The Washington Accords Watershed
The normalization process initiated by the United States through the Washington Accords in August 2025 was a watershed moment for the South Caucasus region. The accords suspended any aspirations that Azerbaijan may have had of using force against Armenia, while giving impetus to the previously-stalled peace process. The August 2025 Washington Declaration -- signed by the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders with US Presidential participation -- established the framework within which the post-2025 regional-normalization process has been operating.
The watershed significance of the accords: by bringing the United States into the peace-process architecture as the principal external facilitator, the accords altered the strategic-incentive structure of both parties. For Azerbaijan, the US engagement raised the diplomatic-and-strategic cost of the use-of-force option that the pre-accords environment had not adequately constrained. For Armenia, the US engagement provided the external-facilitator framework that the bilateral Armenia-Azerbaijan negotiation had lacked.
OWL's separate investigations have documented the post-Washington-Declaration framework's implementation milestones -- the Arshakyan CIS IPA TRIPP / Crossroads of Peace address (May 22), the Akhalkalak-Kars railway opening (May 24), the broader regional-connectivity vision. The forked-tongue-policy analysis addresses the asymmetry between the two parties' approaches to the framework's substantive completion: the final peace-treaty signing.
The Armenian Constructive Approach
In its expansive negotiations with the Trump Administration, as well as in public declarations, Armenia has maintained its highly constructive approach of seeking to quickly and immediately sign a final peace treaty. The Armenian positioning treats the final peace-treaty signing as the priority objective, with the post-treaty regional-normalization benefits (the transport-connectivity opening, the bilateral-trade normalization, the broader regional-cooperation framework) as the downstream consequences of the treaty completion.
The Armenian constructive approach is consistent with the broader post-2018 institutional-realignment trajectory and the multi-alignment doctrine that OWL covered in the separate Kopalyan analysis. The constructive approach treats the peace-treaty completion as the precondition for the strategic-autonomy that the multi-alignment doctrine seeks: a final peace treaty would remove the use-of-force threat that has constrained Armenia's strategic options, enabling the full operationalization of the multi-alignment architecture.
The Armenian positioning carries strategic costs that the cycle's opposition formations have critiqued. The "Politics of Silence" analysis (OWL's separate investigation) documented the concern that the Armenian constructive approach includes the willingness to drop the ICJ and ECHR cases against Azerbaijan, foreclosing the international-accountability avenues for the 2020 and 2023 Artsakh wars. The constructive approach's strategic-cost-versus-benefit assessment is one of the cycle's central foreign-policy contestation points.
The Azerbaijani Forked-Tongue Policy
Azerbaijan, by contrast, has preferred to use the normalization process to enhance its bilateral relations with the United States, while not fully committing to signing a peace treaty. Azerbaijan has strategically conditioned the treaty-signing on sets of artificial preconditions -- the procedural-and-substantive conditions that, in the Armenian and analytical assessment, function as delay mechanisms rather than as genuine treaty-completion requirements.
The "forked-tongue policy" the analysis documents: Azerbaijan presents a peace-seeking posture at the negotiating table and in its US-bilateral engagement, while the prevailing narrative coming out of Baku remains anti-Armenian propaganda. The dual-track approach -- diplomatic peace-positioning externally, anti-Armenian propaganda domestically -- allows Azerbaijan to extract the normalization benefits (the US-bilateral-relations enhancement, the strategic-positioning gains) without committing to the final treaty that would constrain its future strategic options.
The structural logic of the Azerbaijani forked-tongue policy: by not committing to the final peace treaty while extracting the normalization benefits, Azerbaijan maintains its strategic flexibility. The artificial preconditions provide the mechanism for sustaining the non-commitment while presenting a peace-seeking posture. The domestic anti-Armenian propaganda sustains the domestic-political conditions that would support a future strategic-options reactivation if the strategic environment shifts. The cumulative effect: Azerbaijan gains the normalization benefits while retaining its strategic flexibility, at Armenia's strategic expense.
The Asymmetry and Its Consequences
The asymmetry between the Armenian constructive approach and the Azerbaijani forked-tongue policy produces a structural disadvantage for Armenia in the peace-process architecture. Armenia's priority on the quick treaty-completion creates the incentive to make concessions to achieve the completion; Azerbaijan's non-commitment-while-extracting-benefits creates the incentive to extend the negotiation and extract additional concessions. The asymmetry favors the party (Azerbaijan) that is willing to sustain the non-completion.
For the peace-process trajectory, the asymmetry raises the substantive question of whether the final peace treaty will be completed on terms that serve Armenian strategic interests, or whether the Azerbaijani forked-tongue policy will extract sustained Armenian concessions without the corresponding treaty-completion commitment. The US facilitator role is the principal variable: whether the Trump Administration applies sufficient pressure on Azerbaijan to constrain the forked-tongue policy, or whether the US-bilateral-relations enhancement that Azerbaijan is extracting reduces the US incentive to apply that pressure.
The cycle's campaign-period discourse engages with this asymmetry. The Civil Contract positioning treats the peace-process trajectory as producing measurable benefits (the transport-connectivity openings, the suspended use-of-force threat); the opposition positioning treats the constructive approach as producing sustained Armenian concessions without the corresponding Azerbaijani commitment. The forked-tongue-policy analysis provides the analytical architecture for evaluating which positioning the empirical peace-process record supports.
What We Are Watching Next
Three indicators will define the post-cycle peace-process trajectory. (1) Whether the final peace treaty is signed in the post-cycle period, and on what substantive terms. (2) Whether Azerbaijan's artificial-preconditions strategy is constrained by US facilitator pressure, or whether the forked-tongue policy sustains the non-commitment-while-extracting-benefits architecture. (3) Whether the domestic anti-Armenian propaganda coming out of Baku attenuates as a signal of genuine peace-commitment, or whether it continues as a signal of the sustained strategic-flexibility-retention.
The EVN Report Aliyev forked-tongue-policy analysis is one of the substantive Armenian-analytical engagements with the post-Washington-Declaration peace-process asymmetry. The combination of the watershed-accords analysis, the two-parties-approach-asymmetry documentation, and the forked-tongue-policy framework places this analysis at the center of the cycle's peace-process analytical dimension. OWL covers this content as part of our broader documentary scope of the Armenian strategic-policy environment.
Sources: EVN Report article "Aliyev's Forked-Tongue Policy: Peace Meets Anti-Armenian Propaganda," May 2026 (Statecraft & Governance section), primary source for the Washington Accords watershed analysis, the Armenian-constructive-approach documentation, the Azerbaijani-forked-tongue-policy framework, and the artificial-preconditions analysis. August 8, 2025 Washington Declaration documentation. OWL companion investigations on the May 22 Arshakyan CIS IPA TRIPP / Crossroads of Peace address, the May 24 Akhalkalak-Kars railway opening, the May 25 "Politics of Silence" Artsakh-memory analysis, the May 25 Kopalyan multi-alignment doctrine analysis. All factual claims sourced to the named EVN Report article; OWL editorial framings on the asymmetry-consequences analysis, the US-facilitator-role analysis, the cycle-campaign-discourse engagement, and the watch-list indicators are clearly identified as such.