A Few Words about that 'Peace Summit' in DC

The past few days have seen a considerable amount of (somewhat premature) euphoria regarding a 'peace summit' in Washington DC between Donald Trump, Azerbaijan's Ilham Aliyev, and Armenia's Nikol Pashinyan. Contrary to some reports, this did not involve the signing, but the initialing of a long-sought peace agreement between the two states: a crucial difference, even if the initialing in itself can be seen as progress in a conflict which has eluded a more final conclusion for decades.

The summit also resulted in the adoption of several ancillary arrangements as part of a package mediated by the Trump administration, some more significant than others. Inter alia, the abolition of the already moribund OSCE Minsk Group - the main format for negotiations prior to the 2020 war - had long been one of Azerbaijan’s key demands, as had the lifting of a long-standing US arms sales ban under section 907 of the Freedom Support Act. Conversely, Baku officially affirmed its adherence to Armenia’s territorial integrity by accepting the ‘Alma Ata principles’, without, however, explicitly committing to withdrawing from the several hundred square kilometres of undisputed Armenian land captured following the 2020 Karabakh War.

But, undoubtedly, the main outcome of the peace summit was the somewhat sycophantically named ‘Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity’ (TRIPP). This initiative aimed to resolve one of the outstanding sticking points between the two antagonists. The Russian-negotiated ceasefire of November 2020 had included a Russian-controlled transportation link between Azerbaijan proper and its exclave of Nakhichevan as one of its nine points. However, in the years since, Baku had demanded that this link across Armenian territory - referred to by itself as the 'Zangezur Corridor' - receive extra-territorial status, something adamantly rejected by Yerevan.

Moscow - long supportive of the Azerbaijani position - has now suffered a significant setback: Armenian resistance to Russian involvement and Baku’s recent deterioration in relations with Russia have prompted the adoption of a US-led ‘creative solution’: this involves the partial outsourcing of some of the Armenian state’s functions to a US/Armenian consortium with the exclusive rights to develop and manage communications and transportation over that strategic link. US individuals will handle front-office functions, while their Armenian counterparts will oversee the application of Armenian legislation in the background.

Baku's stated aim of achieving a maximally frictionless link to its exclave, and, further, to Turkey, will thus be achieved; meanwhile the government in Yerevan will be able to claim the absence of extraterritoriality in view of the continued application of Armenian legislation and the operation's formally commercial nature. For its part, Washington will gain an important foothold in the South Caucasus by controlling a crucial part of the 'Middle Corridor' between Central Asia and Turkey. A 'win-win' for all involved - or so it would appear.

It is important to note here that much of this framework as yet remains on paper: its most important elements remain in the planning stages, and a final peace accord between the parties has not been concluded. And, to paraphrase Robert Burns, even the best-laid peace plans of men can go awry: and in the particular case of last Friday's outcomes, the peace process and the package outlined above still face a number of vulnerabilities and challenges which, when taken into account, should temper the irrational exuberance seen in some quarters over the past few days.

In fact, the general historical record includes a great number of such processes regarding protracted conflicts that, in the end, failed to live up to their initial promise for any number of reasons: lack of commitment by guarantors, by the parties themselves, changes in government, shifts in the international context, disgruntled spoilers, and the like. The Oslo accords regarding Israel-Palestine come to mind; but so do the peace processes in Sri Lanka, or between North and South Vietnam in 1973, all of which resulted in renewed violent conflict after the initial promises of peace - and associated Nobel prizes - had worn away. More recently, the much-touted proposal for Abraham accords - a brain child of the very US administration now pushing TRIPP - was followed by the dramatic escalation in the Middle East we see today.

Challenges to the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace process - as envisaged in Washington DC - come at three different levels: the systemic, i.e. from shifts in the international system as a whole, which we now know to be highly unstable, and most probably transitioning to a new paradigm; the regional, that is, from sidelined and aggrieved regional powers, in this case Russia and Iran; and the domestic, or, in other words, the political processes within Azerbaijani and Armenian state and society. Let's go through these levels one by one.

