Reprinted from The Realist Review.
Donald Trump’s Give Me A Nobel Prize Tour made a stop in Quantico, Virginia on Tuesday.
At a much anticipated gathering of over 800 US flag officers – who were ordered to the Marine base at the behest of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth – Trump asserted that he should be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize because, among other things, he brought the decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan to a peaceful end.
But is this in fact the case?
To talk about these and other matters, I was joined by Dr. Arthur Khachikyan, an International Relations PhD from Stanford University, who has had to leave his home in Armenia over fear of arrest due to his opposition to the policies of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
Carden: On Tuesday, President Trump spoke about why he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, and he mentioned specifically that he brokered a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and that he did such a good job that now the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia are, as he put it, good friends.
Can you describe the actual state of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan right now?
Khachikian: I certainly understand the desire of President Trump to make peace in our region and win the Nobel Prize. I think it’s commendable. But I think in this particular case, it may be peace, but has come at the expense of destroying one of the parties, namely, Armenia. What this is in reality is the third capitulation of Armenia under Nikol Pashinyan.
Carden: Arthur, what do you mean by “third capitulation”? Can you explain what the first two were?
Khachikian: Well, the first capitulation took place in 2020 when the Armenian government under Pashinyan provoked a war with Azerbaijan by claiming that a contested enclave was Armenia’s, Period. So that enraged our neighbor, Azerbaijan, and its leader, Ilham Aliyev. So a war started, and our so-called Prime Minister handled it in the most incompetent and horrible way possible.
He went into hysterical fits. He didn’t stop the war when he had a chance. There were two or three opportunities to stop the war. He didn’t take them. In the end, 5,000 Armenian boys died – 18 to 20 year olds. Armenians were fighting against Israeli weapons, Turkish military command, and Islamic fundamentalists that were brought to the region by Turkey. We were fighting basically Jihadists Plus, and according to some reports, there were some troops from Pakistan. And sadly, partly because of the war in Ukraine and partly because of our own diplomatic mistakes, we did not receive the help from Russia which we expected.
So we lost the war. And so, in 2020, the Prime Minister signed this first capitulation and surrendered nearly all the regions outside of the once-contested enclave. After that, came the second capitulation, in 2023, when Pashinyan flew to Prague and signed a document giving up Artsakh [also known as Nagorno-Karabakh] and agreed that this ancient part of Armenia was actually a part of our neighboring country, Azerbaijan.
After he conceded this, Azerbaijan attacked and forced the Armenians out in an act of mass ethnic cleansing. The actual war lasted for a day or two. Aliyev had an overwhelming advantage. Again, the Azerbaijanis were equipped by Israel. A number of Israeli journalists later admitted that it was unfortunate that a country that understands the lessons of the Holocaust then helped Azerbaijan do what it did, which was to ethnically cleanse the Armenians from Artsakh. Armenia, incidentally, is also nation that also knows what genocide is. In fact, it could be argued that the Armenian genocide was a dress rehearsal for the Holocaust. There’s a lot of historical evidence for that. In any case, the world stood by, did nothing. Europe did nothing. The so-called human rights organizations did nothing. Some people protested, but we are not Kosovo, where, as you remember, claims of ethnic cleansing led to Western intervention and to Kosovo becoming an independent country.
So that was the second capitulation. The third capitulation just happened, in August, in the meeting between Aliyev, Pashinyan and Trump. Our neighbors were demanding an extraterritorial corridor that would connect Azerbaijan with its own ethnic enclave [a non-contiguous part of Azerbaijan located in the western part of Armenia close to Turkey] and Turkey. So this is part of a kind of Greater Eastern Ottoman Empire project, which will allow Turkey to connect to Azerbaijan and to Central Asia and the Turkic speaking peoples in that region. It’s also a very important geopolitical issue because it allows the West to force Russia out of the southern Caucasus and to separate Russia from Iran—two important allies. But the corridor [also known as the TRIPP or Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity] allows for Turkey to build a kind of southern bulwark against Russia.
Turkey, needless to say, is a NATO member, and we should note that the Israeli army is reforming based on NATO standards. Azerbaijan is also trying to approach NATO standards in military planning, and probably in the future will become a part of NATO, given especially the state of relations with Russia. So the TRIPP corridor would allow the West to deter Russia from the south Caucasus, by building this wall as Turkey, Azerbaijan, and, in the future, Central Asia isolate Russia, cut the transportation routes that run through Azerbaijan. This is an enormous geopolitical gamble, and the Armenians again turned out to be losers in the whole thing. We gave up everything and we got nothing. We didn’t even get our POWs that are now in Baku—no one has access to them. Even the Red Cross doesn’t have access to them. So we don’t know what is happening. Simply put: This was a surrender. This was a surrender, made easier because Armenia is completely flooded and conquered by Western NGOs which are not really NGOs at all, but rather extensions of certain agencies in the West…
Carden:Which are the most powerful US or western backed NGOs in Armenia today?
