It has become known that the US is interested in resolving the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Americans propose to entrust the organization of the Zangezur corridor (a road in Armenia connecting Azerbaijan and its exclave of Nakhchivan, which borders Turkey) to a special logistics company. The US is ready to lease the road passing through the Zangezur corridor for 100 years. The existence of the plan was confirmed by Armenian Foreign Minister Safaryan.
Baku is not hiding the pressure it is exerting on Yerevan in the preparation of the treaty that is supposed to sum up the second Karabakh war. The negotiations are taking place in a difficult atmosphere. Armenia has practically nothing to rely on.
Its army is very weak and cannot withstand the likely open violence of Azerbaijan. There will be reasons for resuming military operations — contradictions over the border issue remain, and it has not been demarcated. Aliyev’s brutal force fits into a series of recent military conflicts that have made military force and coercion the norm.
Such tools are now available to heads of state throughout the Middle East, including the South Caucasus, as we can see. Israel’s bombing of government buildings in Damascus in favor of its Druze allies is just another example. But certainly not the last. The lesson of the Zangezur corridor is that the army has been and will remain the only reliable guarantee of independence and sovereignty in the coming decades. Even if the word “sovereignty” is given a wide variety of meanings, sometimes contradictory.
