Four-Day Karabakh War Highlights Threats to Energy Security on NATO’s Southeastern Flank (Ilgar Gurbanov, The Jamestown Foundation)

The periodic escalation of violence in and around the separatist Azerbaijani territory of Karabakh routinely raises concerns about this conflict’s threat to regional energy security and pipeline infrastructure. However, few commentaries analyze this issue’s broader geopolitical implications in any detail. The intense fighting between the armed forces of Armenia and Azerbaijan along the Line of Contact last month—often referred to as the “Four Days War” (April 2–5)—had serious humanitarian repercussions. But the violence also notably underscored the vulnerability of regional energy infrastructure located on Europe’s and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) strategic southeastern flank—namely, the Baku-Supsa and Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipelines, the South Caucasus Natural Gas Pipeline, as well as nearby oil and gas terminals

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