Unrecognised Reality

This chapter examines the unrecognized entity, or ‘de facto state’, that has emerged and survived in Nagorny Karabakh since 1991. The chapter begins by examining the polarised portrayals of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) as either a vibrant self-determining state or the puppet of an occupying power. The chapter then examines the political structures and institutions of the NKR, before then examining its political economy. It argues that the NKR is a political formation characterised by strategic integration with Armenia and tactical expressions of independent sovereignty. The chapter then examines the scope of democratisation in the entity, and the challenges posed by its layered geographies and the emergence of new human geographies within them.

An Exception in Eurasia

This chapter addresses the international politics of the Armenian-Azerbaijani rivalry, arguing that it is a significant exception to the wider pattern of Russian-Western geopolitical competition in Eurasia. While other post-Soviet conflicts feature cross-border linkages reinforcing the axes of conflict, the Armenian-Azerbaijani rivalry shows patterns of multi-directional, fragmented and crosscutting linkages with a wide range of external actors. This pattern has diffused leverage potentials of external actors, accounting for the lack of decisive shifts in the direction of either conflict escalation or resolution, or (until 2018) regime renewal. The chapter examines Armenian and Azerbaijani alliance and alignment strategies, and the diffusion of the rivalry across regional and international environments. It then examines Russia’s policy towards the rivalry, arguing that while Russian policy is pluralistic and inconsistent, it is best explained as an example of ‘pivotal deterrence’, where a third party, or ‘pivot’, seeks to prevent two adversaries from going to war.

Afterword: Rivalry Unending?

This afterword reflects on the book’s main findings, arguing that the persistence of the Armenian-Azerbaijani rivalry needs to be explained by the convergence of international, strategic, domestic and leadership factors. Acknowledging the weight of each of these layers, the afterword argues for the necessity of change within Armenian and Azerbaijani societies for the rivalry to one day be de-escalated and resolved.

Truncated Asymmetry

This chapter engages with the puzzle presented by the apparent sustainability of an asymmetric rivalry. Across most material parameters Azerbaijan is significantly larger than Armenia, establishing an asymmetric dynamic between a larger challenger and a smaller status quo power. The chapter explains how Armenia ‘truncates’ this asymmetry through local parity, a strategy of deterrence and balancing with Russia. Pushing back against the realist logic permeating much of the policy discourse about Armenian-Azerbaijani rivalry, this chapter argues that it is precisely its asymmetric nature that makes this rivalry both enduring and dangerous.

Displacements

This chapter engages with the human consequences of the territorial imaginings examined in the previous chapter: the ethnic cleansing of populations whose presence did not accord with exclusive visions of national space. The chapter provides a broad overview of the population movements that accompanied the violence of 1988-1994, seeking to disaggregate our understanding of ‘population exchange’. The chapter argues for a differentiated understanding of forced displacement, conditioned by different motives and conceptions of space. ‘Communal ethnic cleansing’ is explored as a collective eviction of ethnic others informed by underlying affective dispositions, characterising mass displacements in the 1988-90 period. ‘Strategic ethnic cleansing’ is explored as the forced expulsion of ethnic others in the service of military-strategic goals, characterising mass displacements in the 1991-94 period. The chapter closes by considering the prospects and politics of return and restitution.

A Violent Unravelling

This chapter provides background on the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict as it unfolded in 1988-1994. Rather than a chronological narrative, the chapter tells the story of these events through the prism of four categories of explanation (structural vulnerabilities, transitional factors, leadership and culture). This situates the conflict against the backdrop of the Soviet collapse, equips the reader with basic facts, and distils the main findings of the existing literature on the conflict.

Borderland into Cornerstone

This chapter homes in on the disputed territory of Nagorny Karabakh, and its role in post-Soviet Armenian and Azerbaijani geopolitical cultures. It shows how Nagorny Karabakh has been an unstable territorial referent, with distinct understandings evolving from 1988 to the present. Drawing on field observations, interviews and popular geopolitical culture, the chapter charts the movement of this contested territory from the geographic periphery to the conceptual centre of both Armenian and Azerbaijani geopolitical cultures from the late 1980s to the present day.

Questionable Borders

This chapter situates today’s reluctance to contemplate territorial compromises in the multiple and contested territorialisations of both republics throughout the twentieth century. Loosely deploying the concept of the ‘geo-body’, meaning the bordered space of the national homeland, it tracks different territorial traditions of ‘Armenia’ and ‘Azerbaijan’ over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It shows how these traditions generated different commitments to borders within each nation’s geopolitical culture. These in turn resulted in overlapping conceptions of homeland that supply the historical, ideological and moral weight behind contemporary territorial claims, and resistance to compromise.

Introduction: Beyond ‘Frozen Conflict’

This introductory chapter familiarises the reader with the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, and situates the conflict within the wider field of post-Soviet territorial disputes. It introduces the main conceptual tools used in subsequent chapters: critical geopolitical analysis and the enduring rivalry framework. The text also provides a guide to the chapters that follow.

‘Land for Peace’

This chapter examines the trajectory and problems associated with the Minsk Process, the peace process addressing the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). It narrates the story of the peace process through a focus on three sets of consecutive problems: multiple and competing mediation efforts in the early 1990s, the structure and sequencing of the negotiation agenda over the following decade, and the growing subversion of the Minsk Process’s framework for a liberal peace by what are here conceptualised as ‘authoritarian conflict strategies,’ pursued by the parties to the conflict. These are identified as strategies of control, communalisation and coercion that undercut the liberal premises of the ‘Basic Principles’ negotiated by the parties since the mid-2000s. Underpinning these strategies is a preoccupation with the preservation of incumbent power to the detriment of other vital components of a comprehensive peace process, such as the problematization of historical narrative and cultural memory, the expansion of political participation, and the revitalisation of concepts of identity and community.