Khachikian: There is an organization called Civil Net also almost entirely funded by Western funds. There are European funds, there are American funds. The embassies also fund some organizations. It’s a huge network. They’re funding dozens of NGOs in Armenia. And again, this is not about democracy or human rights or Western values. I mean, I love all of the above. I would love to have more discussion in Armenia about democracy and the transition to democracy and sustainable development and human rights – all those really nice topics that liberals love to discuss. But this is not what it’s about.
Carden: Could you perhaps describe what the TRIPP means for Armenia in particular?
Khachikian: So this Trump Route for Peace and Prosperity is a very beautiful name for something that in reality is an extraterritorial corridor that was conceded by Armenia to Azerbaijan and Turkey. Well, it’s actually contractually conceded to America for 99 years. So America will supposedly manage this corridor for 99 years. The last time I’ve seen a formula like this was with regard to colonies. I remember the Suez Canal arrangement. That was also 99 years. And then when Egypt tried to take it back, it almost brought about a war. Another 99 year type of arrangement was in Panama with the Panama Canal and Hong Kong I think too was 99 or 150 years, or whatever. So this is basically colonization. When a country gives up its territory for a hundred years to another country, even though there are all these pretty words about sovereignty and territorial integrity, it does not mean much.
This is basically colonization. But nothing in this declaration or document says that Trump will not hand this corridor over to our neighbors, that it’ll not be transferred to a third party. Apparently, the American administration will hire a private company to manage it. This is very similar to the Suez Canal, and our neighbors are saying that 30% of that is going to be ours. So our neighbors are going to own a certain share of this corridor. I mean, it’s not difficult to figure it out. They were pushing for this for many, many years. In fact, Turkey has wanted access to Azerbaijan for almost a hundred years, if not more. This has been a very, very long term project.
Our PM is saying, “oh, it’s not a corridor. It’s not like that at all. It’s a Trump road for security” or whatever – all these beautiful words. But I think he is just trying to deceive his domestic audience because every time Aliyev speaks about it, he says, essentially, “it’s going to be a corridor and I don’t want to see any Armenians in there.”
When a country gives up its territory and says that it will have no customs control, no passport control, and no people in it, it means you gave it up. It’s not yours anymore. And what will Trump do with it? First of all, he doesn’t even know where Armenia is. He confused us with Albania three times, and I think for the life of him, he would not be able to find us on a map. Then he said that we’re fighting Cambodia! He doesn’t even know what region we’re in. I mean, with all respect to Trump – and I don’t have any bad feelings toward him – but we’re not important. We’re really just not that important for the US. What’s important to Washington is Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Israel. Israel also has very important interests in our region. We’re on the border with Iran.
Carden: How are Armenia’s long standing neighbors and allies, particularly Iran and Russia, reacting to the creation of the Trump corridor? It seems to me that it will result in a US presence, not necessarily a military presence on Iran’s border, but almost certainly it will open up opportunities for US and Israeli intelligence on Iran’s border. What is the view within the Armenia’s immediate neighborhood toward all this?
Khachikian: The initial reaction was negative. Our neighbors are clearly very suspicious. Iran’s religious leader said that this is completely unacceptable, and he said that Americans in this corridor will be the next victims. I don’t remember the exact words he used. So basically he threatened to use force. The representative of the Republican Guard in Iran also threatened to use force. But the Prime Minister of Iran, if I remember correctly, was much more conciliatory.
The Russians initially reacted negatively. There was a Russian official, I think the Deputy Prime Minister who said, if you do this, if you open this corridor on your territory without any customs controls, you may be invited to leave the Eurasian Union – of which Armenia is a part. And that’s been the objective of all these Western-funded NGOs all along. But if we cut trade ties with Russia and the Eurasian Union, the price of gas would triple. We will have no independent sources of electricity. Right now, 70%, if I’m not mistaken, of our exports go to Russia. Billions of dollars come from Russia via our seasonal workers. So we are very tightly connected with Russia, and this is something they’re also trying to destroy, to the detriment of our people.
Carden: Arthur, thank you very much for taking the time to talk. I appreciate it.
James W. Carden is the editor of The Realist Review. He is a columnist and former adviser to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the U.S. Department of State. His articles and essays have appeared in a wide variety of publications including The Nation, The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, The Spectator, UnHerd, The National Interest, Quartz, The Los Angeles Times, and American Affairs.