From a systemic perspective, some might present this as a successful hegemonic intervention aimed at upholding a rules-based order in the face of a possible Azerbaijani land-grab in southern Armenia, or Russian post-imperial meddling in the South Caucasus; a less charitable view would be that of a great power exploiting the weakness of a cornered state and the desperation of its leaders, for low-cost geopolitical opportunism and international prestige. With the Liberal International Order - if it ever truly existed - in its death throes, it might perhaps be more accurate to use the second, less charitable characterisation, not least in light of fundamental changes in its onetime liberal hegemon, the United States.

Sycophantic nomenclature can thus only go part way in addressing the Trump administration's performative, fickle and unpredictable nature; more than that, its clearly transactional view of international politics cannot be ignored over the longer term. The price Trump's America is willing to pay to keep hold of that easy win once the going gets tough remains an open question; so does the price it is willing to make others - in this case, Armenia - pay for its continued patronage. With Ukraine now facing a US administration all too willing to barter away its territory in talks with Moscow, serious questions should be asked about what would happen if and when the implicit engagement of the US in the region through TRIPP requires the expenditure of political, economic or military capital. These arrangements will also face a reckoning with a change in administration in Washington DC: there appears to be a substantial personal element in this 'deal', and whether subsequent administrations will cling on to something that does not appear to be part of America's redefined core interests - in the Western hemisphere and, perhaps, East Asia - is also open to questioning.

At the regional level, Russia and Iran pose the greatest potential challenges to TRIPP. Contrary to the more hyperbolic claims that this deal means the ejection of the former from the region, Moscow still maintains a substantial and potentially disruptive economic and military presence, notably in Armenia. Tehran, for its part, has made its opposition to any extraterritorial arrangements in Armenia's Syunik province clear, quite apart from its obvious - and recently reiterated - unease at a substantially bolstered American presence in the region.

TRIPP might not involve a formal cession of sovereignty; but, over the longer term, it would create a potential informal mechanism influencing Armenia's foreign policy and reducing its ability to pursue national interests where they diverge from the United States', unwillingly drawing it into the maelstrom of conflicts between the United States and Iran or Russia. Neither Russia nor Iran would have to be remotely hegemonic in the South Caucasus to effectively act as spoilers if either saw the arrangement as aimed at itself: it would therefore be a major mistake to dismiss these two powers' ability to thwart and sabotage if their interests are not taken into account.

Yet, these considerations would not require Moscow's or Tehran's explicit approval or participation: even their grudging acquiescence would suffice. Early signals from Tehran and Moscow have been mixed at best; maintaining their acquiescence will require a great deal of diplomatic finesse and restraint from all sides in the deal, not least in Washington DC, where neoconservative voices are already profiling TRIPP in terms of their particular interventionist Iranian obsession, with potentially disastrous consequences for Armenia in particular, and the wider region more generally. This is where Trump's previously mentioned non-interventionist and transactional instincts may prove paradoxically beneficial to the arrangement, highlighting the complex - and contradictory - realities which will surround the project in coming years.

Finally, when it comes to the domestic dynamics in Azerbaijan and Armenia, what stands out is the difference between the two states, their societies, and their political elites. Azerbaijan's fabulously corrupt Aliyev family has been firmly in control of an authoritarian dictatorship since 1994; on the other hand, the domestic politics of Armenia - an as yet imperfect liberal democracy - remain particularly toxic, fractious and polarised. Either side provides a very different set of potential challenges to the peace process.

A cynic might claim that, in the absence of a functional opposition, Azerbaijan's authoritarianism makes the task of pushing through any final agreement easier. This would hold if it weren't for the propaganda narratives pumped out by the regime since 2020, where Ilham Aliyev is presented as the 'liberator' of Nagorno-Karabakh, and the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan continues to be depicted in at times openly and crudely racist and essentialist terms. That much of the recent repression of civil society has also centred on pro-peace groups and activists should also provide those with a more blinkered view of Baku's intentions with food for thought.

The question very much remains whether the ruling dynasty could pivot its sources of legitimacy to something other than the nationalist jingoism of recent years, from 'Aliyev the Conqueror' to 'Aliyev the Peacemaker'. Baku has also long maintained a multi-vectoral foreign and security policy which would by no means preclude a pivot back to Russia - and away from any arrangements under Western auspices - should that be deemed necessary, or advantageous in the future. A more than fleeting interest in the peace process would therefore require a careful monitoring of Azerbaijan's official rhetoric and media discourses in coming months and years for the potential emergence of an alternative mobilisational narrative.

