomous region. But the thing is, it’s so heavily reliant on Armenia that it’s basically a part of Armenia.
HUNTER:
It’s a de facto part of our Armenia.
RYAN:
Exactly.
RAMYA:
Yeah. And it was still called the Republic of Artsakh.
HUNTER:
Which is Armenian for the Nagorno Karabakh region.
RAMYA:
Essentially, yes, yes.
HUNTER:
I see.
RAMYA:
And no U.N. member state recognizes Artsakh. This is important because in any other way, if you look at Nagorno Karabakh, it’s supposed to be an autonomous region. But if even Armenia, who supposedly controls Artsakh does not see it as an independent state, you can kind of make your own conclusions with that.
HUNTER:
Its status is in question.
RAMYA:
Exactly. Always.
HUNTER:
I wanted to touch on something, and that is that this conflict seems to have been simmering for a while before it erupted in September. Can you guys, talk a little bit about what’s been going on in this conflict since 1991.
RYAN:
Well, there have been flare ups every year for the most part, but things really came to a boil again in 2016 where they had a short war between the two. It only lasted four days, but it was impactful enough, and the technological scale involved was enough that 350 people died, both civilian and military, according to the U.S. State Department. 350 people in four days.
RAMYA:
Yeah. I mean, tanks, helicopters, suicide drones, heavy artillery. Like this was a conflict, if you know what I mean.
HUNTER:
A serious military conflict.
RAMYA:
Exactly. Exactly. And it was so devastating that all of the evidence suggests that it was actually a planned assault by both sides, and it wasn’t just, you know, one of those flare ups that get quelled after a little bit of conflict.
HUNTER:
So it seems like both sides are getting more serious about taking some serious gambles in the Nagorno Karabakh region.
RYAN:
Exactly.
HUNTER:
And how did the 2016 war end?
RYAN:
Well, it ended in a quick ceasefire announcement that was brokered by Moscow, who typically plays the peacekeeper role between these two. They like to play them off each other.
HUNTER:
So this is a pattern that we see a lot in international affairs, which is these tiny former Soviet states like Azerbaijan and Armenia or the former Yugoslavia, for example, end up having these destructive and pretty much unending ethnic conflicts. How does that happen?
RYAN:
Well, it generally comes down to who else is interested in the outcome of these fights. And in this case, both Armenia and Azerbaijan have powerful benefactors with skin in the game, Russia and Turkey.
HUNTER:
That’s something that I definitely want to talk about. And that’s the relationship between Russia and Turkey, because they’ve had on again, off again relations since the fall of the Soviet Union. But in the past 10 years, things have gotten really weird, especially surrounding conflicts in Syria, conflicts in Kosovo and even proxy wars in Libya. They might come to blows here in Nagorno Karabakh. And I’d like you guys to go over a little bit how the Russian Turkish relationship has played out over the last few years and how it might play into this conflict.
RYAN:
Yeah. So typically, Turkey and Russia have had a close economic relationship, which has basically seen them through all these kinds of hardships. Turkey buys a lot of arms and a lot of oil from Russia. They’re one of the biggest buyers of Russian oil. So that’s been keeping the relationship alive. But Turkey has been trying to move away from that position as of late. And that’s where you can see a lot of these conflicts starting to happen in these recent years, where Turkey doesn’t want to be under Russia’s foot as much as they have been in the past.
HUNTER:
Can you give an example?
RAMYA:
Well, in 2016. A Turkish police officer actually assassinated Russia’s ambassador to Turkey.
HUNTER:
I remember seeing that, yeah, it was on live TV.
RAMYA:
It was pretty crazy.
RAMYA:
Absolutely, yeah. His name was Andre Karlov. And this was a huge deal because it was an openly Turkish police officer who ended up doing it.
HUNTER:
Yeah, it was a Turkish nationalist, right?
RAMYA:
Yeah, yeah.
HUNTER:
Yeah. And then there was another incident that I’m just remembering where during the Syrian civil war, the Turks actually shot down a Russian fighter jet over Turkish airspace. And I remember that caused a pretty big diplomatic rift.
RYAN:
Yeah, that was a pretty big event. But these oil sales and these arms sales tend to kind of push those kinds of conflicts back under the rug.
HUNTER:
And I’m interested to see how it might play into this Nagorno Karabakh conflict.
RAMYA:
Yeah. And another interesting thing to keep in mind is that, as of right now, the way that Russia maintains its sphere of influence and this is actually a topic in foreign relations that we did learn at college. Hunter, you can go into it.
