Donald Trump’s recent achievements in the Middle East, which came about in no small measure thanks to the efforts of Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, and several other states, should not overshadow his successful White House peace summit involving Armenia and Azerbaijan, held at the White House on August 8. 

Trump and his counterparts from the South Caucasus, Ilham Aliyev and Nikol Pashinyan, each left the building with more than they arrived with; all advanced their countries’ national interests; all made commitments they can keep; and none gave away the store.

Trump succeeded where all previous US administrations and other outside players had failed—going back three decades—including Russia, a few EU member states, and most recently the EU itself. He and Steve Witkoff’s team designed the deal to effectively combine conflict resolution, peacemaking, transport and energy connectivity, commercial opportunities, and respect for everyone’s sovereignty. The latter was the secret ingredient Trump’s diplomacy added—the piece that had always been missing in previous attempts by outsiders to broker peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Thus, one of the underappreciated takeaways from the White House peace summit is that Trump has shown that he can respect smaller states that take their own sovereignty as seriously as he takes America’s. It also explains why others failed: a congenital incapability to accept that countries like Armenia and Azerbaijan reject the sublimation of their distinct state identities in the name of over-institutionalizing cooperation (or, even more unlikely, integration) with any other state. 

For Aliyev and Pashinyan, as much as for Trump, borders are not mere lines on a map; they are sovereign markers of territorial integrity, statehood, and identity. This core belief aligns with the logic of America First: what happens beyond a country’s borders is less significant than what occurs within them.

This shared understanding of substantive sovereignty now binds Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the United States to one another as never before through a series of commitments and agreements. These will, if executed and followed up properly, recalibrate the strategic importance of........

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