Armenia’s situation is more complex. In what remains a risky and incomplete move, Pashinyan's elected government is still managing its crushing defeat in the 2020 war by recalibrating the country's foreign and security policies away from long-standing dependence on Russia. The past few years have also seen a slew of unilateral concessions to Azerbaijan, with little to show for in terms of tangible and visible gains, save perhaps for the absence of a full-scale assault on Armenia proper: the population of Nagorno-Karabakh was ethnically cleansed in 2022, the Turkish border remains shut (even after the Washington summit), Armenian prisoners remain in Baku, and Azerbaijani troops still occupy several hundred square kilometres of Armenian territory captured after the 2020 war.

Armenia's imperfect democracy makes the success of the Washington process dependent on the vagaries of Armenia's electoral cycle and its incumbent government's record, which is certainly open to legitimate criticism. This is all the more significant because of one precondition still insisted upon by Baku before the final conclusion of any peace agreement: a change in Armenia's constitution. The next parliamentary polls - and, presumably, said constitutional referendum - are scheduled for 2026; and it remains to be seen whether the prime minister - who, with an approval rating of a mere 13%, is at best the least unpopular of Armenia's politicians - will be able to persuade a largely disillusioned or undecided population to back a peace agreement that was largely the result of imposition rather than mutually respectful negotiation.

Pashinyan and his entourage, who came to power in 2018 through a democratic revolution, now face a dilemma. They might face a choice between risking the collapse of the peace process, which has become synonymous with the Prime Minister’s person, or pushing it through by authoritarian means. The auspices are not good in that regard. The domestic debate on Armenia's geopolitical orientation, and its relations with Russia, Turkey and Azerbaijan has, in effect, degenerated into a vulgar shouting match in which opposition figures routinely describe the Pashinyan government as one of 'Turkish occupation', while any criticism or questioning - however legitimate or articulate - of choices made by the government are dismissed as the work of 'Russian agents', a charge which might or might not be spuriously levelled to silence or sideline opponents in the run-up to next year's vote.

The absence of a healthy debate and a clear democratic choice in 2026 would risk creating a festering wound in Armenian society, potentially undermining any agreement signed, and imposed, by a government lacking in legitimacy over the long term. Not that the West would care. After all, the ethnic cleansing of minorities and the extirpation of democracy can be tolerated when geopolitics so demand; doubly so when it comes to the Trump administration.

The word you were looking for is ‘Technofascism’. Here’s why.

Up to a few years ago, many commentators dismissed the idea that Trump, and the associated MAGA movement, could adequately be described as ‘fascist’. It was said that the movement was too decentralised and undisciplined; that it lacked the militarism, territorial expansionism, and general cult of violence and power typical of the fascist currents dominant in the 1930s; and that, crucially, it still adhered to democratic politics - albeit of a populist kind - in contrast to the openly and virulently anti-parliamentary predecessor ideologies.

Despite obvious movement in the above-mentioned criteria in recent weeks, some observers still consign the description of the MAGA movement as ‘fascist’ to the realm of left-wing over-reaction; and, at first sight, they have a point. 

To be sure, Trump still doesn’t fit historian Stanley G. Payne’s backward-looking definition of the term. He definitely negates liberalism and socialism, and the more genuine, non-radical form of conservatism espoused by the now-marginalised Republican old guard, and one can certainly detect a personality cult among Trump’s followers - from the sycophants surrounding him to the rank-and-file MAGA Republicans. But America is not a dictatorship (yet), and its small-state, pro-capital policies contradict the idea of a large, intrusive state aimed at regulating economic and social relations. Meanwhile, the romantic symbolism and autocratic mass mobilisation - think of SS runes and black- and brownshirts - seen in previous iterations also appear absent, bar a few Nazi salutes by the likes of Musk and Bannon.

But the central question here is not whether whatever ideology underlies Trumpism fits a definition devised to capture the essence of a movement based mostly in the period between the two World Wars; on the contrary, the question should be whether that definition fits the requirements and specificities of our age. After all, while the current iteration of fascism might not tick all the 1930s boxes, it would be naive to believe that a movement inhabiting the same space on the political spectrum would manifest itself in the same way today as it did nearly a century ago, one ocean away.

