Munich - two years later

Three years later, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan again took part in the discussion on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. This time the panel discussion was on the agenda “Moving Mountains? Ensuring Security in the South Caucasus,” replacing the title “Update on Nagorno-Karabakh” of the February 15, 2020, discussion.

But over these two years, not only the names of the panels have changed, but the entire architecture of the more than 30-year-old Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. Both participants in the discussion switched roles - now Aliyev is acting as the liberator of the occupied Azerbaijani territories, and Pashinyan sees his mission in saving the Armenian-populated part of Karabakh from the full restoration of Azerbaijan's jurisdiction over its historically and internationally recognized territory.

Although, unlike last year's discussion, the parties did not go so far into the depths of the centuries of the history of the region, limiting themselves to the facts of the Soviet and post-Soviet period, however, on the issue of resolving the conflict, they retained their negotiating positions and approaches. Azerbaijan, as before, insists on a phased solution of the issue, and Armenia on a package. But the content of these two approaches has changed significantly. Before the 2020 war, the Azerbaijani phased vision contained: the liberation of the occupied territories by Armenia and the subsequent discussion of the status of the Armenian-populated part of Karabakh with the possibility of granting autonomy. The Armenian side linked the return of the territories to Azerbaijan with the simultaneous determination of the status, that is, the recognition of the independence of the Armenians of Karabakh by Baku, even through a formal referendum.

The liberation of the occupied territories by Azerbaijan in the fall of 2020 removed the Armenian precondition "Lands in exchange for status" from the agenda. The Armenian-populated territory within the framework of the large historical Karabakh returned to the bosom of Azerbaijan. And today's agenda provides for fixing the de jure status quo, that is, through the signing of a peace treaty between Azerbaijan and Armenia and the resolution of the issue of the Armenians of Karabakh in the context of this document.

Today, the gradual position of Azerbaijan includes: the signing a peace agreement providing for mutual confirmation of territorial integrity, which was announced by the parties for the period of denunciation of the treaty on the creation of the USSR, and then the beginning of a dialogue between Baku and the Armenians of Karabakh on their future full existence within Azerbaijan. Yerevan's package approach contains: a synchronous decision on the status of the Armenian-populated part of Karabakh with the signing of a peace treaty, where an agreement on the status is comes to the fore, moreover, one that excludes Baku's jurisdiction over this territory.

Due to the presence of these two mutually exclusive approaches, the Munich panel discussion failed in terms of inconsistency with its title “Moving Mountains? Ensuring Security in the South Caucasus.” The moderator failed, as he did two years ago, to bring the parties to a constructive level of discussion, not even in terms of the Karabakh settlement, but the entire security agenda of the South Caucasus. This was not helped by the presence of the Prime Minister of Georgia, Irakli Garibashvili, who, not by chance, found himself in the center of the seated Caucasian Ttrio. Perhaps, if Garibashivili would have acted as a moderator not only by the status of the location on the stage of the Munich Conference, but also in the South Caucasus, where he demonstrated peacekeeping abilities, the effect of the meeting could have been different.

The Georgian prime minister acted as an intermediary between Baku and Erevan, which was marked by a number of decisions, including the release of a group of Armenian prisoners of war by Azerbaijan and the transfer of maps of mined territories of Azerbaijan by Armenia.

The most important harbinger of an optimistic scenario for the further development of the Armenian-Azerbaijani confrontation, which the discussion between Aliyev and Pashinyan could not shed light on, was the statement of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinkin, who noted "significant progress" towards a peace agreement between Baku and Yerevan. "It's good to hear that the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace process is going according to plan and negotiations between the two sides continue," Blinken tweeted after meeting with Aliyev and Pashinyan.

Thus, Blinken said that the peace process has a Plan, according to which significant progress has been made and it is developing. This fact to some extent confirms Aliyev's statement made after the tripartite meeting with Blinken. “Three days ago, we received a response from the Armenian side to our proposals for a peace agreement and now they are being studied. At first glance, there is progress in the Armenian position, but it is not enough.”

Blinken's thesis is also confirmed by the steps of goodwill of Armenia towards Turkey, when Yerevan extended a helping hand to Ankara to eliminate the consequences of the horrific earthquake in the south of the countries. The acceptance of a helping hand by the administration of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which links the settlement of Turkish-Armenian relations directly with the decision of the Armenian-Azerbaijani ones, indicates that a significant positive tectonic shift has also occurred in the Baku-Ankara-Yerevan negotiation process.

Pashinyan, in contrast to the status quo on the eve of the 44-day war, today it is much more difficult to make concessions under the gun of opponents of peace with Azerbaijan in the Armenian society, where the emotional background is off scale from a series of political, diplomatic, and military failures on the geopolitical front. Apparently, therefore, French President Emmanuel Macron had to emphasize Paris’s support once again for the actions of the team and Pashinyan's supporters at the Munich site. "I say this in the presence of my friend, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, whom we will support in the future and with whom we will continue our cooperation."