BAKU, Azerbaijan, August 8. The Washington summit became an opening chapter of consolidating the peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia,Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and Managing Director, Energy, Growth, and Security at the International Tax and Investment Center in Washington, D.C., told Trend.
"One year after the Washington summit, the Armenia-Azerbaijan relationship has undergone a structural shift driven by American leadership, yet it remains the opening chapter of a longer process of consolidating peace rather than its conclusion. The August 8, 2025, White House meeting convened by President Donald Trump with President Ilham Aliyev and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan produced a Joint Declaration, the initialing of a comprehensive peace agreement on interstate relations, the formal closure of the obsolete OSCE Minsk Group, and the launch of the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP). These outcomes have moved the South Caucasus from a decades-long zero-sum conflict toward a framework based on recognized borders, sovereignty, and economic interdependence—precisely the kind of positive-sum architecture that advances U.S. strategic interests," he said.
He pointed out that practical results are already evident and serve American priorities.
"The border has remained calm, with no reported exchanges of fire. Azerbaijan has lifted transit restrictions and begun supplying petroleum products to Armenia; third-country goods now move through Azerbaijani territory. Border delimitation continues through a bilateral intergovernmental commission. TRIPP—the roughly 43 kilometer corridor through southern Armenia linking Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan under full Armenian sovereignty with U.S. development facilitation—is advancing from concept toward construction expected later in 2026. These steps reduce the region’s vulnerability to external disruption," said Cohen.
The expert noted that the full ratification of the peace treaty still awaits Armenia’s constitutional amendments removing residual territorial language, a process tied to domestic politics.
"External spoilers, particularly residual Russian and Iranian influence, persist and must be actively contained. The summit thus marks a genuine turning point facilitated by the agreement between the two nations and their leaders, and engineered by U.S. diplomacy, but institutionalizing peace and completing the connectivity architecture will require sustained American engagement over the coming years," he added.
Why did Washington succeed where earlier formats failed?
Cohen went on to add that for three decades the OSCE Minsk Group and successive European and Russian initiatives managed a frozen conflict rather than resolving it.
"They preserved Moscow’s role as “indispensable” broker, treated territorial integrity as negotiable, and offered neither credible enforcement nor positive-sum economic incentives. After Azerbaijan’s decisive restoration of control over Karabakh in 2020 and 2023 through force, the military balance shifted irrevocably. Russia’s bandwidth was absorbed by its war in Ukraine; Armenia’s traditional security dependence on military power backed by Moscow eroded. Both capitals concluded that continued confrontation yielded diminishing returns," he said.
The expert pointed out that the Trump administration supplied what previous mediators lacked: high-level political will, a trusted broker acceptable to both sides, and a concrete connectivity package that reframed the dispute from security zero-sum to mutual economic win-win gains.
"By placing U.S. facilitation and development rights at the center of TRIPP while preserving Armenian sovereignty, Washington resolved the long-standing corridor impasse and created a tangible American stake in regional stability. The public initialing of the treaty text and the Joint Declaration raised the political cost of reversal. This is a classic demonstration of American deal-making at its most effective: capitalizing on changed power realities to deliver results that earlier approaches that perpetuated external diplomacy and Russian great power engagement could not achieve. In doing so, the agreement directly advances core U.S. interests by diminishing Russian leverage as the traditional security arbiter and limiting Iran’s ability to exploit regional instability or block east-west corridors," he said.
Cohen noted that President Ilham Aliyev’s assertion that peace already exists in practice is largely accurate and has begun to reshape the South Caucasus in ways that serve U.S. strategic goals.
"The absence of violence, the opening of limited trade and transit, the decline in Armenian fears of imminent military pressure, and the emergence of a shared language of regional cooperation confirm that a new reality is taking hold. Geopolitically, the region is moving away from Russian-dominated security arrangements and Iranian leverage toward a multi-vector order centered on east-west connectivity. TRIPP strengthens the Middle Corridor linking Central Asia and the Caspian to Türkiye and European markets, diluting both Moscow’s and Tehran’s capacity to weaponize geography. Armenia gains an exit from isolation; Azerbaijan consolidates its role as a critical transit hub; and the United States reasserts influence in a strategically vital space long neglected by successive administrations," he said.
Cohen believes that this outcome is a signature achievement of the Trump legacy in Eurasia: pragmatic deal-making that prioritizes American interests by fostering connectivity, reducing the operational space for revisionist powers, and creating economic interdependence that makes renewed conflict more costly.
"Challenges remain—domestic political hurdles in Yerevan, the need to translate elite agreements into broader societal acceptance, and the persistent interest of Russia and Iran in disruption. Sustained U.S. engagement, completion of TRIPP, and consistent political will in Baku and Yerevan will determine whether this practical peace becomes irreversible. Keeping Russia and Iran in check is not a secondary consideration; it is central to ensuring that the South Caucasus evolves into a corridor of prosperity and stability under a framework compatible with American security and commercial interests rather than a renewed arena for adversarial competition," he concluded.
On August 8, 2025, following a trilateral meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan signed a joint declaration on establishing peace between Baku and Yerevan and restoring transport connectivity between mainland Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. The initiative was named the "Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity."
As part of the meeting, Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov and Armenia's Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan initialed the draft "Agreement on the Establishment of Peace and Interstate Relations between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Armenia" and signed a joint appeal by the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia to the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office calling for the termination of the OSCE Minsk Process, the mandate of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office on the conflict dealt with by the Minsk Conference, and the High-Level Planning Group.
