‘Land for Peace’

This chapter examines the trajectory and problems associated with the Minsk Process, the peace process addressing the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). It narrates the story of the peace process through a focus on three sets of consecutive problems: multiple and competing mediation efforts in the early 1990s, the structure and sequencing of the negotiation agenda over the following decade, and the growing subversion of the Minsk Process’s framework for a liberal peace by what are here conceptualised as ‘authoritarian conflict strategies,’ pursued by the parties to the conflict. These are identified as strategies of control, communalisation and coercion that undercut the liberal premises of the ‘Basic Principles’ negotiated by the parties since the mid-2000s. Underpinning these strategies is a preoccupation with the preservation of incumbent power to the detriment of other vital components of a comprehensive peace process, such as the problematization of historical narrative and cultural memory, the expansion of political participation, and the revitalisation of concepts of identity and community.