The Common Cause Against Russia Facilitated the American Deal: Foreign Affairs on the Armenian-Azerbaijani Agreement

On August 8, U.S. President Donald Trump hosted the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan at the White House for what he called a "historic peace summit." As with the president's high-stakes yet unsuccessful attempts to mediate a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, this may have seemed exaggerated. After all, for more than 30 years, the two countries in the South Caucasus have been irreconcilable adversaries. They have fought two wars. Just two years ago, Azerbaijan established control over Nagorno-Karabakh, forcing more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee, wrote Foreign Affairs.

After months of bilateral negotiations between the two countries, the moment for a temporary peace agreement was ripening. Importantly, both sides were unwilling for Russia, the traditionally dominant player in the region, to act as a guarantor of the deal, which made Trump's proposal for a peace summit particularly attractive.

At the White House, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev jointly announced a new road and rail connectivity project linking Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan. Armenia granted an American company the rights to develop this transportation corridor passing through its territory, while maintaining sovereign control over the corridor, which is to be named "Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity," with Azerbaijan receiving "unhindered access" to Nakhchivan.

Notably, the TRIPP project replaces the agreement from 2020 between Aliyev, Pashinyan, and Putin that would have granted Russia control over that route.

For various reasons, both the Azerbaijani government in Baku and its Armenian counterpart in Yerevan seek to break free from Moscow's grip. In turn, the Trump administration wishes to sponsor the deal, partly due to potential trade benefits for the United States but more so because a long-lasting peace agreement would bolster Trump’s claim of being a global peacemaker. However, the framework of peace established at the White House in August remains fragile. It will succeed only if the United States continues to implement TRIPP and helps reopen other routes closed due to the conflict. To do this, it must collaborate with Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey to fund and construct additional east-west transport chain links within all three countries.

The analysis highlighted that the United States also needs to work closely with the European Union, which has invested far more politically and financially in the South Caucasus than Washington has. Moscow would naturally want to see the failure of the rapprochement brokered by the U.S. between Baku and Yerevan.

The outlined deal at the White House reflects Azerbaijan's emergence as the dominant player in the South Caucasus. This new reality began to take shape for the first time after the second Nagorno-Karabakh war. During his tenure, Aliyev has skillfully managed relations with Russia, which has historically been an ally of Armenia. In 2022, he signed an interstate agreement with Putin just two days before the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine commenced. By August 2024, Putin is also expected to visit Azerbaijan on a state visit. However, since then, Baku's relations with Moscow have sharply deteriorated. Particularly in the last nine months, Aliyev has become more cautious toward Russia and more inclined to establish peace with Armenia.

The periodical recalled that this summer, Putin appointed Sergey Kiriyenko, a supporter of the Kremlin's hard line on relations with the South Caucasus countries, to oversee the region, a role he previously held in managing Kremlin policies regarding integration of the territories captured from Ukraine.

Aliyev is now resolutely inclined to keep Moscow away from any new regional arrangement. Notably, Armenia is also facing problems with Russia, leading to a tactical alignment of interests with Azerbaijan. Since the times of the Tsars, Russia has ensured Armenia's loyalty by promising to protect it. However, recently, Moscow has repeatedly failed to assist Armenia, for example, when it refused to fulfill its contractual obligation to protect Armenia during Azerbaijan's border incursions in 2022.

The shared disobedience towards Moscow has thus pushed the two leaders towards rapprochement at a moment when Russian capacities in the Caucasus are limited by the war in Ukraine. Consequently, Washington's diplomatic interventions were especially welcome. For Aliyev, who is tightening internal control and closing down international organizations, Trump's offer of a "strategic partnership" with the United States is a gift.

At the August meeting, there were no demands from the White House for Baku to release political prisoners or Armenian detainees. Moreover, just one day before meeting with Pashinyan, the U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil signed a bilateral agreement with Azerbaijan's state energy company, SOCAR.

