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Foreign Policy (23 July 2021)

Robert M. Cutler

Just as generals proverbially prepare for the last war, diplomats often prepare for the last peace—or at least for the last peace initiative. Usually, they fail for the same reason: Things have changed. So it is with the Minsk Group, established by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the 1990s to hold a peace conference on the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in Minsk—hence its name.

For 30 years, the Minsk Group failed to produce results; the recent victory by Azerbaijani military forces—ending Armenia’s occupation—leaves it with nothing left to do. It is now bankrupt and dead. The sooner it is buried, the sooner energies for real peace and reconciliation, not to mention physical reconstruction, can be turned to the future rather than the past.

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