2021/09/23 by Laurence Broers
Social Sciences · #European Politics and Security #Post-Soviet Geopolitical Dynamics #Turkey's Politics and Society
paper · pdf · doi:10.1525/curh.2021.120.828.255
openalex publication_date 2021/09/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
The Minsk Group, led by the United States, France, and Russia, has brokered the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict since the mid-1990s after Armenia-backed secessionists in the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic won the first Karabakh war of 1992–94. That mediation embodied the ideals of the mid-1990s unipolar moment, which assumed that liberalized markets and democratic transitions would converge internally to resolve legacy conflicts in postsocialist states while bringing them into convergence externally with Euro-Atlantic nations. Those assumptions withered away over the next quarter-century. Neither Azerbaijan nor Armenia transitioned to liberal democracy. Backed by an increasingly assertive Turkey, Azerbaijan prevailed in a bloody war in 2020. This time, the regional authoritarian powers, Russia and Turkey, are overseeing what could be a test case for a new form of “illiberal peace.”