Lessons that Lead to War: Foreign Policy Learning and Military Escalation in the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict

ABSTRACT

This paper examines Azerbaijan’s decision to go to war in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020. It aims to unveil the lessons Azerbaijan learned from the reaction of major regional actors in the South Caucasus to rising tensions in Armenian–Azerbaijani relations from the mid-2000s to the 2020 July border crisis. The paper argues that the consistent unresponsiveness of the international community emboldened Azerbaijan to proceed with its war preparations. It shows that Azerbaijan perceived the attitude of regional powers as inability and/or reluctance to interfere in the conflict, and this created a permissive environment for an all-out war.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Calculation is based on data of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. See SIPRI (SIPRI n.d.).

2. Although the magnitude of the 2014 escalation was far behind those of the 1991–1994 or 2016 wars, its scale was wide enough for the Armenian Ministry of Defense to call it a “microwar” (Mkrtchyan 2014).

3. It is worth mentioning that the United States criticized Azerbaijan for its rhetoric, but at the same time did not share the view that Azerbaijan was making war preparations (U.S. House of Representatives 2008, 24).

4. For more details, see European Stability Initiative (2012), OCCRP (2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation under grant No. [260225].