ANALYSIS: Armenia-Azerbaijan peace is becoming routine, and that is the point
ANALYSIS: Armenia-Azerbaijan peace is becoming routine, and that is the point
Nikol Pashinyan's words in Brussels were deliberately unexciting: a real peace exists, trade is under way, a regional infrastructure project is being prepared, and the treaty must now be signed and ratified. For a conflict that defined the South Caucasus for three decades, boring is the achievement.
The evidence for routine is accumulating in small, practical places. Bilateral trade, unthinkable during the war years, is happening. A detained Azerbaijani serviceman who crossed into Armenia's Syunik region in fog is being handled through an investigative committee statement, with a mundane explanation and criminal charges, rather than through military rhetoric. Armenia is talking about a European Union membership application in 2027 in the same breath as peace with Azerbaijan, linking the two projects.
Each side's interests are visible in the framing. Baku wants the peace treaty signed while its position is strong, and wants separatist organising, as in the Fetiyev trial, dealt with as criminality rather than politics. Yerevan wants the Washington deal converted into normal relations and a European horizon, without being seen to concede anything further. Both want the border to stop producing crises.
The constraints are equally clear. A treaty still needs signatures and ratification, and ratification debates can revive old arguments. The soldier case shows how one foggy crossing can still test the system. And the region's infrastructure project, the prize both sides cite, will force concrete decisions about routes, revenues and control that communiques can avoid.
What to watch: the treaty's signature and ratification timetable, whether bilateral trade grows from symbolic to substantial, and whether the next border incident is handled the same quiet way as the Musayev case. If routine holds through an incident, peace is no longer a declaration, it is a habit.
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