Some publications have recently applied the term ‘technofascism’ to describe the increasingly sinister amalgamation of over-powerful, billionaire tech oligopolists with a hollowed-out government. The designation deserves greater attention and certainly credibility beyond this particular usage, for it adequately captures the dynamics of a fundamental changed social space hosting a substantially similar ideology, in modified, updated form. 

Ideologies are shaped by society as much as they shape societies; and Western societies have changed beyond recognition since the 1930s. At the time, they were still dominated by large, pyramidically structured organisations - genuine mass parties, trade unions, and the like; meanwhile, the birth of modern mass media – film, radio - had lent a rigid top-down structure to their information space. The world’s first experience at total war had also thoroughly militarised Europe’s political culture, while - later combined with the great depression - it drew power away from the super-rich of the gilded age towards a growing state. These developments combined to enable rigid, centralised control by totalitarian dictators, more or less centralised economic planning, and equally centralised indoctrination by their propagandists, exemplified by the likes of Joseph Goebbels.

The Trumpist version of fascism - techno-fascism - is the result of the more diffuse forms of social organisation during ‘late neoliberalism’. Today, we live in a world where, to paraphrase the great American political scientist Robert Putnam, people ‘bowl alone’: our societies have become atomised into their constituent individuals to an unprecedented degree. Our information space has, moreover, become superficially ‘democratised’, with anyone with an opinion seemingly able to send it into the ether at minimal cost. Trumpism is also the result of a more diffuse form of military exhaustion: imperial overstretch, in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Its romantic symbolism also remains distinctly modern: based on idealised elements drawn from the history of a relatively young republic rather than myths from an imagined ancient Germanic or Roman past, adding yet another layer of obfuscation. 

This neoliberalism adds another point of difference. In contrast to the 1920s and 1930s, military adventures and economic crises have not resulted in the reduction of inequality: quite on the contrary, our political economies are now dominated by a global, largely unaccountable multi-billionaire class, with unseen concentrations of capital among a select number of rentiers who have, in effect, monopolised vast swathes of the virtual economy.

To expect these very different forms of socio-economic organisation, and a completely different cultural and historical context to produce the same kind of extreme right-wing politics is, in fact, dangerous: it causes us to misperceive the instances where movements inhabiting the same, extreme-right position on the political spectrum take power, and apply programmes that, while neoliberal in form, are still distinctly fascist in content. 

Social atomisation has combined with this form of extreme inequality to produce technofascism: a system where small government allies itself with a technological oligarchy to discipline and control. What Trump and his minions have understood better than any of us is that he who controls the algorithms and AI learning models will be able to manipulate us all in ways unimagined even by George Orwell. 

Mass mobilisation – and incitement - occur from behind the computer screen, through timelines carefully – or, in a more cynical vein, carelessly – curated by algorithms and an absence of basic fact-checking; lies no longer become true merely because they are repeated ad infinitum in newspapers and on tv, but because they are pronounced, reposted, and boosted by these algorithms; and giving the right kind of billionaire his space at an increasingly corrupt trough works wonders when it comes to maintaining a self-interested discipline among the super-wealthy. Add to this the almost religious faith in – billionaire-controlled - AI as a cure-all, and the dangers of denying the true nature of this regime become clear.

Trump and his kin do not need regimented party blackshirts, a federal propaganda ministry, or centrally devised four-year economic plans. Instead, going with the times, they outsource their ‘muscle’ to a motley crew of adequately incited rioters, their disinformation to tech bros, and their economic activity to an informally networked billionaire oligarchy. The message remains the same: scapegoating of minorities (Muslims and immigrants, not Jews); imperial megalomania (Canada and Greenland, not Poland or the Mediterranean); the worship of pure power-politics (and those world leaders who practice it); virulent anti-intellectualism (no book burnings but mass deletions of data); and a personality cult which demands absolute submission to a leader (as seen during Republicans’ reprehensible behaviour in Congress). The end point of all of this is not a celebration of some populist form of democracy, but a hollowing out of any form of participation, camouflaged by the de-centralised nature of fascism in its new, technological guise.

