The overall thrust here seems like an application of Clausewitz’s maxim that “war is the extension of politics by other means”. However, the specific politics suggested seem very unrealistic.
You suggest ways to impact Azerbaijan’s internal politics by targeting harm to specific groups. I see no reason to believe that Armenia had any substantial ability to deal much harm to Azerbaijan at all, so this isn’t relevant. In general, it would be much harder for Armenia to advance to deal significant damage to Azerbaijan’s homeland than it would be to defend.
Assassinations are practically universally a bad way to change a country’s politics; they usually result in a direct backfire.
Your advice seems to lack object-level knowledge of the conflict itself; in particular, Azerbaijan is not a liberal democracy; its current leader has been in power for decades, and won ~86% of the vote in the most recent election.
The second Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was indeed a populist war: the two main causes were racial conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and the result of the First Nagorno-Karabakh war, in which Armenia overran and occupied Nagorno-Karabakh. “We will end racism against us” is not in fact a realistic short-term plan; it would take decades to have relevance. Resolving the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh would presumably involve returning Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan; this is not a good plan for retaining Nagorno-Karabakh! More generally, you can usually prevent a war by just giving in, and maybe Armenia should have given that they lost the war. It’s also not politically realistic, given Armenia’s domestic politics.
Your plans for improving Armenia’s popularity in Azerbaijan (a) wouldn’t stop the war, (b) likely wouldn’t help end the war, and (c) are irrelevant to actually existing war, since they assume that Armenia is overrunning Azerbaijan, occupying their citizens, taking significant numbers of prisoners, etc.
It is not clear to me how Armenia would go about creating a recession or a famine in Azerbaijan?
Pretty much all of these plans are underspecified outcomes, not realistic plans. For example, for “we should do propaganda” you haven’t specified what Armenia should have actually done for it to matter. *In practice*, actually Azerbaijan had an *overwhelming* advantage in propaganda, making use of new channels like TikTok and Youtube to quickly disseminate videos of military successes.
So how should Armenia have retained Nagorno-Karabakh? Given that Azerbaijan is about 3 times its size, and that it has substantial oil reserves that can be used to fund military spending, Armenia would have little chance on its own. Even worse, Azerbaijan is supported by their co-ethnics in Turkey, which is vast and wealthy in comparison to both states; Armenia would not realistically have been able to disrupt this relationship.
Armenia would need a powerful patron to counter this. Three options:
Iran supported Armenia in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, but developed closer ties with Azerbaijan more recently. I don’t know how realistic blocking this would be, I’m not very familiar with regional politics.
Russia has also historically backed Armenia, but didn’t intervene until late in the conflict (Russian peacekeepers are now in the region). This was likely for two reasons: first, Russia is already somewhat overstretched, with concerns in ongoing conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, and Libya. Second, Armenia’s 2018 Revolution brought to power a more democratic government that leaned away from Russia and towards the West. The answer here would be for Armenia to become a more dependent Russian client state, although this may have been impossible for domestic political reasons. Armenia will likely now pursue this strategy.
Armenia has an extensive diaspora in the West, which it used to mobilize political support; using the diaspora and the Armenian realignment towards the West to secure military aid and security guarantees could have been useful, although in practice I don’t think Armenia could have secured anything of much significance.
I generally agree with most of this, in the context of that particular conflict. It was a very smart war to invest in from the perspective of Azerbeijani leadership; Armenia really didn’t have a realistic approach to defend.
Th one part I object to is “Pretty much all of these plans are underspecified outcomes, not realistic plans.”. The title of the post is “Grand Strategy”; the whole point is to talk about general approaches, not specifics. Realistic plans would be the domain of strategy.
So how should Armenia have retained Nagorno-Karabakh?
Use the Iraqi playbook. In the kinetic phase of the war, Armenia is probably hopeless. So make only a token show of resistance.
Before Azerbaijan takes over NK, scatter weapons caches to your co-ethnics. Train NK locals as insurgents. Make sure your border is permeable to insurgents; give them a place to rest, recover, and prepare.
Don’t let Azerbaijan consolidate its control. Use ambushes, snipers, and IEDs to discourage Azerbaijani troops from leaving their compounds. When the invaders make an enemy (and they will, lots of them), give that enemy a weapon. When the invaders make a friend, give that friend and his entire family a hideous death. Let people know that collaborators get closed-casket funerals (and then bomb the funerals).
Provoke the invaders into heavy-handed response, then put videos of the massacres on YouTube (CNN, if you can). Make their allies pay in lives and embarrassment. Portray your freedom fighters as heroes standing tall against brutal oppression.
It’s a horrible project. War usually is, and insurgency is worse than most kinds of war. But it could be done. Eventually Azerbaijan would probably leave, simply because nobody sane wants to stay in the hellhole you’ve created. Victory!
