I would imagine that this could spur additional secessionist movements if the Armenians are successful, thereby perhaps igniting this caucausian powder keg.

So what else could be the U.S.’s key economic and political interests? How so?

I will say that, at current oil prices, the pipeline is bringing them well over a billion dollars a month… maybe closer to two billion. Two billion dollars buys a lot of end user certificates.

Also, as to Armenia having a secure land route through Iran? Dude. I’ve been over that land route. It’s a twisty, mountainous highway that goes over a couple of high (>2,000 meter) passes and that regularly shuts down for weeks at a time in winter. There’s another road from Karabakh to Iran — I’ve been on that one too; it’s in better shape, but it’s awfully close to the frontier.

Armenia to Georgia? Two two-lane roads, one not-so-great rail line. Again, the roads regularly close in winter. (There’s no rail line to Iran. Used to be back in Soviet times, but it went through Nakhichevan.)

Icing on the cake: there are just two roads between Armenia and Karabakh, and one is a high trail that hasn’t been fixed since Soviet times. The other is in good shape but, again, is narrow and twisty and tends to close in winter.

Armenia is much more isolated than Azerbaijan. Much more. It has only a handful — literally a handful, you can count them on your fingers — of road and rail links to its neighbors. And if the Azeris ever got command of the air, they could sever those links with ease. Whether that’s plausible is something else again, but it should be making both sides thoughtful.

Doug M.

One question who would supplied them with quality military hardware. Russia and Iran support Armenia, Turkey supports Azerbaijan, but Western countries, USA included, much less so. So I do not expect Azeris to get really hot weapons that could make big difference.

Armenians hold high ground and probably intelligently fortified the frontier. So it would not be a blitz-krieg. And who would supply the belligents with fresh ammo? Azerbaijan would probably be quickly cut-off from possible supplies through Georgia, while Armenia would have secure land supply routes from Iran and air-lift from Russia.

On top of that, Nakhichevan enclave can be accessed by Azerbaijan only because of gracious permission of Iran.

So the most prudent policy for Azerbaijan is to keep its “petro-military complex” a peaceful oasis of multi-billion dollar graft. Armenians, on the other hand, have their backs against the wall and military matters are dead serious for them. Plus, they can get decent weapons and as much ammo as they may need.

@Doug: Aliyev _fils_ is in a much weaker position than Aliyev _pere_. Even with the oil money, he just doesn’t command the same sort of fear and respect. So there’s a strong incentive for him to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels.

Also, he’s been building up the military, which Father Aliyev was always wary of. Heydar Aliyev was no fool — he rose from obscure origins, up through the ranks of State Security, to die old and in bed. He understood the risks of giving money to the colonels and generals. Aliyev Junior… is creating a petro-military complex that’s quickly taking on a life of its own. He may one day have no choice but to turn the beast out, lest it turn its appetite on him.

Meanwhile, Azeri propaganda about Karabakh has gotten more intense and less connected to reality with each passing year. By now there’s a real danger of blowback, with the ruling elites starting to believe their own bullshit. Again, this was not an issue under Aliyev Senior, but Junior and the people around him aren’t that kind of smart.

Finally, there are the refugees: several hundred thousand of them, well on their way to forming a permanent underclass. It’s still ironclad government policy not to integrate them into society (because that would be admitting that they’re not going home). So they sit in the camps and fester. That’s a continuing irritation that’s grown worse, not better, over time.

Doug M.

Under a 1935 agreement with the USSR, Turkey is obliged to allow free traffic through the straits. But since then, traffic has increased something like a hundred times over… while, at the same time, Istanbul has turned into an immense modern city sprawling along both sides of the (narrow) strait. Ship traffic is now pretty much constant rush hour, and the Turks are seriously worried about a major accident — an oil tanker running aground, for instance.

If the pipeline had stopped at the Black Sea, it would have added to the traffic in the Straits, and in the worst possible way: one supertanker after another. The Turks really, really wanted to avoid that.

Doug M.