In 2020, Azerbaijan launched a surprise attack on the Armenian-governed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. In 2023, after a devastating blockade, it completed its conquest, ethnically cleansing 120,000 Armenian residents and then dynamiting the regional parliament lest the real democracy it represented spread into Azerbaijan. When Yuri Kim, the acting assistant secretary of state, told the U.S. Senate, “We will not tolerate any attack on the people of Nagorno-Karabakh,” she lied.

Behind the scenes, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan saw an opportunity. With Azerbaijani unilateralism returning Nagorno-Karabakh to Baku’s control, Blinken and Sullivan believed there was no longer any real impediment to peace in the South Caucasus. Though President Joe Biden considered himself a foreign policy expert and his team entered office promising both “diplomacy is back” and the “adults are back in charge,” his initial foreign policy legacy was a disaster.