Politics is an arena of constantly shifting interests, where yesterday’s ally can become today’s opponent, and vice versa. In the aftermath of the 2020 war, the growing inconsistency in US-Azerbaijan relations made it increasingly clear that finding common ground between the Biden administration and Baku would be extremely difficult.
The situation was further complicated by the strength of Armenian-leaning political groups in the US Congress. Their influence created a formidable barrier to a peace process that, while increasingly unavoidable, continued to face obstacles to its realisation. However, despite these tensions, diplomacy did not stop. The channels between Washington and Baku remained open, as they had throughout the period.
In fact, during the post-conflict period, Washington arguably carried much of the responsibility for helping advance the peace agenda between Baku and Yerevan. At a time when the Armenian lobby and its political allies were seeking to slow the process, they had considerable influence in both Congress and the White House. That made the United States not just an outside observer of the peace process, but a key actor whose policy choices could either accelerate reconciliation or contribute to further delay.
Therefore, transformation in US-Azerbaijan relations and the emergence of a new peace framework between Azerbaijan and Armenia are best understood not only as separate diplomatic developments, but as parts of the same geopolitical process.
However, the turning point came with President Ilham Aliyev’s visit to the United States on 8-9 August 2025. The visit marked a significant change in the relationship between Baku and Washington while also providing the political setting for the initialling of a peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
For Azerbaijan, the moment was the culmination of a long and difficult process, because the country entered the post-2020 period determined to translate its new position into a wider regional settlement. That required military strength, diplomatic persistence and, ultimately, a reassessment of relations with major powers.
As mentioned earlier, during the Biden administration, relations between the US and Azerbaijan deteriorated significantly. Baku viewed Washington’s approach to the South Caucasus as increasingly one-sided and insufficiently attentive to the region’s new realities. The administration’s emphasis on conflict, confrontation and political divisions, in Azerbaijan’s reading, failed to recognise the country’s position as the region’s leading power and complicated efforts to establish a durable post-war settlement. Besides, it reflected two different approaches to the South Caucasus.
The Biden-era approach was heavily shaped by the unresolved consequences of the conflict and by concerns surrounding Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani government regarded that policy as a continuation of a tendency to treat the region primarily through the prism of conflict rather than through the realities created by the 2020 war and the subsequent developments.
Nevertheless, Donald Trump’s return to the White House changed that equation.
Trump’s foreign policy placed greater emphasis on transactional diplomacy, strategic interests and negotiated settlements. His contacts with President Aliyev before returning to the presidency, including correspondence between the two leaders, helped create the basis for a different relationship with Baku.
Washington increasingly came to see Azerbaijan as an important actor in a broader strategic landscape stretching from the Caspian Sea to Europe and beyond but not simply as a party to a regional dispute. And that reassessment produced tangible results.
President Aliyev’s August 2025 visit to Washington generated an agreement to prepare a Charter on Strategic Partnership between the governments of Azerbaijan and the United States. The subsequent decision to waive the restrictions associated with Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act further demonstrated the change in Washington’s approach.
More importantly, the diplomatic reset was connected to regional connectivity.
The agreement on the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, or TRIPP, gave the long-discussed Zangazur corridor a new geopolitical framework. What had previously been largely presented as a regional transport issue acquired a much broader significance, where connectivity became part of the architecture of peace.
That is perhaps the most important feature of the emerging US-Azerbaijan relationship. Its transformation is not simply about bilateral diplomacy. It is increasingly tied to the question of what kind of South Caucasus emerges after decades of conflict.
The later contacts between the two presidents, followed by US Vice-President JD Vance’s visit to Azerbaijan and the signing of the strategic partnership charter, reinforced this direction.
The same logic applies to the peace process with Armenia.
So, the initialling of the peace agreement in Washington on 8 August 2025 became not an isolated diplomatic event. It became the endpoint of a process in which the balance of power between the two countries had fundamentally changed.
Above all, Azerbaijan entered the negotiations as the state that had restored control over its internationally recognised territory. Armenia, meanwhile, had to confront the consequences of the collapse of the previous regional order.
This distinction matters because the history of the conflict cannot easily be separated from the politics of the peace that followed it.
Before 2020, Armenia had maintained control over Azerbaijan’s internationally recognised territories for decades. During the 44-day war, Armenian forces also launched attacks against Azerbaijani cities. After the war, concerns about revanchism remained an obstacle to a comprehensive settlement.
The decisive change came in 2023, when Azerbaijan’s military operation ended the separatist structure in Karabakh and fundamentally altered the strategic balance.
From Baku’s perspective, it was this sequence of events that created the conditions in which peace became possible. Armenia’s subsequent acceptance of the principles underlying the agreement was therefore not simply a voluntary diplomatic conversion. It reflected the new realities established on the ground.
Moreover, it should be recalled that the five principles forming the basis of the peace agreement were proposed by Azerbaijan. And that gives Baku a particularly strong claim to describe itself as an architect of the peace that followed.
However, the significance of the process goes beyond the question of who won and who lost.
The real test of victory is whether military success can be converted into a stable political order.
That is where the current phase becomes more consequential. The post-war settlement has increasingly shifted the South Caucasus away from the logic of territorial confrontation and towards questions of borders, sovereignty, connectivity and regional integration.
Armenia’s retreat from revanchist positions, its movement towards constitutional changes and the wider discussion of a new regional security environment all form part of that transition.
There is an instructive historical comparison. The Second World War ended in 1945, but Franco-German reconciliation took years to acquire a durable political framework, culminating in the Élysée Treaty of 1963. The Azerbaijani-Armenian process has moved considerably faster. Only two years after Azerbaijan’s 2023 operation, the two sides initialled a peace agreement in Washington.
That speed clearly demonstrates the extent to which the strategic balance had already changed.
Aliyev’s achievement, in this interpretation, lies in using the resulting balance of power to pursue a political settlement. Azerbaijan’s strategy has been to ensure that the post-war order reflects the realities created on the ground while also offering a framework for wider regional connectivity.
This is why the transformation of US-Azerbaijan relations matters so much.
Washington’s new engagement with Baku has coincided with the emergence of a peace process that neither side could have realistically pursued from the same positions that existed before 2020. The United States has increasingly positioned itself not just as an observer of the South Caucasus, but as a participant in constructing its next geopolitical architecture.
The significance of August 2025, therefore, extends beyond a presidential visit or a diplomatic ceremony, particularly representing a transition from the South Caucasus defined by an unresolved conflict to one increasingly shaped by the politics of peace, connectivity and strategic competition.
For Azerbaijan, the objective has been clear: to turn military victory into political leverage and political leverage into a lasting regional settlement.
The real challenge now is ensuring that the settlement survives the politics of the future.
Peace, after all, is not secured when an agreement is initialled. It is secured when the realities that once produced war are replaced by incentives strong enough to make renewed conflict increasingly unthinkable.