The periodical asserts that significant work remains to turn the agreements signed in Washington into reality. The preliminary 17-point agreement ratified by the two leaders is a key to normalizing relations and officially terminating the conflict. However, as essential as it is, it is not a comprehensive peace agreement between the two warring nations. The text lacks provisions regarding the right of displaced civilians to return home. There is no accountability process for war crimes committed over decades.

When discussing peace at the elite level, Azerbaijan is also detaining young Azerbaijani peace activist Bahruz Samedov on charges of "treason" for engaging with Armenian civil society activists.

The agreement may fail, as Aliyev has stated that he will not sign and ratify it until Armenia amends its Constitution to remove any indirect references to union with Nagorno-Karabakh. Constitutional amendments would require a referendum, which Pashinyan is likely to attempt to conduct either before or after the next parliamentary elections in Armenia slated for June 2026.

According to the article, the contract regarding the corridor connecting Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave is also vulnerable. Baku and Yerevan have yet to agree on basic details such as the route of the new road and necessary security measures. How the agreement will allow Azerbaijani traffic to "freely" cross Armenian territory while respecting Armenian sovereignty remains unclear.

Iran, whose northern border runs from Nakhchivan through Armenia and into Azerbaijan, is likely dissatisfied with the peace agreement. Tehran wishes to maintain its current status as a transit country between both parts of Azerbaijan and has opposed any new arrangements that might place Western security forces along the roadway to Nakhchivan or grant excessive control to its two hostile Turkic neighbors, Azerbaijan and Turkey.

So far, Iran's threats have been ineffectual, but that may change if its trucks and trains exit the U.S.-managed route.

The Kremlin may also seek to undermine Washington's agreements. Russia still places strategic importance on this territory, having promised control over it since the 2020 war. Moscow believed it could deploy Russian border troops along the route, gaining leverage over both Armenia and Azerbaijan while securing the missing segment of its North-South international transport corridor, a long-awaited road, rail, and maritime project linking Russia to the Persian Gulf.

So far, the Kremlin’s response to the agreements has been cool and dismissive rather than confrontational. Moscow and Tehran will be careful not to overtly sabotage the route named after the U.S. president. However, they will look for opportunities to discredit the agreement if Armenia and Azerbaijan cannot agree on essential details, or actively undermine it once Trump's presidency concludes.

The region's third neighbor, Turkey, presents a unique case. While it is supportive of peace in the region and is eager to see new transport routes from the South Caucasus to Central Asia, the fact that U.S. officials did not consult their Turkish counterparts on TRIPP was poorly received in Ankara. At the same time, U.S.-Turkey relations remain tense. A new diplomatic line is required between Washington and Ankara to reassure the Turkish side that it will benefit from the Trump Route and U.S. plans for the region.

Throughout decades of dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, there have been "historic" advances, yet the two countries find themselves once again in conflict. Trump's deal may meet the same fate.

Firstly, an entire generation of Armenians and Azerbaijanis has grown up shaped by the conflict. Both nations’ political figures have leveraged animosity for legitimacy, selectively playing on grievances from the actions of ethnic cleansing in the 1990s and in 2023.

The current chaotic geopolitical landscape generates contrary trends in the South Caucasus. On one hand, the decline of multilateral institutions and European liberal norms has made the three regional powers—Iran, Russia, and Turkey—decisively more assertive. In 2021, they devised a "3 + 3" format to assert their rights as new order-shapers in the region. However, in terms of the other three involved in this equation—Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia—these three more powerful states are also erstwhile imperial overlords with outdated historical claims. That shared suspicion, in turn, has generated another trend: the aspiration of all three South Caucasus countries to construct strategically autonomous nation-states that are not dependent on any external power.

Nevertheless, Trump's support for Baku and Yerevan emboldens them to stand up against Moscow. By brokering a preliminary agreement between Baku and Yerevan and naming a critical new transit corridor after himself, Trump must now understand that he cannot do it alone. Instead, he needs to invest in a more traditional style of American diplomacy to foster lasting peace in the region.