Diminishing Justice and Third-Party Intervention: Explaining Russia’s Impartial Stance During the 2020 Karabakh War

ABSTRACT

This article examines Russia’s impartiality during the second Karabakh war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in 2020, despite its close military-strategic alliance with the latter. Russia’s behavior represents a twofold deviation: a weakening of its security commitments to Armenia, and a more balanced policy in a frozen conflict in the post-Soviet space. Four factors are examined that could account for explaining this puzzle, namely increasing bandwagoning of Azerbaijan with Russia, rising opportunity costs of intervention due to Turkey’s support to Azerbaijan, Russia’s potential discontent with Armenia after the 2018 Velvet Revolution, and the role of a justice motive in Russian policy toward the conflict.

Disclosure Statement

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

Notes

1. The current study’s reference to self-interest is more material based, rather than ideational, although it is also acknowledged that self-interest may be broader than material only, to include ideational sources such as identity.

2. In general, international norms are often seen as legitimate, and what is right or just is mainly reflected in international law.

3. The understanding of justice as a universal phenomenon is supported, for example, by the findings on commonalities between world religions: Concerns of justice are not only present in all religions, but also its basic principle “suum cuique” applies everywhere, even if the “suum” (the entitlement) for which “cui” (the individual or group concerned) may be different and thus controversial (Küng 1993).

4. The “culmination” was neorealism: “a spare, highly “scientific” paradigm that enshrined the quest for security as measured in the currency of power as the motive that explains the dynamics of relations between states” (Welch 2014, 411).

5. Moreover, in the realist view, justice is usually understood in a narrow (i.e., purely materialist) sense, as “mutual advantage,” so that, for example, negotiations and agreements are considered just (and/or legitimate) if they produce a net benefit for each party (Gauthier 1986).

6. According to Welch (2017, 75–76), “[t]his perceived discrepancy can arise with respect to substantive questions (i.e., what counts as a just state of affairs) or procedural (i.e., what counts as a just method of reaching substantively just outcomes). […] The specific grounds people use for asserting justice claims can vary from person to person and from culture to culture, but the mechanism of regularly monitoring the world for apparent injustices is universal, as are the affective and behavioral responses to perceptions of injustice or threats to justice: outrage, stridency, and an increased willingness to take risks and/or pay costs to secure outcomes perceived as just vis-à-vis similarly valuable outcomes perceived merely as advantageous.”

7. For example, according to Albin and Druckman (2014), there is a strong correlation between procedural justice in bilateral negotiations and their effectiveness.

8. In this context, without anthropomorphizing the state, we refer to human nature being reflected by the state (leaders) in international relations.

9. See, for example, the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance Between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Armenia, August 29, 1997; the Treaty between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Armenia on the Russian military base on the territory of the Republic of Armenia, March 16, 1995.

10. For example, following the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, Moscow’s foreign policy was officially and/or rhetorically aimed at consolidating a zone of Russian “privileged interests,” a term coined by then-President Dmitry Medvedev to refer primarily to the South Caucasus and other regions of Russia’s “near abroad” (President of Russia 2008).

11. Thus, Russia’s behavior toward the conflict has been shaped by its broader strategic interests in the region, which had included: keeping the military alliance with Armenia, potentially building military presence in Azerbaijan, making sure that developments in the South Caucasus do not spill-over to the North Caucasus, securing military-political presence in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and preventing any future NATO presence.

12. For example, a humanitarian ceasefire was agreed on October 10, 2020, which lasted for a few hours only.

13. It is important to note that while Russia and Turkey have maintained largely good relations in recent years, this does not mean that Russia was willing to share its regional dominance in the South Caucasus with Turkey (or any other great or regional power). This was also evident in the 2020 tripartite agreement where Russia actively positioned itself as the sole peacekeeper, accommodating Turkey’s involvement mainly through a symbolic monitoring center established outside Nagorno-Karabakh.

14. The reference to bandwagoning in this section follows the definition of the concept by Stephen Walt, as alignment with the source of threat (see Walt 1985).

15. GUAM was an alliance established in 1999 by Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Moldova and Azerbaijan to balance Russia in the post-Soviet space. It was joined by Uzbekistan, but abandoned subsequently. The alliance was supported by the US and EU at the time of Russia’s relative weakness.

16. However, the lease discontinued in 2012 because Azerbaijan and Russia could not agree on the terms of the lease.

17. The Madrid Principles, a peace plan introduced by the OSCE Minsk Group in 2007, outlined several key elements of a compromise solution such as return of the territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan, an interim status for Nagorno-Karabakh, ensuring its security and self-governance until a final determination of its status through a legally binding referendum, establishment of a corridor linking Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, affirmation of the right for all IDPs to return to the region, and implementation of a peacekeeping operation to guarantee security (OSCE 2009).