The question is whether Armenia’s domestic political situation is such that the diplomatic option can be pursued. It is not impossible to imagine that the country’s prime minister will calculate that it is in his political interest to lose the war so as to shift blame onto the military. If he does so, he may save his skin in the short term, but to what end? 

In writing about tragedy, Aristotle speaks of the moment of reversal—the inflection point of misfortune, as it were, that marks the onset of the tragic unraveling. Irrespective of whatever sympathies one may hold for Armenia, the sage advice that needs to be proffered by friends and allies alike, given the evidently unfavorable geopolitical circumstances that do not appear to be reversible, is this: your maximalist position is no longer tenable; the time to sue for a negotiated peace is now. 

Damjan Krnjević Mišković, a former senior Serbian and UN official, is Director of Policy Research and Publications and Professor of Practice at Azerbaijan’s ADA University, having taken a leave of absence as Executive Director of the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development (CIRSD), a Belgrade-based think tank. 

Image: A shop is seen on fire following recent shelling during a military conflict over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh in Stepanakert.