Azerbaijan has successfully established autonomy from Russia not through NATO membership but through a strong strategic partnership with Turkey and autonomous military action, particularly by using force to restore control over Nagorno-Karabakh despite Russian preferences.

Geography matters for both the United States and EU when looking at the South Caucasus: the EU would face challenges in formally expanding into the region without shared EU borders, and including Armenia would be complicated because everything would have to pass through Georgia, which is moving in the retrograde direction.

The 2018 Armenian velvet revolution that brought Nikol Pashinyan to power was perceived by the Kremlin as a color revolution similar to those in Georgia and Ukraine, raising Russian suspicions about potential Western influence despite Pashinyan's early efforts to emphasize Armenia would not change its geopolitical orientation.

The Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous oblast was created in the early 1920s as a principally ethnic Armenian region within the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic with a population that was almost 90% ethnic Armenian according to the first Soviet census, consistent with Soviet nationality policy of creating ethnically autonomous regions.

The conflict between territorial integrity and the right to self-determination is a structural problem around the periphery of the former Soviet Union because of embedded ethnic autonomies that was not resolved in the Nagorno-Karabakh case despite a long peace process.

In 2020, Azerbaijan launched an offensive to retake Nagorno-Karabakh, quickly overwhelmed Armenian forces, took back the seven surrounding territories, and gained significant chunks of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast itself, leading to a ceasefire with Russian peacekeepers deployed.

During the 2020 and 2023 Nagorno-Karabakh conflicts, Armenia appealed to the CSTO and Russia for support but was not adequately answered, with Russia arguing that CSTO coverage only applied to territorial integrity of Armenia proper, not Nagorno-Karabakh, which was not juridically Armenian territory.

US interests in the South Caucasus region are comparatively limited, primarily focused on the region as an important transit route, which is of much more benefit to the EU and Turkey than to the United States.

During the 2010s, Azerbaijan's economy boomed on the back of oil and gas revenue, much of which was funneled into military buildup, shifting the balance of military power significantly in Azerbaijan's favor compared to Armenia.

Regional peace in the South Caucasus creates opportunities for integrated transit networks, as much current transit infrastructure bypasses Armenia due to the 30-year war, but with peace, integrated transit networks and international investment become much more realistic

Regional transit integration should be the next agenda item if and when a peace deal signing ceremony occurs, as it represents concrete economic benefits from the peace agreement

Baku now portrays the former Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous oblast combined with the surrounding regions in a new entity called the Carabakh region, and the Azerbaijani authorities state there is no more Nagorno-Karabakh problem as it previously existed.

If the US and EU remain aligned on broader strategic objectives in the South Caucasus, this could be an area of cooperation, but the EU will be the primary driver and key interest is EU investment through programs like the Global Gateway and Tresca, plus European energy companies interested in expanding Caspian oil and gas purchases from Azerbaijan and potentially the east side of the Caspian.

Turkey has made clear that as soon as there is an Armenia-Azerbaijan peace deal, it is ready to move very quickly on opening the border, normalization, and various forms of cooperation, and the obstacle to Armenia-Turkey normalization is not Turkey but rather Azerbaijan's stance.