When Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev and Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan shook hands with Donald Trump at the White House on August 8, 2025, it wasn’t just another photo opportunity. For the first time in decades, the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia set out a roadmap to end a conflict that has scarred both nations for a generation. 

The leaders issued a seven‑point declaration acknowledging that they had “witnessed the initialing of an agreed-upon text of the ‘Agreement on Establishment of Peace and Inter‑State Relations.’” Although not yet fully signed, this document pledges respect for each other’s sovereignty and rejects the use of force to redraw borders. 

It also envisages a US-backed transit route through Armenia to “facilitate unimpeded connectivity” between mainland Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave. For communities along those routes, this isn’t a mere diplomatic agreement. It’s the promise of reopened roads, revived marketplaces, and communities no longer divided by barbed wire and trenches.

Not everyone sees it that way. Stephan Pechdimaldji, in his recent article, dismisses this accord as hollow symbolism and demands “holding Azerbaijan accountable” for the latter’s actions to restore its territorial integrity. Well, the responsibility is not a one-way street. That stance erases the decades when Armenian forces held internationally recognized Azerbaijani territories under control, displacing hundreds of thousands of people. And it disregards the absolute destruction of hundreds of Azerbaijani towns by Armenian armed forces in Karabakh, which Azerbaijan recovered in a desolate state, and is currently trying to rebuild and revive. 

The author’s article also ignores the fact that

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