World in 2019

As the international order grows more brittle, Azerbaijan has once again used Baku not simply as a capital, but as a stage — a place where former presidents, ministers, diplomats and policy thinkers gather to talk through the cracks in the global system, even if they leave without the power to seal them.

Six days after the drone attack on Nakhchivan, the question of who was responsible for the operation remains open. Immediately after the incident, officials in Tehran suggested that Israel might be behind the attack in an attempt to drive a wedge between Azerbaijan and Iran. However, representatives of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) effectively acknowledged the possibility that structures connected to them could have been involved in the operation.

Azerbaijan has moved to strengthen its civil defense preparedness amid growing regional security tensions, approving new rules aimed at informing the population about how to respond to the potential use of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.

Ilham Aliyev on Feb. 23 signed into law the ratification of the “United Nations Convention against Cybercrime,” strengthening Azerbaijan’s legal framework for cross-border investigations of digital crimes and the exchange of electronic evidence.