Highlights From Aliyev’s Panel Discussion At This Year’s Munich Security Conference

Azerbaijan’s pivotal role in TRIPP, which is the new means through which the US aims to encircle Russia along its entire southern periphery, is why it’s important to pay attention to his views.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev participated in a panel discussion at this year’s Munich Security Conference. It’s important to draw greater attention to the highlights given the role that Azerbaijan now plays in the expansion of US influence along Russia’s entire southern periphery. This is being achieved through the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP), which readers can learn more about here, as well as in the context of Vance’s recent trip to the South Caucasus here, here, and here.

Aliyev began by trumpeting Azerbaijan’s role in the “Middle Corridor” (MC) between the EU, Turkiye, the South Caucasus, the Central Asian Republics (CARs), and China. TRIPP complements the existing Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway and will thus result in Azerbaijan hosting two extensions of the MC on its territory. Over the past year, he said that his country invested considerably in regional connectivity projects, including plans for a fiber optic cable under the Caspian Sea to the CARs.

In his words, “All the countries on the route will be more politically and economically integrated” upon TRIPP’s completion, but this requires the signing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. Aliyev has made that conditional on Armenia removing its Constitutional preamble’s reference to the Declaration of Independence whose own preamble makes claim to Karabakh. He doesn’t say so, but the aforesaid comprehensive integration would also include military-security aspects, thus threatening Russia.

Aliyev then affirmed his belief that the US’ interest in TRIPP will continue across future administrations due to its agreement with Armenia for the US to own the majority stake (albeit at a different ratio after 49 years) in its operating company for the next 99 years. In his view, Trump made this commitment due to the enormous regional connectivity assets that Azerbaijan, Turkiye, Georgia, and the CARs already developed up until this point, which enable the US to more easily scale them all through TRIPP.

Azerbaijan is now poised to play a more active role in the CARs’ such projects after joining their consultative council last year, which is now rebranded as the “Community of Central Asia”. Of relevance, Aliyev mentioned how China is now financing a complementary trans-CARs corridor through Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, with the innuendo being that Azerbaijan could play a role in this too. The overall impression is that Azerbaijan is indispensable to the West’s future plans in the CARs.

The last question concerned Russian strikes against the State Oil Company Of Azerbaijan’s assets in Ukraine, which prompted Aliyev to claim that Russia damaged its embassy there three times, the last two of which allegedly occurred after the coordinates were shared with it. Accordingly, one could interpret this as Azerbaijan’s implied justification for helping the US encircle Russia via TRIPP, though there might be a lot more to it than he’s letting on (regardless of whether or not he’s being truthful).

Altogether, nothing that Aliyev shared should come as a surprise to astute observers, but casual ones who haven’t been following regional events can more easily be brought up to speed by reviewing these highlights. As it stands, Azerbaijan is poised to play a pivotal role in facilitating the expansion of US influence along Russia’s entire southern periphery after the Ukrainian Conflict ends, but this risks dangerously worsening the Azerbaijani-Russian security dilemma at the expense of regional stability.