BAKU DIALOGUESBAKU DIALOGUES POLICY PERSPECTIVES ON THE SILK ROAD REGION Vol. 4 | No. 3 | Spring 2021 The Second Karabakh War: Further Reflections Seeing Beyond Victory Laurence Broers From Struggle to Permanent Failure Azer Babayev Energy and the Silk Road Region: Geostrategic Considerations Hydrocarbon Energy Complexes SGC’s Strategic Benefits Robert M. Cutler Vitaly Baylarbayov Oil Pipelines in the Silk Road Region SGC and the Geopolitics of Climate Change Rodrigo Labardini Morena Skalamera Beijing’s Long Road to the Gulf Region Fuad Shahbazov The Ties That Bind: The South Caucasus and its Immediate Neighborhood Trilateral Cooperation Between Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Georgia Richard Weitz Ukraine’s Strategic Relations with the South Caucasus Taras Kuzio Investment Attractiveness Along the Silk Road Development or Regression? Stanislas Pritchin 1 Vol. 4 | No. 3 | Spring 2021 ISSN Print: 2709-1848 ISSN Online: 2709-1856 BAKU DIALOGUES BAKU DIALOGUESBAKU DIALOGUES POLICY PERSPECTIVES ON THE SILK ROAD REGION Vol. 4 | No. 3 | Spring 2021 The Second Karabakh War: Further Reflections Seeing Beyond Victory Laurence Broers From Struggle to Permanent Failure Azer Babayev Energy and the Silk Road Region: Geostrategic Considerations Hydrocarbon Energy Complexes SGC’s Strategic Benefits Robert M. Cutler Vitaly Baylarbayov Oil Pipelines in the Silk Road Region SGC and the Geopolitics of Climate Change Rodrigo Labardini Morena Skalamera Beijing’s Long Road to the Gulf Region Fuad Shahbazov The Ties That Bind: The South Caucasus and its Immediate Neighborhood Trilateral Cooperation Between Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Georgia Richard Weitz Ukraine’s Strategic Relations with the South Caucasus Taras Kuzio Investment Attractiveness Along the Silk Road Development or Regression? Stanislas Pritchin Vol. 4 | No. 3 | Spring 2021 2 3 Vol. 4 | No. 3 | Spring 2021 BAKU DIALOGUES BAKU DIALOGUESBAKU DIALOGUES POLICY PERSPECTIVES ON THE SILK ROAD REGION bakudialogues.ada.edu.az Published by ADA University Baku, Azerbaijan Under the editorial direction of Mr. Fariz Ismailzade, Editor-in-Chief Executive Vice Rector, ADA University In conjunction with Mr. Damjan Krnjević Mišković, Senior Editorial Consultant Director of Policy Research and Publications, ADA University And through the counsel of the Editorial Advisory Council of Baku Dialogues H.E. Dr. Hafiz Pashayev, chairperson Mr. Nasimi Aghayev H.E. Mr. Hikmet Çetin H.E. Mr. Tedo Japaridze Prof. Dr. Jeffrey D. Sachs H.E. Mr. Sodik Safayev Prof. Dr. Samad Seyidov Prof. Dr. S. Frederick Starr Mr. S. 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The analyses provided and viewpoints expressed by the authors featured in Baku Dialogues do not necessarily reflect those of its publisher, editors, consultants, Editorial Advisory Council members, and anyone else affiliated with ADA University orBaku Dialogues. Our sole acceptance of Vol. 4 | No. 3 | Spring 2021 4 responsibility is the provision of a forum dedicated5 to intellectual discussionVol. 4 | No.and debate.3 | Spring 2021 BAKU DIALOGUES Table of ContentsBAKU DIALOGUES Vol. 4 | No. 3 | Spring 2021 8 Seeing Beyond Victory Laurence Broers 26 From Struggle to Permanent Failure Azer Babayev 38 Hydrocarbon Energy Complexes Robert M. Cutler 58 The Strategic Benefits of the Southern Gas Corridor Vitaly Baylarbayov 70 The Southern Gas Corridor and the New Geopolitics of Climate Change Morena Skalamera 86 Oil Pipelines in the Silk Road Region Rodrigo Labardini 108 Beijing’s Long Way to the Gulf Region Fuad Shahbazov 124 Trilateral Cooperation Between Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Georgia Richard Weitz 138 Ukraine’s Strategic Relations with the South Caucasus Taras Kuzio 154 Development or Regression? Stanislas Pritchin Vol. 4 | No. 3 | Spring 2021 6 7 Vol. 4 | No. 3 | Spring 2021 BAKU DIALOGUES BAKU DIALOGUES normalization initiative that Restoration of sovereignty over Seeing Beyond Victory took place in 2008-2009. Nev- de-occupied areas translates into the ertheless, while the Armenian- personal liberations of hundreds of Azerbaijani conflict is now seen by thousands of Azerbaijanis displaced Azerbaijan’s Pathways After the many in Azerbaijan as resolved, it from those territories in 1992-1993. has in fact been repackaged and The fate of this population has been Second Karabakh War embedded