Why Aliyev Thinks He Has to Attack Armenia Soon

Armenia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (FIS) released its first annual report, qualifying the complex security environment and the matrix of threats that Armenia faces, with a conditional prediction that it is not anticipating large-scale war to be initiated by Azerbaijan. While the underlying basis of the FIS’ predictions remain consistent with the available data and predictive modeling, the report does not, however, preclude the high-probability of Baku initiating surgical or strategic attacks against Armenia. For Aliyev, the initiation of interstate militarized conflict is not only a preference, but also a priority: he wants to attack because he thinks he has to attack.
Azerbaijan’s greatest geopolitical success after the 2020 war, at the structural level, was not simply the ethnic cleansing and absorption of Nagorno-Karabakh, but rather, the formation of a new regional distribution of power that established an immense power disparity with Armenia. Within the contours of Azerbaijan’s security architecture, the preservation of this power asymmetry remains its highest priority, over both territorial matters as well as any considerations of peace or stability. Baku’s grand strategy constructed after the November 9 ceasefire agreement envisioned three continuous developments: first, Azerbaijan will not only assume the posture of victor but will also assume posture of mini-hegemon dictating regional terms to Armenia, and not simply the peace process; second, the ability to impose its geopolitical will upon Yerevan stipulated maintaining Armenia’s state of post-war weakness, and by extension, the immense power parity established in the decade leading up to and after the war; and third, consolidate this regional (dis)balance of power by working with Russia to situate Armenia in an impossible position, with Russia refusing to meet its minimal obligation of selling arms to Armenia, while Yerevan lacking the ability, by virtue of its membership in the CSTO, of procuring weapons from Western markets.
Power Disparity As Baku’s Most Valuable Interest
At a strategic level, Baku envisioned an Armenia that would be denied the basic opportunity of providing for its own defensive capabilities, and in this context, an Armenia without minimal deterrence capabilities. Within the power constellations of any sub-system, such as the South Caucasus within the broader Eurasian system, the distribution of power between competing actors necessitates deterrence capabilities in order for the sub-system to have some semblance of a balance of power configuration. After the 2020 war, the regional balance of power transitioned to a regional imbalance of power, as the power disparity between Armenia and Azerbaijan became so immense that the distribution of power became both lopsided and heavily concentrated within Azerbaijan. Armenia was to remain at Azerbaijan’s mercy, because its minimal deterrence capabilities were not only decimated, but the ability to restore was obstructed by the Russo-Azerbaijani axis. In whatever iteration the interests, goals, and designs of Baku are qualified in, ranging from Aliyev’s absurd demands of Armenia in the negotiation process to the construction of a “Western Azerbaijan” narrative to persistent threats of reserving the right to preemptively use force, these are all reduced to preserving the most fundamental objective of Baku, and that is the preservation of the power disparity with Armenia.
As such, Aliyev’s greatest fear is Armenia’s ability, or the growing potential, of closing this power disparity. While understanding that Armenia cannot realistically achieve parity with Azerbaijan—at least in the immediate future—Aliyev, nonetheless, remains obsessed with obstructing Armenia’s ability of developing minimal deterrence capability. Understanding and qualifying Azerbaijan’s strategic thinking through this prism, it would be irrational for Aliyev not to initiate some militarized dispute with Armenia to disrupt it from attempting to close, regardless of the scope, the power gap. In analytical terms, whereas Aliyev’s grand strategy after the 2020 War sought to maintain or even expand the power disparity with Armenia, under the understanding that Russia would refuse to deliver any arms to Armenia and thus categorically reducing Armenia to a defenseless actor, Armenia’s Western pivot and policy of diversification ruptured this grand strategy constructed by Baku. In this context, Armenia went from not having any access to weapons to purchasing roughly $3 billion in armaments within a three-year window. For Aliyev, the greatest geopolitical and geostructural success that Azerbaijan has achieved since its post-Soviet independence stands at the risk of being ruptured. With the fundamentals of his grand strategy in the process of being jeopardized, Aliyev has assumed a posture that has puzzled many, leading to much confusion as to why he remains aggressive, uncompromising, and unreasonable when it comes to weaker, peace-seeking Armenia. For Aliyev, everything, from normalization of relations to establishing peace to achieving regional stability, are deemed as structural threats to the new balance of power he created after 2020. Thus, while everyone is concentrating on peace and stability, Aliyev remains obsessed in making certain that the distribution of power in the region, which guarantees a robust disparity with Armenia, is maintained. This remains, from Aliyev’s lens, the number one national interest of Azerbaijan.
