BAKU, Azerbaijan, August 8. The Washington
summit became an opening chapter of consolidating the peace between
Azerbaijan and Armenia,Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is a Senior Fellow at
the Atlantic Council and Managing Director, Energy, Growth, and
Security at the International Tax and Investment Center in
Washington, D.C., told Trend.
"One year after the Washington summit, the Armenia-Azerbaijan
relationship has undergone a structural shift driven by American
leadership, yet it remains the opening chapter of a longer process
of consolidating peace rather than its conclusion. The August 8,
2025, White House meeting convened by President Donald Trump with
President Ilham Aliyev and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan produced
a Joint Declaration, the initialing of a comprehensive peace
agreement on interstate relations, the formal closure of the
obsolete OSCE Minsk Group, and the launch of the Trump Route for
International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP). These outcomes have
moved the South Caucasus from a decades-long zero-sum conflict
toward a framework based on recognized borders, sovereignty, and
economic interdependence—precisely the kind of positive-sum
architecture that advances U.S. strategic interests," he said.
He pointed out that practical results are already evident and
serve American priorities.
"The border has remained calm, with no reported exchanges of
fire. Azerbaijan has lifted transit restrictions and begun
supplying petroleum products to Armenia; third-country goods now
move through Azerbaijani territory. Border delimitation continues
through a bilateral intergovernmental commission. TRIPP—the roughly
43 kilometer corridor through southern Armenia linking Azerbaijan
to Nakhchivan under full Armenian sovereignty with U.S. development
facilitation—is advancing from concept toward construction expected
later in 2026. These steps reduce the region’s vulnerability to
external disruption," said Cohen.
The expert noted that the full ratification of the peace treaty
still awaits Armenia’s constitutional amendments removing residual
territorial language, a process tied to domestic politics.
"External spoilers, particularly residual Russian and Iranian
influence, persist and must be actively contained. The summit thus
marks a genuine turning point facilitated by the agreement between
the two nations and their leaders, and engineered by U.S.
diplomacy, but institutionalizing peace and completing the
connectivity architecture will require sustained American
engagement over the coming years," he added.
Why did Washington succeed where earlier formats
failed?
Cohen went on to add that for three decades the OSCE Minsk Group
and successive European and Russian initiatives managed a frozen
conflict rather than resolving it.
"They preserved Moscow’s role as “indispensable” broker, treated
territorial integrity as negotiable, and offered neither credible
enforcement nor positive-sum economic incentives. After
Azerbaijan’s decisive restoration of control over Karabakh in 2020
and 2023 through force, the military balance shifted irrevocably.
Russia’s bandwidth was absorbed by its war in Ukraine; Armenia’s
traditional security dependence on military power backed by Moscow
eroded. Both capitals concluded that continued confrontation
yielded diminishing returns," he said.
The expert pointed out that the Trump administration supplied
what previous mediators lacked: high-level political will, a
trusted broker acceptable to both sides, and a concrete
connectivity package that reframed the dispute from security
zero-sum to mutual economic win-win gains.
"By placing U.S. facilitation and development rights at the
center of TRIPP while preserving Armenian sovereignty, Washington
resolved the long-standing corridor impasse and created a tangible
American stake in regional stability. The public initialing of the
treaty text and the Joint Declaration raised the political cost of
reversal. This is a classic demonstration of American deal-making
at its most effective: capitalizing on changed power realities to
deliver results that earlier approaches that perpetuated external
diplomacy and Russian great power engagement could not achieve. In
doing so, the agreement directly advances core U.S. interests by
diminishing Russian leverage as the traditional security arbiter
and limiting Iran’s ability to exploit regional instability or
block east-west corridors," he said.
Cohen noted that President Ilham Aliyev’s assertion that peace
already exists in practice is largely accurate and has begun to
reshape the South Caucasus in ways that serve U.S. strategic
goals.
"The absence of violence, the opening of limited trade and
transit, the decline in Armenian fears of imminent military
pressure, and the emergence of a shared language of regional
cooperation confirm that a new reality is taking hold.
Geopolitically, the region is moving away from Russian-dominated
security arrangements and Iranian leverage toward a multi-vector
order centered on east-west connectivity. TRIPP strengthens the
Middle Corridor linking Central Asia and the Caspian to Türkiye and
European markets, diluting both Moscow’s and Tehran’s capacity to
weaponize geography. Armenia gains an exit from isolation;
Azerbaijan consolidates its role as a critical transit hub; and the
United States reasserts influence in a strategically vital space
long neglected by successive administrations," he said.
Cohen believes that this outcome is a signature achievement of
the Trump legacy in Eurasia: pragmatic deal-making that prioritizes
American interests by fostering connectivity, reducing the
operational space for revisionist powers, and creating economic
interdependence that makes renewed conflict more costly.
"Challenges remain—domestic political hurdles in Yerevan, the
need to translate elite agreements into broader societal
acceptance, and the persistent interest of Russia and Iran in
disruption. Sustained U.S. engagement, completion of TRIPP, and
consistent political will in Baku and Yerevan will determine
whether this practical peace becomes irreversible. Keeping Russia
and Iran in check is not a secondary consideration; it is central
to ensuring that the South Caucasus evolves into a corridor of
prosperity and stability under a framework compatible with American
security and commercial interests rather than a renewed arena for
adversarial competition," he concluded.
On August 8, 2025, following a trilateral meeting with U.S.
President Donald Trump in Washington, President of Azerbaijan Ilham
Aliyev and Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan signed a joint
declaration on establishing peace between Baku and Yerevan and
restoring transport connectivity between mainland Azerbaijan and
the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. The initiative was named the
"Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity."
As part of the meeting, Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Jeyhun
Bayramov and Armenia's Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan initialed
the draft "Agreement on the Establishment of Peace and Interstate
Relations between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of
Armenia" and signed a joint appeal by the foreign ministers of
Azerbaijan and Armenia to the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office calling
for the termination of the OSCE Minsk Process, the mandate of the
Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office on the
conflict dealt with by the Minsk Conference, and the High-Level
Planning Group.
