geopoliticalfutures.com [PDF] · #geopolitics
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- The fighting might well die down. Neither Azerbaijan nor Armenia wants to pay a steep price for Nagorno-Karabakh, and neither Russia nor Turkey is ready for a serious test of power, even if they were confident in where they stood. What is most interesting is the absence of the U.S. Washington has a long record of intervening in areas where it has limited interests, and where the price for achieving little will be high. This is why it was involved in the 2008 Russian-Georgian war, on Georgia’s side. It is now content to let Russia, Turkey and Iran balance each other.
Nagorno Karabakh Perch Perspectives is Jacob Shapiro, who used to be the core analyst at George "I founded Stratfor" Friedman's Geopolitical Futures. COVID has had George Friedman mostly staring into his navel and talking about that beaujolais he had back in the Crimea in 1952 while Jacob Shapiro is doing actual analysis with memes and in-jokes. He's worth subscribing to because so far as I know, he isn't charging anyone any money. I kinda think I get his emails 'cuz he stole George Friedman's mailchimp list.Whilst everyone distracts themselves with commentary, justifications, and criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tax returns, Armenia and Azerbaijan are preparing for war. (Everyone, that is, except us and Kim Kardashian. 2020 is weird, y’all.) Both sides have declared martial law and mobilized troops after sustained fighting in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, a landlocked Azerbaijani exclave with an Armenian majority that functions as a de facto autonomous state. As of this writing, two days of fighting have resulted in wildly different estimates of casualties on all sides, ranging from 16 killed in action to many hundreds dead. War is bad, but what makes the fighting over this small territory with a population of roughly 150,000 is the possibility that it could drag Turkey and Russia into a much broader conflict. Turkey has already pledged to support Azerbaijan “with all its means” and Armenia says it is ready to ask for Russia’s military assistance if it needs it.