The Road to a Durable Peace? Guarantor Commitment, Regional Integration, and Active Negotiation in the Armenia-Azerbaijan Settlement

Abstract

Armenia and Azerbaijan face enduring challenges in their post-conflict relations. Both must address structural conditions and resolve ongoing irredentist demands against one another. They must also mitigate the historical animosity that perpetuates their conflict. This thesis investigates three conditions for settlement-level agreements employed by third-party guarantors to foster a durable peace: sustained guarantor commitments, symmetric regional integration, and active – not passive negotiation. Existing comparative case studies on Israeli agreements with Egypt and Jordan and the Dayton Accords were analyzed to determine the effects of various post-conflict mechanisms. These mechanisms include economic incentives, institutional design, and security guarantees. Their impact on the likelihood of sustaining a negative peace was assessed. On this basis, novel empirical data from 12 semi-structured elite interviews were collected. The interviewees included current and former U.S. negotiators, ambassadors, and regional stakeholders. Their insights were used to assess the impact of the U.S.-proposed Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) economic framework, asymmetrical interdependence, and mediation postures on this unfolding peace sample. The findings suggest that different mechanisms in peacebuilding and regional integration have played contradictory and overlapping roles in the South Caucasus. The analytical framework developed bridges the gap between classical conflict-resolution concepts of negative peace and liberal institutionalism. The findings predict that unsequenced economic integration without prior institutional architecture is more likely to create coercive leverage in favor of autocratic regimes like Azerbaijan. In contrast, a credible third-party guarantor acting as an active negotiator (the U.S.) is required to balance asymmetries and bind parties to enforcement obligations. The last section offers a concrete recommendation for policymakers.