In an unprecedented global action, almost 200 media outlets from 50 countries will simultaneously disrupt their front pages, homepages, and broadcasts to demand an end to the killing of journalists in Gaza and to call for international press access to the enclave.
On August 8th, American president Donald Trump hosted the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to announce a framework that could potentially end the two countries’ decades-long conflict. While many parts of the deal had been in place for almost a year*, the White House ceremony creates the need for swift action for the deal to stick. Europeans can influence the process, with their leverage growing as attention turns to the region’s possible integration into global markets.
“Peaceful relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan are a good thing, the role of the USA here is problematic, because the US is not part of the South Caucasus region,” in the interview with 168 Hours said Professor Jeffrey Sachs, renowned economist, professor, and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University’s Earth Institute.
Since this capitulating document was signed under duress, it is considered invalid under international law. Pashinyan is intentionally misrepresenting the “Peace Treaty” to convince the voters to return him to power in the 2026 parliamentary elections.
When it comes to solutions, Claudia Bonamini believes that: “We should all try to go a little beyond our fears, keep an open mind, seek encounters, and see people as people. We should also make the effort not to believe everything we are told about migration, and maybe try to experience and understand it for ourselves.”
In the press, Yerevan is eagerly trying to sell it as a “win”: apparently commerce will flow, peace will be incentivized, and outside management will guarantee fairness—even security. In reality, the first manufactured crisis, border provocation, or “security” demand from Baku will shred those assumptions completely.
Real peace and lasting stability in the region require solutions based on justice, balanced solutions acceptable to the parties, not residual outcomes built and imposed on coercion and geopolitical trade-offs.
Agreement on Establishment of Peace and Inter-State Relations between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan
Today, U.S. President Donald Trump will host Nikol Pashinyan and Ilham Aliyev in Washington. The meeting will likely end with an agreement on a transit route between Azerbaijan and its Nakhichevan exclave—packaged as a U.S.-brokered breakthrough, perhaps even branded the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP).
On the surface, this might look like diplomacy. In reality, it follows the classic playbook of the #ShockDoctrine by @NaomiAKlein: exploit a fragile, post-war Armenia—shattered, isolated, and politically cornered—to push through a geopolitical and economic project that serves foreign interests and emboldens regional aggressors, all while Armenia is too destabilized, misguided, and weak to resist.
