PANEL
Peace Negotiations and United States Strategy in South Caucasus
Russia’s war in Ukraine loosened Moscow’s hold on the South Caucasus and opened space for negotiation.
Omer Niazi
September 10, 2024
OMER NIAZI is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Council and a Visiting Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center.
From left: Iulia-Sabina Joja, who moderated, Umud Shokri, and Omer Niazi at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has reordered security and energy relationships across the wider Black Sea region. With Moscow’s attention consumed by the war, the influence it long exercised in the South Caucasus has thinned — and that opening, arriving after the most recent fighting over Karabakh, has made negotiation between Armenia and Azerbaijan possible in a way it had not been for three decades.
A settlement would do more than normalise relations between the two states. It would make reconciliation between Armenia and Turkey conceivable, with consequences for trade routes, security arrangements, and the movement of energy across the region. Those consequences run in both directions: as European buyers look away from Russian supply, Azerbaijan has become a more significant energy partner to Europe, and the terms of any peace will shape how that relationship develops.
The Middle East Institute convened a panel on these questions on 10 September 2024. Omer Niazi, now President and Chief Executive Officer of the Council, took part as a Title VIII Research Fellow with the Institute’s Black Sea Program, alongside Umud Shokri. The discussion was moderated by Iulia-Sabina Joja, Director of the Black Sea Program and now a member of the Council’s Board of Advisors.
Watch the full panel discussion, hosted by the Middle East Institute.
Disclosure: This panel was convened and recorded by the Middle East Institute. Omer Niazi took part as a Title VIII Research Fellow with the Institute’s Black Sea Program and did not participate on behalf of the Council, which had no role in organising the discussion. Views expressed in the discussion are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Council on International Law, Order, and Security, its staff, or its Board of Advisors.
To cite this article: Middle East Institute. (2024, September 10). The Caucasus: Peace Negotiations and the Global Energy Transition [https://mei.edu/events/caucasus-peace-negotiations-and-global-energy-transition/]. Washington, D.C.
Copyright in this article is retained by the author. Published by the Council on International Law, Order, and Security. Quotation with attribution is welcome; republication in full requires permission. See our Terms of Use.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the Council, its staff, or its Board of Advisors.
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