A de-Russified Caucasus? It’s too early to tell

DARIO’S COMMENT: Yes and no.

The Caucasus is certainly shifting its allegiance away from being overtly pro-Russian. A decade ago, Azerbaijan was a close ally of Putin. And Armenia had always been a close traditional ally of Russia, particularly due to the shared Christian heritage between the two countries. Today, the region has never seemed so distant from Russia.

But this shift in the Caucasus, together with rumors of a defusion of Iran and a mostly unified Gulf, may lead to a political reorganization of the wider Middle East. If this pact comes into being, it’s a clear sign that we’re seeing the greater Middle East retrace its polarities from a Shia-Sunni conflict to a Turkic-Arabic one. This tension suggests that Russian power, while diminished, will continue as a meaningful mediator and third party in the region’s conflicts and redevelopment opportunities.

But let’s start where this summer’s conflict resolution began:

A very Armenian coup: Pashinyan’s government had been at odds with the Armenian Church and its clergy for over a year, with the Church’s significant sway over its conservative society helping the religious institution function as a powerful opposition to Pashinyan’s government. It started with Church-organized mass protests against the government’s perceived lack of action during Azerbaijan’s successful offensive in 2023, and harsh denunciations against the Church by Pashinyan in response.

Russia is a strong backer of this conservative Church; their interests are closely aligned against Pashinyan due to his pivot to the West, which would involve a pact with NATO-backed Turkey and Azerbaijan, traditional Armenian enemies, as well as military agreements with France.

2025 saw the conflict intensify, particularly with the arrest of Russian-Armenian oligarch Samvel Karapetyan on June 19. Karapetyan was arrested on charges of publicly calling for a coup after implying the Church could be in a strong position to overthrow the government in some public comments.

It was a few days after that, on June 25, that the real bombshell dropped: the Armenian Investigative Committee (AIC), a public investigative body in Armenia, announced it had found evidence that a plot had been planned to overthrow PM Nikol Pashinyan and seize power by force in the country.

The coup plotters allegedly included two senior hierarchs in the Armenian Apostolic Church: Archbishops Bagrat Galstanyan and Mikael Ajapahyan.

The AIC disclosed that police raids had uncovered a significant cache of weapons supposedly held by the plotters, and claimed they planned to incite mass civil unrest in the country through numerous planned terrorist attacks. This assertion was based on leaked audio that included supposed recordings of the coup plotters, alongside a drafted ‘to-do’ list for a planned coup d’etat. These accusations notably led to the arrest of Archbishop Ajapahyan on 27 June, amid scuffles between police and members of the Armenian clergy at their headquarters in Etchmiadzin, among other key arrests of the Armenian clergy.

The verbal escalation between these Armenian institutions has only worsened throughout these events. In true Armenian fashion, for instance, the Prime Minister was accused of being circumcised by the spokesperson for the Armenian Apostolic Church and thus, not a true Christian. In response, Pashinyan proclaimed his willingness to undergo a thorough examination to demonstrate that he is a real Christian.

Behind the veil: But why have these events come to a head now?

On the one hand, you have next year’s Armenian elections, where Pashinyan is expected to win a thin plurality, only gathering around 11.5 percent of the vote. In other words, campaigning season has already begun.

Unfortunately for Armenia watchers, we can’t be sure this explains the timing of the failed clerical coup.

All we know is that it was allegedly discovered right as Erdogan’s attempt to mediate a Turkey-U.S.-backed deal on Zangezur for Armenia and Azerbaijan was being undertaken. CivilNet, a respected pro-Western Armenian daily, also expressed some skepticism over the plotting claims: they claimed the plotters “couldn’t even plan a wedding, much less an insurrection” and that it was led by “second-rate, disliked” figures by the wider Armenian public.

Could Pashinyan have brought this conflict to a head to forcibly reduce internal opposition to an upcoming proposition to engage with the Turkey-U.S. peace feeler? We’ll never know for sure.

Towards an Armenian-Azeri peace: The logistics corridor through Armenia’s Syunik could be fantastic news for the Caucasus.

Azeri rhetoric has been increasingly bellicose, particularly since it proved it could overwhelm Armenia’s military, thanks to its ample supply of modern Turkish military equipment, on two occasions in the last five years. Aliyev’s stated aim since the recapture of Nagorno-Karabakh has been a rather simple one: to join both parts of Azerbaijan together.

On the other hand, Armenia is in an increasingly enfeebled position. Russia, its traditional protector, had been increasingly wavering and weak in its support. While Armenia used to hold military sway over Azerbaijan in the 1990s, its now-enfeebled army has suffered dramatic reversals. Lacking the natural resources of the Azeris, this unequal power balance won’t go anywhere soon.

That’s why this deal, on the face of it, should help take this part of the Caucasus towards peace. It would make the U.S. and Turkey have a vested interest in keeping Azeri and Armenian tensions from boiling over. It would also remove much of the sting from Aliyev’s rhetoric, since his leadership would have achieved two historic goals: regaining Nagorno-Karabakh and unifying Azerbaijan’s territory. At least on paper.