HUNTER:
Yeah, it’s really great that you bring up spheres of influence because it’s a really integral part of the modern understanding of foreign affairs. And what spheres of influence refers to is this idea that, in a given region, there is always a dominant state. There is a state…
RAMYA:
A big dog.
HUNTER:
Exactly. There’s the big dog that can dictate the policies and foreign relations of the smaller states in the region.
RAMYA:
Right. And the way that Russia does it is by oil sales and more importantly, arms sales.
HUNTER:
And the thing is, is that the Nagorno Karabakh conflict is an example of where these spheres of influence clash.
RAMYA:
Right. Exactly.
HUNTER:
Because you have Russia who views the caucuses essentially as part of the former Soviet Union and thus part of its sphere of influence.
RAMYA:
Right. Right. And with Turkey, you see Erdogan trying to, kind of, build up this concept of a neo Ottoman Empire. If we really think about it during World War One, the Ottoman Empire was a formidable opponent. And that’s what Erdogan is working towards. While Russia is working towards the exact same thing. It’s trying to regain its former glory.
RYAN:
And what was part of the Ottoman Empire sphere of influence? Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Caucasus.
HUNTER:
Yeah.
RYAN:
So actually, it’s a classic clash of interests between Turkey and Russia.
HUNTER:
And if I remember right, the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire fought a dozen or so wars over that exact region and over that sphere of influence. So it’s a conflict that’s just geographically been around for about a thousand years, and it’s playing out now.
RAMYA:
In a very simplified way, we have the Ottoman Empire and the Soviet Union duking it out over Armenia and Azerbaijan. I mean, this is an oversimplification, but listeners, if you kind of follow where I’m coming from, that’s kind of the ideals that are clashing as of right now.
HUNTER:
And it sounds like both sort of choosing sides. At least Turkey openly supports Azerbaijan. The Azeris, as we’ve talked about, are ethnic Turkic people and Muslims. And even though Turkey is predominantly Sunni and Azerbaijan is mostly Shia, that affinity still exists. And there’s also this terrible relationship between Armenia and Turkey following the genocide.
RYAN:
Yeah. I mean, you can’t really recover from that, especially if Turkey keeps the position that it has.
RAMYA:
Denies it.
RYAN:
Exactly. That it’s denying that it was a genocide on what seems to be pretty technical terms. It’s they’re technically correct.
HUNTER:
It’s a technicality.
RYAN:
Yeah, it’s a technicality. Thank you.
RAMYA:
Yeah. And in this particular situation, when we know that Turkey and Armenia have this kind of hard line where they will never agree right? Something like a genocide is not something you can come around to.
HUNTER:
It’s bad blood.
RAMYA:
It’s bad blood. It’s bad blood, and it has not dried. It is still there. And so you see Turkey basically siding with Azerbaijan. And you see Russia trying to tackle both sides.
HUNTER:
Yeah. And that’s something I want to get into a little bit, is the fact that Russia to an extent supports Armenia, but seems to be playing both sides. Can you guys get into that a little bit?
RYAN:
Yeah, I can get into that. Russia definitely plays both sides. It sells weapons to both. And since they’re both in such frequent armed contact with each other, they’re constantly fighting, that it’s very lucrative for Russia to sell arms to both sides because they constantly need new ones. So Russia really wants to keep this situation as it is. But then you have Turkey over here who’s really pushing the envelope with Azerbaijan. They’re trying to make Azerbaijan, for lack of a better word, as they’re trying to make it Turkey. They’re trying to make it a part of Turkey’s sphere of influence. So, yeah, Russia typically tries to play the peacekeeper between these two countries and resolve these conflicts so that they can keep selling weapons to them. But Turkey might force them out of that position and they might have to choose and they would choose Armenia.
RAMYA:
Yeah, but also something important to mention is that Russia and Armenia are part of something called the Collective Security Treaty Organization. And this is essentially a military alliance. It’s an intergovernmental military alliance, and it involves Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
HUNTER:
So it’s like a Central Asian Warsaw Pact.
RAMYA:
Exactly. Exactly. So there is the potential for Armenia to call on its allies for this particular conflict. So at least in my opinion, I think Russia is just saying, no, we don’t we really don’t want this.
HUNTER:
And this is one of the things I really wanted to get into is that the the real issue, for our listeners at home, isn’t necessarily an ethnic conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. It’s really about the escalation of that conflict to include the regional actors, Turkey and Russia. RAMYA:, you’ve talked about this relationship between Armenia and Russia. And I want you to get a little deeper there. I want you to tell us why Russia might intervene on behalf of Armenia and try to expand its sphere of influence into the Caucuses more.
