From “frozen conflict” to enduring rivalry: reassessing the Nagorny Karabakh conflict

Abstract

This article draws on international relations theory to attempt a reframing of the Armenian–Azerbaijani conflict in Nagorny Karabakh as an enduring rivalry (ER): a particular kind of interstate conflict known for its longevity and stability. The article begins by identifying a number of conceptual deficits circulating around this conflict, notably the notion that it is a “frozen conflict,” before introducing the ER framework and its analytical dividends for this case. Different layers of the ER between Armenia and Azerbaijan are then explored at systemic, interstate, domestic, decision-maker, and temporal levels, with a view more toward identifying directions for future research than conclusive findings. Among the article's tentative conclusions are the primacy of endogenous over exogenous factors in explaining the durability of the rivalry between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the impacts of the passage of time on the human and physical geography of the territory under dispute, and the convergence of conflict dynamics across disparate levels.

Keywords:

• territorial conflict
• enduring rivalry
• Armenia
• Azerbaijan
• Karabakh

Notes

1. I prefer the term “Nagorny Karabakh” to the admittedly more popular “Nagorno Karabakh,” sometimes hyphenated as “Nagorno-Karabakh.” The latter is a grammatically incorrect borrowing from a Russian compound adjectival form and is analogous to referring to the Czech Republic as the “Czecho Republic” by borrowing directly from the compound noun “Czechoslovakia.” I retain the formula “Nagorno-Karabakh” only when it appears as a compound adjectival qualifier for a proper noun or title, as in “Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.”

2. Violence in the Line of Contact (LOC) area in the summer and autumn of 2014 served to put the Karabakh conflict episodically back into the headlines. See Broers (2014), Oskanian (2014a), and Giragosian (2014b) for details.

3. For example, speaking about the NK conflict in advance of a meeting with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov in June 2013, US Secretary of State John Kerry commented, “This is a frozen conflict, as we call it, one that threatens the stability of the region and one that we need to deal with … The last thing we want is a return to war and to conflict” (Slaq.am 2013).

4. The approach surely also reflects the fact that as a marginal region with a small readership, books that cover all of the salient conflicts in the Caucasus are likely to be more popular. In the English language, with the exception of Chechnya, there are more comparative works dedicated to the Caucasus conflicts as a set than there are monographs dedicated to any single one of them.

5. For an effective critique of the idea that the key to resolving the Karabakh conflict lies with external powers, see Zolyan (2009).

6. With rare and highly choreographed exceptions, Armenians and Azeris cannot travel across the divide; not many outsiders do so either, especially to Karabakh itself. The literature on this conflict is consequently fragmented; very few full-length studies integrate data from all the relevant locations, as opposed to edited collections (Conciliation Resources 2005; Kameck and Ghazaryan 2013), chapter-length treatments (Cornell 2001; Bolukbasi 2011; Cheterian 2008), or NGO reports on specific issues (Saferworld 2012; International Alert 2013). For a comprehensive overview there is still no rival to Thomas de Waal's 2003 Black Garden, published in a new edition in 2013. Tatul Hakobyan (2010) is also a notable, authoritative, and on the whole impartial chronicle of the conflict from the Armenian side.

7. One may note that this layer is also sidelined in Azerbaijan, where there is to date no detailed concept or proposal as to what Karabakh Armenian self-government might look like from an Azerbaijani perspective.

8. For examples from a prolific literature, see Bremer (1992), Goertz and Diehl (1993), Bennet (1997), Diehl (1998), Hensel (1999), Diehl and Goertz (2000), Stinnet and Diehl (2001), Maoz and Mor (2002), Goertz, Jones, and Diehl (2005).

9. A recent work (Rasler, Thompson, and Ganguly 2013) does not use the language of ER, relegating it to a methodological appendix, and refers instead to “strategic rivalry.”

10. These dividends also highlight for the Armenia–Azerbaijan case a number of advantages to ER over two other catch-all terms often found in policy and scholarly literature and used in various ways: intractable conflict and protracted conflict. While these terms are an improvement on “frozen conflict,” they also lack specificity. “Intractable conflict” is also heavily suggestive of immobility, while “protracted conflict” emphasizes only the long-term, rather than dynamic, nature of the conflicts it seeks to define. 