The great consequences extend far beyond a pacification of Armenian-Azerbaijani tensions, however. It also suggests the very real inauguration of a pan-Turkic power which spans the Caucasus: Zangezur was the last remaining obstacle to a physical land and sea bridge between all Turkic territories.

While ethnicity isn’t the most significant delineator of geopolitical conflict lines, the close cultural ties it fosters among leaders, their business and diplomatic communities, means they should always be considered meaningful.

Especially when we consider how the rumored Grand Bargain is remaking the rest of the Middle East under a unified Gulf conglomerate: the GCC. This means, in short, that the Middle East may be returning to its status quo ante before Sykes-Picot: Arab versus Turkic.

While claiming the pre-Sykes-Picot Middle East was arranged into a Turkic north and an Arabic south is an exaggerated oversimplification, it broadly aligns with the region’s history. Save for a short period of Pax Arabica after the rise of Islam in the 7th century, the entry of Turkic migratory powers from Central Asia meant the region then became a constant tug and pull between Turkic domination and Arabic (or Arabic-tinged Egyptian) domination.

This power dynamic held for centuries. Most recently, it was the Arabic and Egyptian underbelly of the Ottoman Empire that was crucial to Western attempts to destabilize the Ottomans towards the late 19th century and in the First World War, as exemplified by Lawrence of Arabia.

Russia still has a foot in the Caucasian door, and not just because of the strong sympathy Armenian voters still feel towards it (60 percent of Armenians still view their traditional strategic patron favourably).

But because in the greater Middle East, whose Caucasian north is dominated by Islamic, Turkic forces, the Christian communities of Russia, Georgia and Armenia will naturally gravitate towards each other.

Especially if we consider the Grand Bargain’s premise, which begins with an American pullout from the region (and an Israeli defanging), leaving Russia as the only Christian power in the area.

Russia has also proven its ability to wield a military stick time and time again. An inefficient, incredibly costly, and badly organized stick, but a stick nonetheless. This has led the Georgia Dream party in Georgia to continually strive to toe a dangerous middle line between Western powers and Russia, for instance.

We foresee that this dynamic of Christian carrot and Russian army stick means it’s too soon to call Russia’s exclusion from the Caucasus as final.

THE BLIND SPOT COMMENT: No shit. Excuse our French.

There’s nothing more frustrating than being unable to access cutting-edge AI tools (like Veo 3) without VPNs because our zealous bureaucrats refused to keep their red-taped paws out of innovation.

But there’s a bigger story that interlaces with this one: the AI psychosis story. Izzy will probably regale you with a better version when she’s back from holiday. In short, over the past few weeks, there have been increasing stories going viral claiming that AI Chatbots can worsen and even induce psychosis.

This isn’t without grounds: human-trained AIs with reinforcement learning have adapted to our psychology and can shamelessly tell you what you want to hear. So it should come as no surprise that they can worsen someone already inclined towards mental imbalances.

Some have asked if there is a deeper layer to it. What if the commencement of this third industrial revolution, which promises to outstrip the revolutionary impact of the first two, and perhaps spawn a new form of synthetic life (if it hasn’t already), means ChatGPT and other AI Chatbots let humans peer into some underlying reality our brains may be incapable of processing?

There’s something shady enmeshed in these stories, however. As Izzy asked, who benefits from mass stories about AI-induced psychoses?

We think the answer is quite clear: it will satiate a perennial desire for bureaucratic control. In short, if AIs are labelled as dangerous, their providers must be licensed and overseen by our ‘competent’ bureaucratic authorities.

We’re looking at you, EU.

DARIO’S COMMENT: My opinion, which follows, could be fairly dismissed as stating the obvious. But it’s important to make it nonetheless.

There is no housing crisis among young people. Not exactly. There is an urban housing crisis, masquerading as a general housing crisis.

For the past year and a half, I’ve been travelling in Spain to acquire artisan contacts for a few products I’ve designed and made. What I saw was spectacular. Deep inside Spain’s supposedly dying interior, there are thriving and bustling towns. One is Ubrique, the world’s capital of luxury leather goods production. It reminded me of Hank Rearden’s factory in Philadelphia in Atlas Shrugged, or Columbus, Ohio, in Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One: a haven of hustle and bustle amid a sea of decline. But unlike these examples, Ubrique shines because of its anachronisms, not its technology.

The most obvious sign of prosperity in this town is that its streets are filled with young parents and their children, all of whom can easily afford the cheap, relatively large houses in the surrounding towns of the beautiful Sierra de Grazalema park.

The same goes for my cousins in the northern city of León, in the oft-derided deserted central plains of Spain. Unlike most of my highly educated, urbanite friends in prestigious corporate jobs (none of whom own a home), all of my cousins are homeowners. And they have normal jobs: one sells Adidas clothes and the other is a nurse. But they have ample disposable income, even after paying their cheap mortgages. And their cars get them anywhere they need to be, even if their homes are out of the way. Their quality of life is decidedly higher at less than 1/5 the income of my London-based friends.

Yes, it sounds obvious. But I’m just surprised that in an age of remote working we don’t tackle the youth housing crisis from this perspective. Encouraging young people to move to rural areas (with tax breaks, for example) would readily solve much of the housing crisis. Considering the collapse of livability and security in most European cities, I suspect this re-ruralisation trend will emerge regardless.