U.S. President Donald Trump’s Washington deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan is aimed at peace – American style.
The increased tariffs, territorial claims, profitable economic deals worth more than $4 trillion with the richest Arab countries and the selective bet on ending current military conflicts indicate Washington’s new strategy to preserve its role as a global hegemon that rejects the multipolar world, trying to deprive competitors (including China and Europe) of trade and economic prospects and continue to drain the richest regions of their resources.
A number of conflicts initiated with the direct participation of the United States (including in the Middle East and Ukraine), in a certain sense, were aimed at dragging their direct and potential opponents into exhausting, burdensome wars to weaken them. Now, the United States is not going to finance wars, but wants to achieve peace in order to get profitable economic deals and prolong its leading role.
Naturally, a bad peace is better than a good war, but a world without respect for the objective interests of other actors (e.g. Russia) cannot ensure long-term peace and security. Striving for the regions richest in resources indicates not only the conclusion of profitable (which often enslaves small countries) contracts, but also the formation of an effective logistical infrastructure and transport communications for the continuous export of goods to world markets. International transport (transit) corridors are being formed along this path, taking into account geographical and financial attractiveness combined with geopolitical ambitions.
The Turkish Bosphorus and Dardanelles Straits, the Persian and Aden Gulfs, the Panama and Suez Canals have been, are and will remain key arteries of world trade. The struggle for their control is on the agenda of the world’s powers. History also shows other examples of important lines of communications that primarily pursued not peaceful (trade) goals, but military plans for the passage and conquest of new territories. These include the sad story of the 1939 Agreements on the Danzig Corridor in favor of Nazi Germany, which accelerated the partition of Poland and the outbreak of World War II.
With the active assistance of NATO Türkiye and President Recep Erdoğan personally, the United States was able to reach an agreement with Armenia for the second time in 30 years to establish control over the 43km-long Zangezur Corridor and to agree on a 99-year lease, which will ensure non-stop connection of mainland Azerbaijan with the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic exclave, as well as open international transit to connect the Turkic countries of Central Asia and Azerbaijan with Türkiye and Europe. The United States, as the arbitrator and controller of the Zangezur section, will receive 40% from the transit.
In Washington, the largest American energy company, ExxonMobil, signed important agreements with Azerbaijan (SOCAR) to return to the Caspian basin. Following ExxonMobil, it is clear that other major Western oil and gas companies (including the British BP) will participate in new Caspian and Central Asian energy projects.
Zangezur contradictions
The Zangezur Corridor, now called the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity”, is planned to include roads, railways, power lines and fiber-optic cables, as well as oil and gas pipelines.
Azerbaijan has almost completed a six-lane highway along the Aras River line and is building a modern railway (according to European standards) to the border with Armenia in the Zangilan region. On August 22, Türkiye began the construction of the Kars-Igdir-Dilucu railway to the border with Azerbaijan in the Nakhichevan region, the construction of which, 224 km long, is scheduled to be completed within 4-5 years (the EU has allocated $2.4bn worth of investments to Türkiye for this purpose). Azerbaijan will modernize roads in Nakhichevan itself, and Armenia will modernize roads in Zangezur with the help of a private US company.
However, the question arises: which new pipelines are to be squeezed into these 43km of the “Trump Route” through Armenia when Azerbaijan has already implemented the South Caucasus Energy Corridor (oil and gas pipelines) through Georgia and Türkiye (the only transit energy communications in the post-Soviet space bypassing Russia)?
The answer to this question can be found in the frequent bilateral and multilateral summits under the auspices of the Organization of Turkic States (Türkiye, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan). The recent visit of Turkmen President Berdimuhamedow to Karabakh and the meeting in Turkmenbasy beween the leaders of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan two weeks after the August 8 Washington agreement provide a substantive answer. It is about the new potential of the oil and gas fields of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and the transit of energy resources through the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan and the “Trump Route” to Türkiye and Europe.
It was for this purpose that, shortly before the Washington deal, a summit between EU and Central Asian leaders was held in Samarkand. With the signing of an agreement on the 99-year lease of a transit territory in the Armenian Zangezur, the U.S. and U.K. are launching new contracts in the 21st century. It is no coincidence that British Minister of State Stephen Doughty visited Baku and Yerevan and signed strategic partnership agreements with Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Traveler Vadim Harutyunov, citing sources in the United States, believes that the Armenian-American military will be present in Zangezur (possibly under the guise of a private company) to control the “Trump Route”. Beydulla Manaf, an Azerbaijani expert from Dallas, claims that since the road in Zangezur is named after U.S. President Trump, there cannot be any PMCs in Armenia, only the U.S. army.
All of these aspects of the Washington deal raise questions for other major Eurasian players (primarily Russia, Iran, China, and India), the exclusion of whose interests may lead to a new wave of contradictions and crises in the regional security system.
The former head of the Armenian Special Services, Davit Shahnazaryan, notes that Türkiye’s exit through Armenia to Azerbaijan (particular via the “Trump Route”) will allegedly take place in some other way; not through the 43km section in the Meghri district bordering Iran, since Russian FSB border guards are present in this border zone. Actually, the best route runs from Kars to Gyumri and then straight east to Azerbaijan (Baku) with a length of just over 600km, while the route through Meghri and Nakhichevan along the Aras to Türkiye is longer and has a difficult terrain.
However, Türkiye has already announced the construction of the Kars-Igdir-Dilucu railway, which means access through Ordubad (Nakhichevan) to Meghri and further to Zangelan. Nevertheless, Shahnazaryan, as well as representatives of the Russian government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, justifiably highlights the 43km Meghri section in connection with the border zone, where there can be no open movement of goods and passengers without border and customs control. And this does not exclude a clash of interests with third countries (including Russia and Iran) or a contradiction with the norms of international law.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was rather hasty with his visit to Washington (without having coordinated with Russia) on the topic of the “Zangezur Corridor” and signing the agreement dated November 9, 2020 (however, as did Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who also signed the said document). Iran and Russia adhere to a balanced approach to issues of regional peace and prosperity, coming from a position of respect for the interests of the International North-South Trade Corrdior mega-project (one of the routes of which may be the Armenian Zangezur).
Thus, Zangezur and Panama are not only far from one another in terms of geography, but also function.
Alexander SVARANTS – Doctor of Political Science, Professor, Turkologist, expert on the Middle East
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