It is precisely for this reason that Aliyev has intensified his rhetoric and concrete threats against Armenia, with the entirety of his justification hinged on one development: Armenia’s unexpected speed of rearming itself. “The ongoing armament of Armenia,” Aliyev declared, is a “new threat factor for the South Caucasus,” a claim that posits structural and geostrategic concerns from Baku’s lens. As such, Aliyev notes that it is in the national interest of his regime to preemptively attack Armenia and obstruct it from attempting to develop deterrence capabilities and thus close the power disparity: “I have already said this and I want to say it again that we cannot simply watch this as observers and do nothing,” for “Armenia’s arms race forces us to attract financial resources to military issues,” and not only “Armenia must stop immediately arming,” but the “weapons that have already been sent to Armenia must be returned.” To the untrained eye, Alyev’s claims border on the absurd, but observed through his paradigmatic lens, Aliyev is making a very simple claim: he cannot allow the disparity in the region’s distribution of power be touched or altered. Thus, he thinks he has no choice but to attack, for the core national interest of his country, as he defines it, is in the process of being endangered.
A large body of research demonstrates that in the domain of conflict continuity, democracies are not only more likely to be attacked, but also in post-conflict environments, authoritarian regimes are more likely to engage in persistent escalation. Further, whereas democracies are more willing to accept shifts in distribution of power, authoritarian regimes are less willing to tolerate shifts in disparities and are more likely to use force to rectify shifts in distribution of power. Considering the fact that conflict propensity of civilian autocrats are the highest, since they face the least domestic backlash, Aliyev remains well-suited to initiate militarized activities against Armenia to preserve his regime’s grand strategy. Further empirical studies show that personalist dictatorships, such as the Aliyev regime, in which leaders depend on only a small coterie of supporters, are more likely to initiate conflict than other authoritarian regime types. In this context, the type of regime that constitutes Aliyev’s is the most conflict-prone when compared to other forms of authoritarian regimes, such as juntas or elite-constrained regimes. To this end, when qualifying the type of dictatorship that characterizes the government in Baku and the propensity for conflict initiation on matters specific to distribution of power, even the extant scholarship supports the postulate that Aliyev will seek to use force, short of initiating large scale war, to disrupt Armenia’s ability to close the power asymmetry gap with Azerbaijan.
Why Aliyev Is Convinced He Has to Preemptively Use Force
In qualifying the behavior of war-prone personalist dictatorships, the need for power asymmetry is crucial if such a regime is going to engage in authoritarian conflict management. The capacity to control the terms of conflict with Armenia and to manage instability in the region requires the Aliyev regime to possess a large disparity in power capabilities vis-a-vis Armenia. Understood within this framework, it is in the perceived interest of the Aliyev regime to escalate and manage conflict persistence with Armenia; any other alternative remains antithetical to its perceived national interest, and as such, irrational. Thus, Aliyev refuses and will refuse to sign any peace treaty with Armenia because he views the establishment of peace as a process that will allow Armenia to methodically close the power asymmetry and thus disrupt the new (dis)balance of power that Aliyev constructed with Russo-Turkish support. And noting the threat that Baku feels from Armenia’s armament process and the perceived danger this poses to their grand strategy, it would be irrational for Aliyev not to act.
While Armenia has continued to enhance the diplomatization of its security, such as recently signing a Strategic Partnership with the United States and agreeing with the European Union to extend the EU Observation Mission for another two years, this, in of itself, will not suffice to deter Aliyev from attacking if he qualifies the threat to the balance of power configuration as severe. In essence, while Armenia has added additional layers of soft deterrence to its security architecture, Aliyev will be willing to attack and risk losing immense international diplomatic capital if he deems it necessary to preserve the power disparity. Within the domain of risk-propensity, from his lens, the risk of allowing Armenia to close the asymmetry gap is far more severe than dealing with the international fallout. It is within this realm of thinking that Aliyev thinks he has to, at the opportune moment, initiate some level of militarized action.
Azerbaijan will most likely refrain from undertaking a large-scale invasion, for such an approach is too costly, resource-intense, and high-risk, and noting Aliyev’s penchant for being intrinsically risk-averse, initiation of full-scale war will be deemed unnecessary. Aliyev will more likely opt for localized operations and incursions in the border areas, but his primary objective will be to initiate surgical strikes against Armenia’s new defense positions and advanced weaponry and weapons systems that have been procured from India and France. Baku’s underlying objective in preserving the power disparity is to preemptively attack Armenia’s new capabilities and thus disrupt and throw back Armenia’s improvements and advances in deterrence-building. Within this context, Aliyev cares less about absorbing or occupying more territories (that’s the cherry on top for him) and more about destroying Armenia’s rearmament process and the extent to which it is developing the capacity to resist Azerbaijan.
In essence, Aliyev is seeking to do what Armenia failed to do after the First Karabakh War and subsequent developments post-1994: limit the enemy’s ability from recovering and preserve the new balance of power. And to do this, he will do what Armenia refused to do after 1994: maintain conflict-persistence, impose terms through power asymmetry, and initiate controlled instability by using force.
(c) 2025, EVN
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