Spiking Tensions Between Russia And Azerbaijan Could Affect Us All

The tectonic plates of global power politics crunched together at a new focal point in recent days as Russia and Azerbaijan insulted each other publicly with the world watching. It started with a police raid on an extended family of nearly 50 Azeris, mostly businessmen, residing in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg. Some were arrested, some allegedly tortured, others beaten up, even killed, according to Azeri media. The incident spawned outrage on Baku media, the cancellation of cultural events and the arrest of Russian journalists by Azeri authorities – followed by more tit-for-tat arrests and other hostile incidents. This, soon after the two sides had patched up a rift caused by the shoot-down of a civilian Azeri airplane allegedly by Russia in December. Moscow repudiated responsibility which angered Baku further.

What does this renewed hostility portend and why should the world care? As the German Marshall Fund link above states “the forcefulness of the (recent) actions by (the two governments) suggests that there is a hidden cause of the conflict” and adds there’s some likelihood that it “should be seen as part of geopolitical discord between Russia and Azerbaijan” based around Moscow’s exclusion from the Zangezur Corridor . Readers of this column will be familiar with the term – it’s a potential trade corridor that allows Central Asian trade to bypass Russian territory and go directly southward to the world via Turkey. Such a development would liberate both Azerbaijan and the Central Asian Stans from Moscow’s control over their economies and rate of growth. In this context, every gesture and incident becomes symbolic of larger implications. Azeri leader President Aliyev spurned a telephone call offer from Putin while accepting one from Ukraine’s Zelensky.

The deeper context to all this takes us back to the second Armenia-Azerbaijan war over Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023. The first one in the 1990s was won by Armenia, the second by Azerbaijan which retook the territory despite Moscow’s military base in Armenia supposedly providing a security guarantee for Yerevan. Russian inaction shocked the world – and alienated the Armenian population – at the time. Coming before the debacles of Syria and Iran, it was indeed a shock. But Moscow deftly switched sides and made offers to Azerbaijan for Russian participation in the Corridor. Another interpretation was that Moscow had allowed Baku to win the Karabakh war for now, but fully expecting a piece of the pie in return – and that piece would effectively restore Russian control over the trade route and its former colonies in Central Asia.

So why the recent hostile actions? Including Ukraine-based reports that a Russia-Azerbaijan war is impending and that Russia is reinforcing its military base in Armenia for just such a confrontation. The most likely accelerants seem to be a wholly unexpected Azeri-Armenia rapprochement, hitherto historical enemies, and the US offer to provide an American company to preside over, i.e. defend from Russia, the Zangezur Corridor going through Armenia. In either scenario, Russia’s oversight gets excluded. Some have suggested that the US offer is intended to block the Azeri-Turkish dominance over the Corridor’s southern end but Azerbaijan is the only non-Russian access to the Caspian so that doesn’t work.

The full geostrategic shift at the world’s center presupposes a cultural as well as a commercial continuum from the Stans out to the world via Turkey. We are talking not just about Azeri oil, Turkmen gas, Kazakh oil, Uzbek gold and the like. We are also talking about a pan-Turkic cultural and ethnic thread running through those countries which Moscow has divided and dominated since before 1800. Currently Turkey has displaced Russia as security guarantor and military advisor in a large swath of that area, which includes a full-scale military base in Azerbaijan. But there are other forces opposed to that new alignment, which, as receptacle of a new global trade route, would maximally empower Turkey’s throw-weight into the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean. Iran certainly wouldn’t be happy but it has bigger problems at present. Israel and Greece would also try to stymie a pan-Turkic outflow of funds and power thrusting a combative Erdogan into their zones of influence.

For Russia, the threat derives not merely from its former southern colonies breaking out of post-Soviet dependence but also from the potential instability within its own borders should ethnic Turkic regions such as the Tatarstan and Buryatia feel inspired to follow suit. And, of course, geopolitical distractions of that kind in Russia’s nether regions would equally stymie Moscow’s ability to focus on Ukraine, Europe and the Baltics. In short, what may seem like a circumscribed confrontation in a relatively isolated zone could trigger a massive realignment in global power balances.