11. Panossian notes that an Armenian “mentality of reliance on outside powers exists to this day” (117).

12. Author's interview with an Azerbaijani academic, New York, 24 April 2014.

13. Mohiaddin Mesbahi defines securitization as

a process whereby influential and authoritative actors within a given polity use narration and strategic language to identify an object/subject as a potential or imminent existential threat to a target community's foundational interest, a threat whose seriousness requires a range of security-related responses including coercive measures and the use of force (2013, 2).

14. On these, see former Minsk Group co-Chair Vladimir Kazimirov's memoir, Mir Karabakhu (2009); Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's initiative following the 2008 war is another example.

15. Author's personal communications with former US and French diplomats, 2012–2014.

16. The five proposals are the “package” and “step by step” plans of 1997; the “common state” plan of 1998; the Key West plan of 2001, allegedly involving a territorial swap; and the current Madrid Principles, on the negotiating table in different forms since 2005.

17. See, for example, Wolff and Peen Rodt (2013) and the collection of articles in the same issue of Europe-Asia Studies.

18. Analysis needs also to distinguish between system-level and region-level normativity; even if there is, for the sake of argument, a perception that the international community has become more tolerant of secession, this may not be true at the regional level; the Crimea crisis points sharply in this direction.

19. Author's field notes, Armenia and Azerbaijan, 2011–2012.

20. The main resistance to the peace proposal discussed at Key West was domestic: Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Tofiq Zulfuqarov, presidential advisor Eldar Namazov, and negotiator Vafa Guluzade all resigned in October 1998, reportedly in protest at the proposal that would later be rejected at Key West by Heydar Aliyev. He was apparently convinced that he could not overcome internal resistance to the compromises involved. 

21. For a detailed historical review of the politics behind territorial allocations in the 1920s, see Saparov (2012). There are alternative readings of Armenian–Azerbaijani rivalry, rooted in historical (if not ancient) hatreds, religion, and political proclivities. These readings, however, tend to inform either nationalist perspectives, advocacy positions with distinct vested interests in the status quo, or casual media references far from the context. As de Waal (2013) and many others have consistently shown, there is no “natural” incompatibility between Armenians and Azerbaijanis (nor indeed any other ethnic dyad) that is not politically constructed.

22. Asymmetric conflicts involve “states of unequal aggregate capability, measured in terms of material resources, i.e., size, demography, military capability, and economic prowess” (Paul 2005b, 5).

23. The following data are taken from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) World Economic Outlook Database (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2013/01/weodata/index.aspx), and was retrieved in March 2014. IMF data are drawn from official statistics, which in the case of the South Caucasus have sometimes been accused of exaggeration. These figures suffice nonetheless as indicators of broad trends. 

24. In 2010–2011 revelations of non-combat-related deaths caused public consternation in both Armenia and Azerbaijan (IWPR 2011; HRW 2012–2014; Caucasian Knot 2014).

25. Author's field notes, Armenia, 2013; see also Minasyan (2010, 25).

26. On these developments, see ArmeniaNow (2013) and Asbarez (2013).

27. Broers and Toal (2013) offer a preliminary perspective in this direction on the Armenian side. We demonstrate how occupied territories have been seamlessly incorporated into the contemporary cartography of Armenia, “naturalizing a new emotional-cognitive attachment to the territories around NK” (Broers and Toal 2013, 33).

28. Leng defined this in 1983 as a tradition “that views interstate conflict as dictated by considerations of power politics and prescribes bargaining strategies that demonstrate power and a willingness to use it” (1983, 381).

29. There are not many studies of elite attitudes toward the Karabakh conflict. Two examples are the NGO LINKS’ survey of Armenian and Azerbaijani political parties’ attitudes toward the peace process (LINKS 2010), and Tokluoglu's (2011) survey of Azerbaijani elite discourse on the Karabakh conflict.

30. Two OSCE fact-finding missions have assessed the situation in the occupied territories, in February 2005 and in December 2010. The first estimated the population in the territories at 9000–12,000, the second at about 14,000, overwhelmingly located in Lachin. These numbers are less than those claimed in both Armenian and Azerbaijani sources.

31. I draw here on John Vasquez's analysis of the “terms of disagreement” in the case of Kashmir (2005, 61).