in a new, highly com- a continual concern in Azerbaijan, plex, and unpredictable web of with fears that the construction of linkages. new settlements would lead to a de Laurence Broers facto integration of these communi- ties and, by implication, acceptance n the aftermath of the Second relations between Moscow and Three Liberations of forced displacement. Although Karabakh War, Azerbaijan Ankara in the era of Recep Tayyip the challenges of rehabilitating stands at a critical moment Erdogan and Vladimir Putin. his is not to under- and reconstructing the de-occu- inI its history. The war has re- The conflict is now one link in a Testimate the signifi- pied territories are formidable, the solved many of the issues driving string of conflict theatres where cance of the war’s outcomes in prospect of return is now an attain- Azerbaijani grievances over the last Russia and Turkey are involved, Azerbaijan. Victory in the Second able goal. A strategy for the “great three decades. Yet it leaves others and across which Moscow and Karabakh War can be read in return” has already been published, both unresolved and entangled Ankara may negotiate trade-offs terms of three liberations for and working groups are elaborating within a new regional configura- that have little to do with the in- Azerbaijan. The first of these is its operationalization. tion that more than ever hinges on terests of local parties. To be sure, territorial. Through the military the interactions of external great Azerbaijan’s closeness to Turkey advance along the southern flank The third liberation is affective: powers and the fractured local assuages concerns over Russian in- in October and November 2020, emancipation from the humiliation politics of the South Caucasus. fluence for now. And the strategic, and then in accordance with of a devastating military defeat in rather than tactical, outlook on the terms of the 1994. No other con- The regionalization of the Azerbaijani-Turkish partnership November 2020 flict in the former Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict— means that few in Azerbaijan be- Russian-Armenian- Victory in the Second Soviet Union fea- meaning its transition to a lieve that Turkey would ever engage Azerbaijani Karabakh War can be tured such drastic Russian-Turkish condominium— in trade-offs that cross Azerbaijani trilateral declara- read in terms of three lib- overspill beyond ultimately links the conflict to the red lines. This belief is reflected tion, Azerbaijan erations for Azerbaijan. the territory origi- vagaries of what Pavel Baev and in the experience of the Turkish- restored control nally disputed. An Kemal Kirişci call the “serpentine” Armenian “football diplomacy” over all of the equivalent scenario seven districts occupied by in Georgia, for instance, would Laurence Broers is the South Caucasus Programme Director at the London-based Armenian forces in 1992- have seen a swathe of western peacebuilding organization Conciliation Resources, Associate Fellow in the Russia 1993, with the exception of a Georgia at least as big again as and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of narrow corridor connecting Abkhazia itself occupied and its the journal Caucasus Survey, the author of Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia. population driven out. Further- Rivalry (2019), and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of the Caucasus (2020) and Armenia’s Velvet Revolution: Authoritarian Decline and Civil Resistance in a Azerbaijan thereby all but restored more, as American journalist Multipolar World (2020). its territorial integrity. Thomas Goltz documents in his Vol. 4 | No. 3 | Spring 2021 8 9 Vol. 4 | No. 3 | Spring 2021 BAKU DIALOGUES BAKU DIALOGUES famous memoir Azerbaijan Diary in the Minsk Process mediated by battleships in battle. The paradigm which we are only starting to un- (1998), Azerbaijan’s defeat derived the Organization of Security and had changed, and like the prover- derstand now. as much from internal divisions Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). bial generals anticipating yester- and political turmoil in Baku that International lip-service to the res- day’s war, Japan had prepared for rmenia was also, in its own resulted in a disorganized war ef- toration of Azerbaijan’s territorial the wrong battle. Away, overwhelmed by vic- fort and the loss of several