Baku and Yerevan take control of their future through direct talks Article by Robert Cutler in CACI Analyst

The American publication The Central Asia-Caucasus ANALYST has published an article by Canadian analyst Robert M. Cutler, focusing on the Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement. Caliber.Az presents an excerpt from the material.

"Since the 1994 Bishkek Protocol froze the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Karabakh in a fragile ceasefire regime under Russian sponsorship, mediation models had consistently prioritized multilateral equilibrium over durable resolution.

The OSCE Minsk Group—formalized in December 1994 with the three co-chairs France, Russia, and the U.S.—institutionalized this status quo. In this diplomatic environment, negotiations served as an instrument for conflict management rather than conflict termination. The April 2016 Four-Day War briefly upended that architecture, demonstrating the latent instability embedded of the frozen-conflict model. Four and a half years later, the 2020 Second Karabakh War fundamentally restructured the region’s power balance. It rendered obsolete the externally imposed frameworks that had governed negotiations since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The outcome of the 2020 war was the restoration of Azerbaijan’s control over the previously Armenian-occupied regions. The Russian-brokered ceasefire of November 10, 2020, set the stage for a negotiation dynamic. Armenia’s formal recognition of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity in October 2022 (a move reportedly taken despite Kremlin opposition) implicitly signalled a shift that was not widely acknowledged at the time. Specifically, multilateral mediation lost its functional rationale; a new phase of direct engagement emerged.

The October 2022 Prague meeting marked the first sustained round of direct talks without the Minsk Group’s mediation. The Armenia–Azerbaijan peace process has entered a structurally distinct phase, as direct bilateral diplomacy has replaced externally mediated negotiations. For nearly three decades, external actors had dictated the diplomatic framework while regional players remained constrained by inherited institutional architectures, notably the defunct OSCE Minsk Group.

The failure to finalize a peace treaty in 2024, despite reports that 90 percent of the agreement had been drafted, is not due to any diplomatic shortcoming. Rather, it represents a strategic recalibration. The logic behind avoiding an interim settlement is evident in historical analogues. For example, the 2015 Minsk II Agreement, designed to create a transitional settlement for the then-Donbas conflict, wound up embedding unresolved territorial issues in the political fabric.

Since October 2022, all consequential negotiations have been conducted bilaterally. External actors now function as logistical facilitators rather than as substantive arbiters. This pattern is comparable with, for example, the 1979 Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty, which—despite U.S. facilitation at Camp David—was fundamentally structured around direct negotiation The Armenia–Azerbaijan framework thus increasingly resembles the former model, with bilateralization reinforcing sustainability. However, asymmetries within the process remain pronounced.

Azerbaijan has consistently employed a “position-setting” strategy, articulating clear demands and advancing specific legal-political objectives.

The trial of Ruben Vardanyan, former "state minister" of Karabakh, further underscores Azerbaijan’s strategy of consolidating its post-2020 advantage through legal and political mechanisms. Vardanyan, arrested in September 2023 following Azerbaijan’s military operation in Karabakh, has been charged with financing terrorism and illegally crossing Azerbaijan’s border. His prosecution reflects a broader pattern of post-conflict legal adjudication, where Azerbaijan is systematically dismantling the institutional remnants of the former Karabakh juntas while reinforcing its sovereignty claims over the region.

An unresolved question about Armenia’s constitution remains a central point of contention. The constitution’s preamble makes reference to the 1990 Armenian Declaration of Independence, which in turn invokes the 1989 Soviet-era decision on Karabakh, implicitly sustaining a legal framework that conflicts with Armenia’s 2022 diplomatic commitments. While Armenia contends that a treaty provision will supersede domestic law, Azerbaijan cites historical precedents.

The 2003 Armenian Supreme Court decision permitting Robert Kocharyan’s candidacy for president, despite constitutional residency requirements, exemplifies this phenomenon. This precedent reinforces Azerbaijan’s concerns regarding the durability of Armenian legal commitments, particularly given the requirement for a national referendum to amend the constitutional preamble—an event that will not take place before late 2026.

Historically, such delays have introduced windows of instability, where unforeseen political shifts disrupt anticipated diplomatic trajectories. The postponement of Palestinian legislative elections following the Oslo Accords, for example, contributed to the erosion of transitional governance structures, leading to subsequent escalations. The Armenia–Azerbaijan process now faces a comparable timeline-dependent risk, where protracted legal ambiguity could generate new friction points before formalized resolution mechanisms are enacted.

The bilateralization of diplomacy in the South Caucasus challenges the post-Soviet convention of externally managed equilibrium but has not yet cohered into a stable system. The next 24 months will likely determine the trajectory of this diplomatic framework. Events between now and the end of 2026 will establish whether bilateral statecraft becomes institutionalized or whether it remains only an intermediary phase before external actors again seek to reassert dominant influence," Robert M. Cutler wrote.

By Aghakazim Guliyev