The Azerbaijani president used the CICA summit in Baku to make a wider argument about the failures of international diplomacy. The challenge now is to ensure that a peace won after decades of conflict becomes more than an uneasy truce.
There is an uncomfortable question at the heart of international politics: what happens when the rules that supposedly govern relations between states are ignored, and the institutions responsible for enforcing them do nothing?
President Ilham Aliyev put that question at the centre of his address to the seventh summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Baku. Although much of his speech focused on Azerbaijan’s conflict with Armenia, his argument extended well beyond the South Caucasus. It was about the credibility of international law, the consequences of diplomatic failure and the conditions under which peace can survive.
The Azerbaijani President's central contention was straightforward, implying that international organisations cannot claim to defend a rules-based order while allowing their own decisions to remain unenforced for decades. In his telling, Azerbaijan’s experience offers a particularly stark illustration of that contradiction.
For a country that regained its independence in 1991, the legacy of the Karabakh conflict has shaped national security, foreign policy and relations with international institutions. President Aliyev recalled that approximately 20% of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognised territory remained under Armenian occupation for around 30 years, while hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis were displaced. He argued that the international response failed to match the scale of the problem.
The most consequential example was the United Nations Security Council. In 1993, it adopted four resolutions demanding the withdrawal of Armenian forces from occupied Azerbaijani territories; however, those resolutions remained unimplemented for decades.
For the Azerbaijani President, this was more than a historical grievance and evidence of a structural weakness in the international system, which mostly displayed a gap between declaring a principle and ensuring that it is respected.
Moreover, the President’s criticism raises a question that extends far beyond Azerbaijan. What value do international resolutions possess if their implementation depends on political calculations rather than consistent rules?
International law is often presented as the foundation of a stable global order. But its authority depends not only on the principles written into treaties and resolutions. It also depends on whether states and international institutions are prepared to act when those principles are violated.
In his speech at the 7th CICA summit, President Aliyev argued that Azerbaijan faced precisely this contradiction. The United Nations had adopted resolutions, diplomatic negotiations had continued, and the OSCE Minsk Group had been established to seek a settlement. However, in their assessment, these mechanisms failed to produce a lasting resolution.
The Minsk Group, which was created in 1992, became a particular target of his criticism. He accused the mediation process of preserving the status quo rather than resolving the conflict.
There is, however, an important distinction between identifying the limitations of international institutions and concluding that military force is the answer. International organisations operate within a political system in which states have competing interests, and enforcement mechanisms are often constrained by the positions of powerful members. Reforming that system is considerably more complicated than exposing its shortcomings.
Nevertheless, the question President Aliyev raised deserves serious attention. If states conclude that international institutions cannot protect their territorial integrity or enforce decisions taken in their name, confidence in multilateral diplomacy will inevitably suffer.
In addition, President Ilham Aliyev traced Azerbaijan’s eventual military response to decades of unresolved conflict and the failure of negotiations to deliver a settlement acceptable to Baku.
The 44-day war in 2020 fundamentally changed the situation on the ground, and Azerbaijan regained control of substantial territories, and the ceasefire agreement of 10 November brought an end to the fighting at that stage. And three years later, in September 2023, Azerbaijan restored control over the remaining territory of Karabakh.
So, the Azerbaijani President presented these events as the restoration of Azerbaijan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. He also argued that the international community’s failure to secure the implementation of its earlier resolutions had helped create the conditions in which military confrontation became possible.
His account places responsibility for the conflict primarily on Armenia and the international actors he believes enabled its policies. That interpretation is central to Azerbaijan’s official position, although a complete assessment of the conflict must also recognise the competing narratives, losses and fears that have shaped Armenian and Azerbaijani societies.
The most important point in President Aliyev’s argument is not that Azerbaijan won a war. It is that a diplomatic process that fails to address the underlying dispute can leave the parties trapped in a cycle of confrontation, with consequences that eventually extend beyond the negotiating table. To be more specific, that is a warning international institutions should take seriously. Because victory does not always guarantee peace. Perhaps the most politically significant part of the Azerbaijani President's address came when he turned from the war to the question of what followed it.
He insisted that Azerbaijan had not sought revenge against Armenia for decades of suffering and destruction. Instead, he said, Baku had offered peace after restoring its territorial integrity. This message serves an important purpose in Azerbaijan’s diplomatic narrative, in which it presents the military outcome not as an end in itself, but as the starting point for a different relationship with its neighbour.
However, peace is more demanding than victory. A military outcome can settle control over territory without automatically resolving historical grievances, restoring trust or removing the political incentives for renewed confrontation.
Further to President Ilham Aliyev's speech at the event, he also highlighted Azerbaijan’s place in the international system. Situated between Europe and Asia, the country has increasingly sought to present itself as a connecting hub for transport, energy, trade and political dialogue. President Aliyev linked this role to Azerbaijan’s independent foreign policy, emphasising sovereign equality, non-interference in internal affairs and respect for territorial integrity.
These principles are especially relevant to a country seeking to expand its diplomatic influence across several regions while maintaining relationships with partners whose interests do not always align.
CICA provides a platform for that ambition. The forum brings together Asian states around dialogue, confidence-building and cooperation on shared challenges. During Azerbaijan’s chairmanship, Baku has promoted transport connectivity, digitalisation, environmental protection, tourism, education and scientific cooperation.
Aliyev also welcomed the extension of Azerbaijan’s chairmanship for a further two years, presenting it as evidence of confidence in the country’s efforts to strengthen the organisation. There are undoubtedly strategic objectives here, reflecting not only the country’s economic and military strength but also its ability to build partnerships and contribute to regional cooperation. For Azerbaijan, connectivity is not solely an economic opportunity; it also serves as a diplomatic instrument. Transport corridors, in particular, can foster trade interdependence while creating significant practical incentives for regional actors to preserve stability. However, connectivity alone cannot guarantee security, as economic cooperation works best when it is supported by predictable rules, credible commitments and a political environment in which disagreements can be managed without returning to confrontation.
That is why the question of international law raised in President Ilham Aliyev’s speech is relevant to Azerbaijan’s broader ambitions. The country’s aspiration to become a bridge between regions depends, in part, on whether those regions can sustain a stable and predictable international environment. President Aliyev's address in Baku was rooted in Azerbaijan’s national experience, but its most important question concerns the future of multilateral diplomacy.
The international community can neither prevent every war nor ensure that every dispute be resolved through a single resolution, a mediation format or a summit declaration. But institutions that repeatedly fail to turn their decisions into practical outcomes risk weakening the very principles they were established to defend.