This makes calling things by their proper name especially important, not least in the United Kingdom. For Keir Starmer to continue pretending that we still live in 2001, that the United States has not fundamentally changed, that we can still allow for dependencies to be created with elements of this illiberal ecosystem, is at best naïve, at worst negligent. Beyond the niceties of realpolitik, Trump’s technofascist regime should be called out, and approached with the healthy distrust it deserves: as a threat to the fundamental values that underly the very fabric of the open, democratic society liberals and progressives claim to aspire to.

In Praise of (Pooled) Sovereignty

Liberals have long maintained a contradictory attitude to the idea of sovereignty. The idea of the rule of law administered within the territories of the nation-state was central to the emergence their preferred political system in the 19th century. On the other hand, those same liberals’ subsequent embrace of globalisation and universal values also implied a withering of that state’s power: throughout the latter half of the 20th century, economic interdependence, and a deference to collective - and, in the EU’s case, supra-national - arrangements became part of the Liberal International Order’s modus operandi.

In the West, the result was the emergence of what political scientists like Adler and Barnett described as a ‘security community’; a cluster of states between whom war had become unthinkable. Centred on the United States, underpinned by shared liberal values, norms, and institutions, this select group represented the pinnacle of the global order. There may have been occasional divergences - emerging, in no small part, from America’s claims to ‘exceptionalism’ - but the overall direction of travel was the same: one where the world, and the security community itself, was to be ‘made safe for democracy’, or, in a more cynical vein, shaped to the requirements and preferences of the dominant West.

Mutual trust was the common currency of that community; it ensured that dependencies were not seen as a problem. Europe might have been lethargic in its defence spending, but it trusted America to maintain a sufficient interest in its security to get away with such free-riding. Intelligence sharing was, again, done quite matter-of-factly, especially between the members of the so-called ‘Five Eyes Alliance’. The penetration of open societies by American tech titans, their access to the personal data of Europeans, their control of the information space was not seen as problematic. Sovereignty became an afterthought in this world of ‘shared values’.

This nonchalant attitude will now come to haunt liberals in the West, and throughout the world, in the most unexpected ways. Indeed, the extent to which its operation in favour of liberal order was dependent on the good graces of the unipole – the United States – as a liberal power was often taken for granted. Open societies with near-transparent borders – at least regarding capital and information – are all very well when a liberal hegemon dominates the resulting flows; it’s an entirely different matter when that power turns illiberal. At that point, the lack of sovereignty turns into an absence of firebreaks against subversion and state capture.

Europe has made itself vulnerable to manipulation in a borderless world. Its leaders were overly complacent when they allowed their states to become energy dependent on Putin’s Russia, all in the name of the supposedly conflict-suppressing wonders of ‘interdependence’. They also allowed their belief in the Transatlantic ‘security community’ to blind themselves into complete subservience to America’s tech titans: indeed, rather than supporting an indigenous IT sector on this side of the Atlantic, the mantras of ‘free trade’ and an ‘open internet’ led to the outsourcing of our IT, and, crucially, virtual information spaces, so Silicon Valley.

Europe’s elites were asleep at the wheel. And while this was somewhat excusable in an era when the United States was seen as a bulwark of liberal democracy, now that a rentier tech billionaire class has allied itself with a retrograde nativist cabal in DC, it is no longer an option. Elon Musk’s appropriation of the platform formerly known as ‘Twitter’ as his personal plaything is a harbinger of even darker things to come; as is Jeff Bezos’ evisceration of Washington’s newspaper of record into a Pravda-like ideological mouthpiece for neoliberalism.

What makes this moment particularly dangerous is the plausible deniability of control and manipulation, and the use of ‘freedom’ as an empty slogan geared towards justifying a free hand for this plutocratic alliance. By nature, contemporary social media appear democratic and open, a free-for-all where even the most insignificant individual can make a mark; Artificial Intelligence allows for what, again, appear to be innocent flows of information from machine to citizen. 

Scratch the surface, and the control of algorithms and machine-learning models becomes of paramount importance. For tech billionaires, nothing would be more desirable than having a free and self-serving hand in surreptitiously shaping and distorting the very essence of debate and knowledge, rather than having to defer to democratically elected governments upholding their respective societies’ fundamental values, including limiting their plutocratic influence. Musk’s and Bezos’ antics, coupled with the allied Trump administration’s ostentatious and transparently hypocritical declarations on ‘freedom,’ align perfectly with this logic.

