Yves here. Before you take Andrew Korybko’s view as extreme, a new story in the Washington Post, framed as Trump hosting a meeting on Friday to try to broker a “peace deal” between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Even though it does not mention the idea of a US lease of the Zangezur Corridor even though that was floated by the US as part of a US conflict resolution proposal in July. Recall, as Mark Sleboda has pointed out, that Russia won the war in Syria but lost the peace.
By Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based American political analyst who specializes in the global systemic transition to multipolarity in the New Cold War. He has a PhD from MGIMO, which is under the umbrella of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Originally published at his website
Armenia might formally withdraw from the CSTO and then replace Russian troops with American PMCs.
US Ambassador to Turkiye Tom Barrack proposed in mid-July that his country lease the Zangezur Corridor for 100 years as a means of breaking the deadlock between Armenia and Azerbaijan over this issue. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova reacted negatively to his suggestion by accusing the US of trying to take over the peace process and jeopardizing regional stability. Her remarks followed a report alleging that a secret memorandum had already been signed for creating the “Trump Bridge”.
The Spanish outlet Periodista Digital claimed that members of the Armenian diaspora procured this document from their state contacts, which will also see the deployment of around 1,000 American PMCs to secure this route. RT chief Margarita Simonyan, who’s ethnically Armenian and passionate about her ancestral homeland’s affairs, popularized the report by sharing it on X. She’s also been very critical of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who she earlier accused of selling Armenia out to Turkiye.
If agreed to, and the report remains unconfirmed for now, the “Trump Bridge” could lead to Russia’s expulsion from the South Caucasus. The last clause of the Moscow-mediated November 2020 ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan calls for Russia’s FSB Border Guards to secure what Baku has since taken to calling the Zangezur Corridor through Armenia’s southern Syunik Region. Replacing them with American PMCs could precede the expulsion of Russian troops from Armenia.
Pashinyan confirmed in mid-July that Armenia will likely leave the CSTO instead of unfreeze its membership that he unilaterally suspended. This could be the pretext for requesting the withdrawal of Russian troops simultaneously with welcoming American PMCs. From his perspective, their deployment could function as an informal security guarantee vis-à-vis Azerbaijan and Turkiye since they’d think twice about endangering US citizens, especially those guarding a project called the “Trump Bridge”.
What the US wants to gain from this, apart from some easy profits, is setting into motion the sequence of events required for removing Russian forces from Armenia as explained above. The US can also monitor Turkish military traffic across the route to Central Asia while possibly stoking Azeri separatism in neighboring Iran’s majority-Azeri northern regions. Another benefit is that Trump could present this deal as having averted war and thus possibly raise the prospects that he’ll be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Armenia’s latest political unrest earlier this summer was driven in part by concerns that Pashinyan was on the brink of clinching a deal to open the Zangezur Corridor without any Russian role. That scenario coupled with Armenia’s possibly imminent withdrawal from the CSTO could leave Syunik vulnerable to an Azerbaijani(-Turkish?) invasion. He might have thus thought that inviting American PMCs to replace Russia’s FSB could placate his people, but they might still protest if he leases Armenian land to the US.
In the event that he does and isn’t deposed by a popular revolution or patriotic military coup, the “Trump Bridge” is expected to result in a surge of Turkish influence across Central Asia as explained here, which might then lead to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan defecting from the CSTO. The easiest means to this geopolitical end is for Armenia to cut an economic-security deal with the US that excludes Russia’s envisaged role in monitoring Turkish military traffic to Central Asia. It’s unclear how Russia could stop this.
One thousand PMCs? Assuming the cost of hiring one mercenary is $1,200 per day, the annual cost would be $438 million ($1,200 x 365 x 1,000). That’s more than a country with a $1.7 billion defense budget could afford.
But for the US, that is couch lint. Who will actually pay the piper?
Korybko is missing the key player in this story, Iran. Damage to Russia is more hypothetical (loss of influence, etc.), but damage to Iran in lost transit feel and oil sales will be direct and painful. Is Iran going to just sit and let Americans park themselves on it’s northern border? They’ll be able to see any projects from their side of the border, they’ll be able to support Armenian “resistance” groups that will be more than happy to blow critical infrastructure and if push comes to shove, they can infiltrate across the border and take action themselves.
Iran has far more at stake here and, especially since Aliyev allowed Israel to use Azeri territory to attack Iran, they don’t need to worry about alienating Aliyev, in fact they may be eager for some payback.
Iran for nearly 300 years has had a policy of not initiating wars, of being only on the defense.
As much as people are making noise about this, Russia’s influence in the region does not depend on who is checking passports in Zanzegur. All the economies in the region are dependent on the good will of Russia, and no amount of PMCs in a narrow mountain valley will make Russia any less dominant military power in the region.
As for Iran, the amount of traffic passing trough on that two lane road from one part of Azerbaijan to another is in no way commercially significant, no matter how much Aliyev is pitching it as the future of the regions trade routes. Iran’s and Azerbaijan’s railroads made an agreement at the end of last year to together develop a rail route from Azerbaijan to Nakhichevan trough Iran’s existing system, so Iran will likely be moving the bulk of the stuff anyway.
Iran opposes the corridor only because at the moment it seems to be a way of getting US/NATO troops to Iran’s border, and that Iran won’t have.