Council on Foreign Relations on Karabakh Escalation

ByEmil Sanamyan

Dec. 29, 2016

Likelihood of a fresh outbreak of fighting in Nagorno Karabakh in 2017 is low and if it were to occur it would have negligible impact on U.S. foreign policy, says the latest Preventive Priorities Survey issued annually by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

The survey ranks conflicts worldwide by their likelihood of escalation and anticipated impact on the United States. Notably, CFR made the same prediction in its 2015 Survey and decided to leave Karabakh out the survey for 2016, arguing at the time than an “an outbreak of military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh [was] not identified as [a] significant concern in the initial pool of crowdsourced contingencies.”

CFR’s Center for Preventive Action that publishes the survey is led by Paul Stares.