Russia Took Advantage While the West Slept
By failing to offer realistic alternatives, the U.S. and Europe have left another region to the tender mercies of a predatory power.
This month marks the first anniversary of the cease-fire in the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the second between the two countries over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, in the southern Caucasus.
The first war ended in 1994, also with a cease-fire. Then the two sides agreed that the United States, France, and Russia would co-chair a negotiating process for a lasting solution.
In 2012, I was asked to be the U.S. representative in that process. Although the job’s official mandate laid out basic principles for any solution—among others, that any peacekeeping force would be multilateral—I found that there were some unwritten understandings as well. One of
