Strategic Partnership

Summary While the American mainstream media was busy discussing the fly on Mike Pence’s head during Vice Presidential Debate, the Armenian-Turkish conflict entered the second week of violence across the entire line of contact (LoC) between the Republic of Artsakh and Azerbaijan, and many regional and extra-regional powers took a neutral to stand and watch attentively from the sidelines. An attempt by Azerbaijani-Turkish and ISIS-linked formations to encircle Artsakh by taking over its strategic communication highways with the Republic of Armenia while carrying out devastating blows against Artsakh’s Defense Army in a new and enhanced blitzkrieg strategy has failed dramatically....

EVENT: Senior presidential adviser Jirair (Gerard) Libaridian resigned. SIGNIFICANCE: Libaridian’s departure comes at a time when Armenia has been mounting a relatively successful effort to build its international ties. ANALYSIS: On September 15, Jirair Libaridian announced that President Levon Ter-Petrosian had accepted his resignation as a senior foreign policy advisor, on purely personal grounds. Libaridian has been a key architect of Armenian foreign policy since independence, playing a central role in negotiations over Nagorno Karabakh and in warming relations with Turkey....