The overall thrust here seems like an application of Clausewitz’s maxim that “war is the extension of politics by other means”. However, the specific politics suggested seem very unrealistic.
You suggest ways to impact Azerbaijan’s internal politics by targeting harm to specific groups. I see no reason to believe that Armenia had any substantial ability to deal much harm to Azerbaijan at all, so this isn’t relevant. In general, it would be much harder for Armenia to advance to deal significant damage to Azerbaijan’s homeland than it would be to defend.
Assassinations are practically universally a bad way to change a country’s politics; they usually result in a direct backfire.
Your advice seems to lack object-level knowledge of the conflict itself; in particular, Azerbaijan is not a liberal democracy; its current leader has been in power for decades, and won ~86% of the vote in the most recent election.
The second Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was indeed a populist war: the two main causes were racial conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and the result of the First Nagorno-Karabakh war, in which Armenia overran and occupied Nagorno-Karabakh. “We will end racism against us” is not in fact a realistic short-term plan; it would take decades to have relevance. Resolving the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh would presumably involve returning Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan; this is not a good plan for retaining Nagorno-Karabakh! More generally, you can usually prevent a war by just giving in, and maybe Armenia should have given that they lost the war. It’s also not politically realistic, given Armenia’s domestic politics.
Your plans for improving Armenia’s popularity in Azerbaijan (a) wouldn’t stop the war, (b) likely wouldn’t help end the war, and (c) are irrelevant to actually existing war, since they assume that Armenia is overrunning Azerbaijan, occupying their citizens, taking significant numbers of prisoners, etc.
It is not clear to me how Armenia would go about creating a recession or a famine in Azerbaijan?
Pretty much all of these plans are underspecified outcomes, not realistic plans. For example, for “we should do propaganda” you haven’t specified what Armenia should have actually done for it to matter. *In practice*, actually Azerbaijan had an *overwhelming* advantage in propaganda, making use of new channels like TikTok and Youtube to quickly disseminate videos of military successes.
So how should Armenia have retained Nagorno-Karabakh? Given that Azerbaijan is about 3 times its size, and that it has substantial oil reserves that can be used to fund military spending, Armenia would have little chance on its own. Even worse, Azerbaijan is supported by their co-ethnics in Turkey, which is vast and wealthy in comparison to both states; Armenia would not realistically have been able to disrupt this relationship.
Armenia would need a powerful patron to counter this. Three options:
Iran supported Armenia in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, but developed closer ties with Azerbaijan more recently. I don’t know how realistic blocking this would be, I’m not very familiar with regional politics.
Russia has also historically backed Armenia, but didn’t intervene until late in the conflict (Russian peacekeepers are now in the region). This was likely for two reasons: first, Russia is already somewhat overstretched, with concerns in ongoing conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, and Libya. Second, Armenia’s 2018 Revolution brought to power a more democratic government that leaned away from Russia and towards the West. The answer here would be for Armenia to become a more dependent Russian client state, although this may have been impossible for domestic political reasons. Armenia will likely now pursue this strategy.
Armenia has an extensive diaspora in the West, which it used to mobilize political support; using the diaspora and the Armenian realignment towards the West to secure military aid and security guarantees could have been useful, although in practice I don’t think Armenia could have secured anything of much significance.
I generally agree with most of this, in the context of that particular conflict. It was a very smart war to invest in from the perspective of Azerbeijani leadership; Armenia really didn’t have a realistic approach to defend.
Th one part I object to is “Pretty much all of these plans are underspecified outcomes, not realistic plans.”. The title of the post is “Grand Strategy”; the whole point is to talk about general approaches, not specifics. Realistic plans would be the domain of strategy.
So how should Armenia have retained Nagorno-Karabakh?
Use the Iraqi playbook. In the kinetic phase of the war, Armenia is probably hopeless. So make only a token show of resistance.
Before Azerbaijan takes over NK, scatter weapons caches to your co-ethnics. Train NK locals as insurgents. Make sure your border is permeable to insurgents; give them a place to rest, recover, and prepare.
Don’t let Azerbaijan consolidate its control. Use ambushes, snipers, and IEDs to discourage Azerbaijani troops from leaving their compounds. When the invaders make an enemy (and they will, lots of them), give that enemy a weapon. When the invaders make a friend, give that friend and his entire family a hideous death. Let people know that collaborators get closed-casket funerals (and then bomb the funerals).
Provoke the invaders into heavy-handed response, then put videos of the massacres on YouTube (CNN, if you can). Make their allies pay in lives and embarrassment. Portray your freedom fighters as heroes standing tall against brutal oppression.
It’s a horrible project. War usually is, and insurgency is worse than most kinds of war. But it could be done. Eventually Azerbaijan would probably leave, simply because nobody sane wants to stay in the hellhole you’ve created. Victory!