Conflict that is blocking reform

On May 16, 2016 in Vienna, with the participation of the foreign ministers of the United States, Russia and France, the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia reaffirmed the need to comply with agreements to strengthen the ceasefire regime introduced in 1994 and 1995 and strengthen monitoring in the conflict zone. It caused de-escalation in the conflict zone and a sharp reduction in losses, and in particular, after the regime change in Armenia when Nikol Pashinyan came to power.

On January 16, 2018 in Paris, the Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia, with the participation of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, expressed their readiness to prepare the peoples for peace.

However, at the junction of May-June 2019, because of the sniper attacks from both sides caused the victims after a relatively promising pause. Paraphrasing Carl von Clausewitz, in the situation one can say that the military aspect of the Karabakh conflict is only a continuation and manifestation of the political will of the warring states. Moreover, the states represented by the leaders, Aliyev and Pashinyan, are increasingly descending into militant positions.

Experts believe that the parties are not interested either in strengthening the cease-fire regime or in preparing people for peace because of opposing interests in the conflict. Azerbaijan does not accept such an approach, since, according to Baku, this leads to the consolidation of the status quo, when 20% of the country's territory is occupied. Armenia does not want to change the status quo, which, according to Yerevan, could lead to the loss of gains in the war with Azerbaijan.

Under the current situation, these two views continue the line of reality lasting for many years, but in tactical terms, they have given way to other causal motives dictated by the interests of external forces and the internal problems of the regimes in Azerbaijan and Armenia.

It can be said that the strengthening the cease-fire regime and the idea of ​​preparing peoples for peace were prolonged by international players in the Caucasian theater of political action, where the United States plays a dominant role.

In Armenia, the revolution from below caused the change of the authoritarian and corrupt regime, and Nikol Pashinyan plays the role of the savior , who began democratic reforms in the country within the framework of the values, norms and rules of the civilized world. The subsequent events showed that his losing opponents are not going to put up with defeat at all and are taking various counter-revolutionary actions to discredit Pashinyan"s reforms, by using the Karabakh map. The preparation of nations to peace is recited as a defeatist policy leading to the loss of Karabakh.

In Azerbaijan, the United States supports and inclines Ilham Aliyev to carry out reforms that could allow evolving the authoritarianism into democracy. Although Aliyev is taking some steps to restructure more the economic sphere, than the political one, the reformist policy stumbles under various pretexts and claims that mediators are unable to resolve the conflict with consideration of the interests of Azerbaijan.

For the United States, the processes occurring today in the conflicting countries are more important than the negotiation process. The process of democratization of Armenia and Azerbaijan was launched in 2015, starting with an economic collapse, and it should be brought to a logical end in the near future. The trends that we are witnessing testify to the acceleration and expansion of the process of change in the societies of the two countries.

Under this situation become clear the efforts to strengthen the ceasefire and prepare the people for peace, which are mainly aimed at preventing the escalation of violence during the period of transformation - preventing the use of military means to block the processes of change in both countries and curtailing reforms.

It is clear that under the contradictory, fragile internal transformations, the preparation of nations for the peace is not a real and practical idea. People who are tired of socio-economic and sociopolitical crises; they think about swift and final changes in their societies, rather than a question of settling the conflict.

The escalation of violence in the Karabakh direction testifies to the dramatic domestic political struggle in Armenia and Azerbaijan. The forces torpedoing the transformation processes are turning to war as the only way to block democracy and protect authoritarianism. Whether the initiators of change in the South Caucasus will be able to block the opposing forces is a reasonable question. However, no less dramatic is the fact that they have no other choice than to bring the matter to its logical conclusion.