Timothy heritage and Francesco Guarascio from Reuters touched on the issue of a potential war in South Caucasus to have a spillover effect. “Put your head above the trench and they’ll shoot you,” says a young ethnic Armenian soldier, peering through a narrow slit in a concrete watchtower at Azeri lines 400 meters away where he says snipers lie in wait.” Depicting the border line between Armenia and Azerbaijan with this words authors note that today military arsenal of both countries has greatly improved.
“Political and military analysts say war is not inevitable, and that the potential for destruction and a regional war serve as a deterrent. But they are increasingly discussing how a conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan might play out.”: note the authors. Briefing on possible war triggers they pose the issue of border skirmish being a most important one- “Less likely would be a political decision to go to war – despite Azerbaijan’s threats to regain control of Nagorno-Karabakh – or a pre-emptive strike by Armenia or Nagorno-Karabakh if an attack by Azerbaijan seemed imminent.”
Quoting Thomas de Vaal on the new war to be more destructive than the low-tech war of 1991-94, the articles comes up with a list of potential asymmetric targets from Armenia in case war erupts- “Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (BTE) natural gas pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) crude oil pipeline”. On the other hand authors note that the large oil corporations as Chevron and BP will have a lot to lose if it happens so.
Touching the issue of war spillover, authors quote NKR president Bako Sahakyan stating that the war would have a wider geopolitical spread. Nevertheless, the article notes neither Turkey nor Russia will rush to war each for its own interest. (Turkey’s relations with Armenia are fragile, and Russia doesn’t want to lose its Baku relations/ ed.) Commenting on Iran’s possible involvement, authors note that once-neutral position may now be changed into real involvement taken into account of the fact of Israeli-Azerbaijani recent military relations.
“The Azeris can’t retake Karabakh now. They are militarily incapable of doing it”- quoting Matthew Bryza, the former U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan, the article points to the geographic difficulty of overtaking Nagorno Karabakh. In a conclusion to the analysis the authors quote Yusif Agayev, Azerbaijani military expert wo states that inability to take control of Nagorno Karabakh in the first months of the potential war shall necessitate involvement of Azerbaijani society- “I don’t think the society of my country is ready for war.”
