Trump gave his “COMPLETE and TOTAL endorsement” to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s re-election bid ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections on 7 June in a post on social media. He explained that “Soon, the United States and Armenia will break ground together on the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, which will transform the South Caucasus, and help our wonderful American Energy Companies gain access from Central Asia all the way to the United States.”
All of this advances the Neo-Reagan Doctrine, which refers to Trump 2.0’s aggressive rolling back of Russian influence across the world with a focus on its “Near Abroad”, particularly the South Caucasus and Central Asia. Last August’s “Trump Route for International Peace & Prosperity” (TRIPP) serves the dual purpose of a NATO military logistics corridor through the first region to the second across the energy-rich Caspian Sea. Its successful implementation would tighten Russia’s strategic encirclement.
Pashinyan’s re-election is required for that to happen, however, ergo why Trump and Vance before him endorsed his re-election. He’s therefore expected to win by hook or by crook, and he can count on the US and the EU (which tacitly endorsed his re-election) to turn a blind eye if he authorizes the use of force – including lethal – against protesters who might demonstrate against potential fraud. Pashinyan is simply too integral to the Neo-Reagan Doctrine for the US to allow him to be democratically replaced.
The successful implementation of TRIPP will complete Armenia’s pro-Western pivot, thus likely leading to a “divorce” from Russia that would probably include the departure of its troops, and expand NATO influence to Azerbaijan. About that country, it’s geostrategically located between Russia (particularly its occasionally restive Republic of Dagestan) and Iran on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, and its armed forces just completed their conformation to NATO standards last November.
Apart from being a shadow member of NATO, Azerbaijan is allied with Turkiye, and it also entered into de facto alliances with the UK and Ukraine since TRIPP’s announcement. As NATO’s outpost on the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan could then facilitate the bloc’s military logistics to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, the first of which NATO wants to “poach” from Russia as warned about here while both could build Trans-Caspian Pipelines to Azerbaijan then to the EU via TRIPP and Turkiye like Trump just alluded to.
Russia has always been opposed to the construction of such pipelines, but if NATO turns Azerbaijan into its regional bastion in the event that Russia doesn’t soon implement its own Monroe Doctrine in the region like it was recently urged to do here, then a Ukrainian-like security dilemma will follow. Regardless of whatever the outcome of such a dilemma might be, Russia would be placed on the strategic defensive right on its own doorstep yet again, thus amounting to another success of the Neo-Reagan Doctrine.
The sequence of events leading to the tightening of NATO’s containment noose around Russia’s southern flank, or at least the South Caucasus if Russia stops it from spreading into Central Asia, is dependent on Pashinyan’s re-election. If the opposition’s victory is “too big to rig”, then the US might orchestrate a Color Revolution to keep Pashinyan in power, failing which Azerbaijan and/or Turkiye might invade on the pretext of “restoring democracy after Russian meddling manipulated voters against Pashinyan”.