RAMYA:
Well, Ryan did a lot of this research, but I can tell you that Russia wants to keep Turkey weaker and reliant on Russia because, well, post Covid, it’s not just Azerbaijan and Armenia that are suffering. Russia’s economy is in shambles. I mean, on top of Covid, they’ve been dealing with crippling sanctions from Western powers. But I think Ryan has more to say about what exactly Russia would get out of this.
RYAN:
So, OK, so well, what Russia really wants out of this whole conflict is they want to negotiate the cease fire. They want these two sides to go back to the status quo antebellum, where they can sell them both weapons that they use in wars against each other, then mediate that conflict and break them up, and then sell them the weapons again and go back to that because it works out for them. It’s what works for them best. But the problem is now that Turkey is influencing Azerbaijan to this degree and interfering on their behalf, it might force Russia to give up the idea of retaining influence over the Caucasus countries entirely. So we say that because Russia has already lost its grip on Georgia. They tried to invade it in the early 2000s. It didn’t really work out in that way. And so it can’t really afford to lose Azerbaijan to Turkey and then lose Armenia because they didn’t help out enough and they didn’t pick a side in time. So they might have to just rely on France, the U.K. and the U.S. for mediation and actually have to pick a side.
HUNTER:
So let’s get deeper into the geopolitical ramifications of this. This is really what this show is about. You have Russia who’s trying to maintain the status quo and Turkey that’s trying to expand its sphere of influence deep into the Caucasus in a way that we really haven’t seen before. The problem is, is that Turkey is a NATO member. Can you guys talk a little bit about how Turkey might or might not drag NATO into this conflict and provoke an all out conflict between NATO and Russia?
RAMYA:
So you bring up a very important point, and that is that Turkey is a member of NATO. And what this means is that NATO members are going to be involved regardless of what happens because Turkey is involved and Turkey isn’t just involved with any other power, it’s Russia. And I took an entire class about NATO and Russia, right? So now that Russia’s involved and Turkey is involved with this, NATO members are, you know, taking issue with it. So the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the United States have both condemned Turkey’s actions and have called for a cease fire. Now, you know, the basis of their condemnation is that Turkey is a part of NATO.
HUNTER: They don’t want to get drawn in.
RAMYA: They don’t want to get drawn in. But they’re also going to, you know, say, hey, guys, let’s stop this, because it’s not like they can tell Russia what to do. But they can, you know, ostensibly tell Turkey what to do. And if Emmanuel Macron could have his way, he would kick Turkey out of NATO. And this is a sentiment that’s shared with most members of NATO. Most of them are pretty annoyed with Turkey just from Erdogan’s…
RYAN: Frequent aggression.
RAMYA: Frequent aggression! Exactly.
HUNTER: The problem is, is that Turkey houses American nukes and everyone is afraid that if we decide to kick them out of NATO, Erdogan’s going to keep those and use them if we cut them off completely. So it puts NATO in this real bind. Do they support their ostensible NATO ally, Turkey, despite the fact that they don’t want to get involved? Or do they risk breaking with Turkey and having an even worse situation on their hands? That brings us to the United States, the de facto head of NATO, and their position in the conflict.
RYAN:
Yeah, and the U.S. is in a really interesting position here because Donald Trump is the president right now and he has been vocally open about his distaste for NATO and how much the U.S. contributes to it. And so because of his position on NATO and how friendly he is with Russia, I don’t see him intervening to help Turkey in any way in this regard. And I don’t really see if Trump loses the election in November and Joe Biden takes the presidency. I just don’t see how this could be within Biden’s scope of problems that he wants to solve in his first hundred days.
RAMYA:
And as of right now, we’re seeing members of Congress and the United States urging our secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to cut funding to Azerbaijan and to sanction Turkey.
HUNTER:
Well, that brings up something interesting, too, which is that the United States has relationships with both sides. There is a very powerful Armenian lobby in the United States. There’s a lot of very powerful Armenian Americans. I mean, the Kardashian family, they are Armenian-American.
RAMYA:
Exactly.
RYAN:
Kim Kardashian has a relationship with President Trump. She’s been in the White House.
HUNTER:
Yeah exactly.
RAMYA:
There’s a very strong Armenian lobby, Armenian American lobby that we don’t really think about. But there is a very strong political force that is affecting these kinds of policies.
HUNTER:
Well, especially, for example, in my home state of California, Adam Schiff, who you guys might know from the impeachment hearings. He deals a lot with the Armenian lobby because there’s a huge Armenian presence in California. But it equally goes for Azerbaijan. If you guys want to talk about the relationship between the United States and Azerbaijan.
