The Times and Karabagh

I think it’s important to repeat just how low quality the journalism and general writing standards of the New York Times have become.

The latest exhibit is a headline talking about the latest fighting in Karabagh as “almost no one saw it coming”.

For anyone at all familiar with the region this was the inevitable outcome of the 2020 war. The fact that the Times didn’t seem to understand or report on that or the lead up to the current conflict is a damning indictment of their “journalism”. I keep repeating this specifically about the Times because they are held in such high esteem. They’re just Fox News with less odious political views.

The fates of Karabagh and Ukraine have become linked. In 2020, Azerbaijan proved that it was possible to unfreeze a conflict and, with the aide of far more modern weapons, render a Russian “peace keeping” mission completely irrelevant. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was ultimately the tipping point in Russia’s decision to go to war.

The dust is far from settled, but if the current Armenian government holds and Azerbaijan doesn’t attempt to bite off a land bridge to Naxcivan, Russia’s relevance in the region has dramatically diminished. The handwriting has been on the wall since the 2020 war.

There’s a lot that can be said about the humanitarian tragedy of the Karabagh wars. Unfortunately the Western press seems to be utterly incapable of covering complex stories, instead always wanting simplistic victims, heroes, and villains. It’s hard to find good in the leadership of any of the groups. That doesn’t diminish the suffering of the thousands of Azeri refugees from the first Karabagh war, nor does it diminish the suffering of Armenians fleeing from Karabagh right now.

The other aspect that’s not being heavily reported in the West is how Armenian leadership in Karabagh consistently refused any compromises towards a final peace settlement. Getting 99% of what they wanted wasn’t good enough. And now they’ll end up with 0%.