Amid ongoing regional challenges and a history of failed external initiatives, the countries of the South Caucasus are beginning to explore new ways of working together on their terms. Past efforts led by larger powers have often sidelined local priorities, highlighting the need for a format that reflects the region’s interests and dynamics.

By Robert M. Cutler
A recent meeting in Tbilisi suggests that such a shift may be underway. On 17 April 2025, a trilateral meeting between Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia took place in Tbilisi, at the level of the three countries' deputy ministers of foreign affairs. This meeting represents the first-ever formal trilateral consultations and ended with an agreement for further talks, including developing a more comprehensive roadmap and establishing mechanisms to support its implementation.

To understand the significance of this shift, it is important to recall previous attempts at regional cooperation that failed to take root. Earlier efforts to establish regional frameworks—such as the “3+3” initiative, which united Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia with Russia, Turkey, and Iran—ultimately failed to gain momentum.

Tbilisi declined to participate, unwilling to sit alongside Russia following the 2008 war and the continuing occupation of Georgian territory. Armenia, too, had significant reservations. Ultimately, the arrangement offered little space for the South Caucasus states to articulate their interests within a structure dominated by larger powers.

An earlier format, the “Caucasus Four,” which included Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Russia in the early 2000s, also faltered due to diverging geopolitical agendas. These setbacks underscored the conclusion that any practical regional cooperation must be initiated and led by the local states, free from external imposition and grounded in their sovereignty and agency.

The Tbilisi convocation follows an informal trilateral meeting at the Antalya Diplomatic Forum earlier in the month. The evolution of a trilateral form takes place against the backdrop of diminishing returns from Russocentric and Euro-Atlantic mediation frameworks. Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia are now beginning, albeit tentatively, to engage in multi-tiered interactions with implications for post-conflict normalisation and infrastructural integration.

Azerbaijan used the Tbilisi platform to reinforce its post-2020 strategic framing. The normalisation narrative continued to assert the indivisibility of territorial gains and emphasise the Zangezur Corridor and Middle Corridor as infrastructural instruments of political integration.

These corridors, linking the South Caucasus to Eurasian and trans-Caspian markets, are, beyond their supply-chain significance, a means for translating economic and financial activity into the definitive consolidation of state sovereignty, including Armenia’s. In this framework, corridors serve as more than just infrastructure; they are tools of geopolitical consolidation.

Armenia, meanwhile, has maintained a dual-track approach to the peace process, rhetorically underscoring a commitment to a finalised peace process while resisting conditionalities of cardinal consequence to Azerbaijan, such as the need to modify Armenia’s constitution and to dissolve the OSCE Minsk Group. Armenia’s constitutional references to territorial claims in its preamble remain a key point of contention. This issue has emerged as a core friction point in the peace process.

Armenia’s reluctance to undertake such reform recalls earlier European precedents where constitutional changes facilitated diplomatic breakthroughs. The 1998 Belfast Agreement, for example, required the Irish Constitution to renounce territorial claims over Northern Ireland as a precondition for peace. Similarly,

North Macedonia’s 2018 referendum and subsequent constitutional amendments, changing the country’s name to resolve a long-standing dispute with Greece, unlocked its path towards Euro-Atlantic integration. These cases illustrate that constitutional adjustments, while domestically contentious, can serve as catalysts for regional stabilisation and international alignment.

Georgia’s role in the trilateral appears to be primarily observational. It seeks functional integration amongst the three without aligning itself in the conflict dyad. This strategic signalling, conditioned by internal electoral dynamics and the imperative to avoid becoming entangled in Azerbaijan-Armenia disputes, remains filtered through its declared aspirations for integration with the EU.

Both Azerbaijani and Armenian officials now publicly confirm that the text of a draft peace agreement has been finalised. However, notwithstanding procedural gains, no operational or practical breakthrough seems likely shortly. Key disagreements over sequencing, sovereignty, and institutional legacy remain unresolved.

Though still at an early stage, the trilateral approach offers a framework for limited diplomatic engagement, permitting cooperation on less divisive issues. Yet the prospects for sustained alignment among the three states remain limited, as each one’s strategic direction points in a different direction: Azerbaijan deepens ties with the Turkic world and the “Global South”.

At the same time, Georgia maintains a declarative Euro-Atlantic course, and Armenia, adjusting to its (self-)alienation from Moscow, is still finding its footing. These orientations pull in different directions, making translating tactical cooperation into lasting policy convergence difficult.

Public statements by the parties reveal a perhaps only rhetorical consensus around regional infrastructure development, like the Middle Corridor and the Zangezur Corridor, as both a necessity and an opportunity. Azerbaijan’s promotion of these two routes underlines the new strategic aspect of transit politics. Still, the success of these initiatives remains constrained by persistent political mistrust and the absence of harmonised legal-regulatory frameworks.

Georgia’s interest in corridor economics may enable it to act as a regional stabiliser under the right conditions. Armenia’s participation in such initiatives is contingent on bilateral normalisation with Azerbaijan and Türkiye.

The ongoing trilateral South Caucasus discussions point toward an emergent logic of regionalism without supranational codification. This makes good sense: flexible geometry and operational pragmatism should, for the present, prevail over legalism or institutional fidelity. The aggregation of dialogues, including these trilaterals, represents a genuine structural evolution in conflict containment and regional planning.

The unresolved issues in the Armenia–Azerbaijan peace track will determine whether the current convergence leads to formal closure or to recursive stalling. Whether this flexible regionalism matures into a stable mode of cooperation or fragments under external pressures and internal disagreements will shape the region’s political and economic trajectory in the years ahead.