RYAN:
Yeah, it’s a little less formal. But the main relationship between the U.S. and Azerbaijan is between U.S. oil companies and Azerbaijan’s oil. The U.S. likes to cut deals with the Azerbaijan, get cheaper oil to sell. It works out for both sides. But right now, it could entangle things further.
HUNTER:
So it sounds like the U.S. position is they don’t want to get involved, but they might be forced to get involved.
RYAN:
Exactly.
RAMYA:
Yeah. I mean, because the Trump administration has taken almost an isolationist stance against everything that’s happening in the world. I mean, we saw this with President Trump pulling out of the World Health Organization. We saw this with our, we talked about it in our episode Soft Power Showdown. So when we have a government in the United States that’s pulling back from international organizations, it’s really hard to tell where the United States stands on these things.
HUNTER:
Or whether they even care enough to get involved.
RAMYA:
Exactly. Exactly.
RYAN:
You know, Trump doesn’t want to get involved, but you’re not sure how much of the decision making falls on his lap or if he delegates it to someone, say, like Mike Pompeo, who might have other goals in the region.
HUNTER:
Or how much Turkey might force our hand.
RYAN:
Exactly. There’s a lot of things to consider.
RAMYA:
I mean, they have our nukes. They have American nukes. So I feel like Turkey already has, I wouldn’t say an upper hand, but has leverage.
RYAN:
And Trump is cozy with Erdogan as well as with Putin. Ease back with every dictator he meets.
RAMYA:
Very true.
HUNTER:
It sounds like one of the possible outcomes is that the U.S. and Russia try to broker a ceasefire here. But I want to talk about the most likely scenarios. I want to walk through what the ramifications are geopolitically, depending on who might win this conflict.
RYAN:
So in terms of most likely outcomes, I would say a ceasefire is the most likely. And in that scenario, the real winners are Turkey and Russia, because they gain even more influence over Azerbaijan and Armenia than they had before. And so that’s pretty good for Turkey because they’re trying to expand their sphere of influence. It will cost them what precious little goodwill they had left with their NATO allies. But that doesn’t seem to be a problem for Erdogan. He’d rather just accomplish his goals than keep people happy, which I guess is fair. But in terms for Russia, no matter what really happens if a cease fire goes through, they’re not really going to be in the best situation because they’re going to have lost some semblance of power because they won’t be the only one negotiating the cease fire. And whatever happens, their relationship with Armenia isn’t going to pull them out of this terrible economic slump that they’re in. So they’re just really caugh between a rock and a hard place.
HUNTER:
Well, you’re right in that Russia might lose face because in the past, all of these conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan have been brokered by the Russians. The cease fires have been essentially negotiated fully by Moscow. And when you have Turkey entering into the equation and being a real player, that doesn’t look good for Putin’s reputation in the region.
RYAN:
Not at all.
HUNTER:
So last question for you guys before we wrap up. Why should our listeners care about this conflict?
RYAN:
I would say one of the main reasons to care about this conflict is that it’s a really good insight into how it’s not always about who’s fighting the battle, but more who has a vested interest in the outcome of the battle that really determines how events play out. This is a classic example of that.
RAMYA:
Because we have two very powerful countries fighting for a sphere of influence over Central Asia, right? You’ve got Turkey with Erdogan basically wanting to create this neo Ottoman Empire. And you’ve got Putin who’s been working for, well, I mean, let’s just say decades, right? To create this new Soviet Union type of situation where he has all these Soviet buffer states. So we’ve got two very big competing interests. And then we’ve got Armenia and Azerbaijan in the middle of it in a way. So I would say that that’s why it’s important, because it’s not just about Azerbaijan and Armenia. It’s about two historically very powerful countries. And you know, that have been empires in the past that are trying to regain their glory.
HUNTER:
That’s it for our show today. If you enjoyed this unscripted episode, please read and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify or however you’re listening. If you have questions about the show or ideas for future episodes, please hit up our Website, http://www.geopoliticsrundown.com, and send us a message. As always, thank you for listening. This has been Geopolitics… Rundown.
Articles we used for our research:
Armenia and Azerbaijan Are Heading to War Over Nagorno-Karabakh Again
The Simmering Karabakh Conflict starts to boil over
Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) Control Map & Timeline – October 2, 2020
France, Russia and US call for immediate truce in Nagorno-Karabakh
RUSSIA AND THE NAGORNO-KARABAKH CONFLICT: A CAREFUL BALANCING