This brings me back to the value of sovereignty. If, in the past, it was seen, by liberals, as a relic of the past, in this 21st century, it deserves a thorough reappraisal. Perhaps not in its national form - which would probably condemn Europe to the status of easily divisible, relatively small, squabbling states and statelets – but as a result of a further deepening of European integration, and an abandonment of the messianic universalist fantasies of the past. Insisting on a regulatory firewall should be the order of the day, rather than the delusion that Trump’s United States - or, indeed, a chainsaw-wielding Musk - could be relied upon, like before, with our citizens’ data, and outsized control over the information sphere and the knowledge economy, as Keir Starmer appears to do. 

Other forces – including the need for stronger defensive capabilities against Russia, and the uncertainties of increasingly walled-off manufacturing economies – may, or may indeed not, drive Europe towards that updated appreciation for the need to create and maintain high-tech information capabilities that stand on their own, rather than defer to the vagaries of the American oligarchy. Meanwhile, it’ll have to stand together and pool sovereignty, or lose it as it is squeezed between more coherent units – like the United States and China – who dominate the sectors of the future today. The clock is ticking, and time is not working in the continent's favour.

Whither Armenia's 'Velvet Revolution'?

To say that recent events in Armenia have caught observers – including yours truly - by surprise would an understatement.  Its hybrid, semi-authoritarian regime, while highly unpopular, appeared relatively well-entrenched: all major challenges to its hold on power – usually following one of the country’s perennially flawed elections – had been successfully seen off in recent decades.  The population had seemingly been cowed into apathy through a deft combination of repression (with the killing of opposition demonstrators in March 2008 as a particular low point), electoral bribes, administrative resources, ‘political technologies’, and the ever-present safety valve of emigration, to which the country had lost hundreds of thousands of its best and brightest – and possibly most rebellious – since independence. 

The ongoing ‘velvet revolution’, as its protagonists call it, has put most of these certainties in doubt: a new generation of activists, most of whom are too young to remember the collapse of the Soviet Union, has taken over the streets of Armenia’s capital, Yerevan.  The trigger was an attempted sleight of hand typical of the post-Soviet regimes that perennially hover between fully-fledged authoritarianism and pretend democracy: the ruling Republican Party had ensured a transition from a presidential to a parliamentary constitution in recent years, only to hand the now powerful Prime Ministership to the former President, Serzh Sargsyan, in a bid to allow him to maintain power beyond his two-term, ten-year limit, turning what appeared to be a welcome piece of democratic reform into a legislative hoax.

On Trump, the Populist Wave, and the Forgotten Virtues of Qualitative Approaches

What really bothers me about Trump’s win is not just the clear disconnect it has revealed between the political and economic elites and the ‘man on the street’; it is also the way it has revealed a dangerous blind spot in the social sciences, which have, in general, either moved towards greater quantification (and therefore an increased distance between themselves and their subject-matter), or have systematically prioritised societal discourses and practices as top-down, unidirectional, elite-led phenomena.

The War on Experts: Why it Matters

Politicians like power, and they do so for a variety of reasons.  Most believe their ideas deserve to be realised for the sake of the public good, or at the very least rationalise their ambition in terms of this adherence to a higher ideal; very few would unashamedly admit to vying for power for its own sake.  In democratic states, the distinction is, in any case, hard to make: no politician was ever elected on a platform of unadulterated, unjustified ambition.

How War in Nagorno-Karabakh Could Spread – and Become a Major Problem for Europe

Every now and then, the West is reminded of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom it knows nothing (as Neville Chamberlain once said). Nagorno-Karabakh is such a place, a tiny enclave that has caused strife between neighbouring Azerbaijan and Armenia even before they gained independence from the Soviet Union.

While recognised as part of Azerbaijan by the international community, the ethnic Armenians living in the Nagorno-Karabakh region fought an independence war to a standstill in 1994. It is now essentially an independent republic supported by Armenia, and while the fragile truce that has held from 1994 on has been regularly breached, the latest bout of fighting is the most serious escalation of violence to date.