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Winners and losers in the Second #NagornoKarabakh War. A thread. 
1/ Having largely recaptured NK, Azerbaijan has been able to resolve the one grievance that has been central to its politics - indeed, its national identity - since independence.
2/ Apart from the war itself, the re-settlement of displaced individuals over the next few years will provide the Aliyev dynasty with a virtually inexhaustible reservoir of support: its position has become unassailable in the foreseeable future.
3/ Russia has managed to make the best of a tricky situation. It could not throw its weight behind Armenia as this would have meant ‘losing’ Azerbaijan. But neither could it allow…
4/…Azerbaijan to completely discredit it by creating an even greater humanitarian catastrophe with a complete military takeover of NK.
5/ Seeing the issue completely ‘resolved’ through such a complete takeover wouldn’t suit it either: that woud have meant losing a major point of leverage over both sides.
6/ Turkey's involvement also meant a linkage with other theatres where Ankara and Moscow were involved, especially Syria.
7/ Placing peacekeepers in NK has allowed Russia to strongly reassert its leading - indispensable - role in the region, against those who saw its ‘tolerance’ of Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan as a sign of withdrawal.
8/ As the only member of the Minsk Group with ‘boots on the ground’, it has also ensured its continued leading role in any future political settlement, even in the event of a ‘re-activation’ of US policy during (assumedly?) a Biden presidency.
9/ Turkey’s relatively minor role in the operation could be an indication of Ankara’s continued respect for that claim, apart from possible linkages made with Moscow in other regions where the two powers interact, notably Idlib.
10/ The small size of the Russian contingent - fewer than 2000 - has been commented upon. But Russia’s deep relations with both sides should make that less of an issue, as should memories of the previous instance when Russian peacekeepers were challenged in the Caucasus, in 2008.
11/ Turkey’s main symbolic gain has consisted of an even more enhanced status in Azerbaijan - although it remains to be seen whether that will be translated into a longer-term strategic presence.
12/ More material is the transit corridor linking Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan enclave - and, by extension, Turkey - with the mainland.
13/ This has been an almost unmitigated loss for Armenia. The Nagorno-Karabakh issue was just as central to its national identity as in Azerbaijan’s case, as apparent in the unprecedented levels of mobilisation inside & outside the country during the war.
14/ What was once part of a narrative of victory and success has abruptly turned into yet another episode of grievance and victimisation. Turkey’s involvement has, moreover, ripped open the wounds of the genocide,…
15/ …and reinforced the existential links made between the Karabakh issue, and 1915. Armenian society is in shock, both in the homeland, and the diaspora.
16/ This puts Armenians before difficult choices in coming days, weeks and months, choices that will possibly strike at the core of national identity, between the nationalisms of the past, with objectives born from past grievance and injustice,…
17/…and more forward-looking notions of citizenship, geared towards securing statehood itself within the realities of the 21st-century South Caucasus.
18/ Which of these emerges dominant after what will probably be a period of political turmoil depends on how the defeat in NK ends up interpreted: as a failure of the ‘traditional’ nationalism dominant in the country since 1998,…
19/ …or as a ‘stab in the back’ by an elite insufficiently ‘committed to the cause’. For Armenia, this is a fork in the road which may end up shaping internal and external politics for generations. /End
