German expert: Vance's trip to South Caucasus means more than just working trip

US Vice President JD Vance signed a strategic partnership with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev in Baku on Tuesday during a historic visit to the South Caucasus as Washington consolidates its engagement with Armenia and Azerbaijan following their historic peace deal after decades of conflict.

Vance has unveiled an exciting initiative to bolster Azerbaijan's maritime security by providing new patrol boats to help safeguard its territorial waters. He further highlighted the promise of expanding collaboration in cutting-edge areas like artificial intelligence and critical minerals, especially through the innovative Middle Corridor transit systems.

But the main thrust of the cooperation is connectivity through transport and logistics by developing the major transit corridor dubbed the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) which was agreed by Armenia and Azerbaijan in their peace deal brokered by the US last August, integrating the two countries into a new east-west trade route to strengthen wider Eurasian trade routes.

Having visited Armenia before Azerbaijan, Vance commended the leadership of the two former rival countries who fought two wars over the Karabakh region in decades of conflict, adding that their continued cooperation within the ongoing historic peace process will ensure long-term stability in the South Caucasus.

In Armenia, a country that no sitting US vice president or president has visited before, Vance said on Monday that “peace is not made by people who are too focused on the past. Peace is made by people who are focused on the future.”

Evaluating J.D. Vance's visit to Armenia and Azerbaijan requires considering the US's geopolitical strategy in the region, according to Dr. Brendan Ziegler, a German-based analyst speaking to AzerNEWS.

"Ever since the agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia on August 8 in Washington, the idea of Baku and Yerevan rapproachment is something 'surprising' and plausible. Given the fact that it had been labelled as something symbolic rather than a tangible approach by some, consequent events said something different. Mutually shared statements, disclosures, and Ilham Aliyev's meeting with Trump at Davos are simple proofs. Perhaps, JD Vance's trip to both countries even meant something more powerful. The first visit by a U.S. vice president to Armenia, and one to Azerbaijan, occurred after nearly two decades. Looking from a big scope we can say this is a new stance by Washington. This emerging U.S. model is indirect control through trusted regional allies. In this framework, Israel and Türkiye sit at the center, with Saudi Arabia playing a secondary but still important role. Under the Trump administration, this approach has been applied with notable consistency. And with Vance's statements, calling Azerbaijan a key US ally, as a New Strategic Partnership acts as an extension of this broader architecture."

Ziegler thinks that this reflects a deliberate shift in U.S. regional management. “Washington no longer wants to police the South Caucasus directly,” he argues.

“Instead, it is folding Baku into a wider security and connectivity ecosystem overseen indirectly through its most trusted regional partners.” In this model, Azerbaijan is not sidelined but embedded, managed through alliances rather than mandates.

He explains, TRIPP is often reduced to a trade corridor crossing southern Armenia, unveiled after last August’s White House summit that ended decades of Armenia–Azerbaijan conflict. “That reading misses the point,” he says.

"This logic also explains the centrality of the “Trump Route for International Peace & Prosperity” (TRIPP) to Vance’s visit. TRIPP is often described as a trade corridor across southern Armenia, unveiled after last August’s White House summit that ended the decades-long Armenia–Azerbaijan conflict. But its importance is not merely economic. Strategically, it displaces Russia’s long-standing plan to control a similar corridor guarded by Russian forces, thereby striking at the Kremlin’s residual influence in the post-war South Caucasus. Beyond that, TRIPP opens a critical logistical gateway to Central Asia. For Washington, this is about far more than transit fees. The landlocked Central Asian republics sit atop critical mineral reserves vital to future industrial and defense supply chains. The U.S. has already signed memoranda of understanding with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and Vance’s proposal for a critical minerals trading bloc, floated at a ministerial attended by over 50 countries, provides essential context for his subsequent Caucasus trip."

Commenting on the significance of the U.S. Vice President’s visit to both Armenia and Azerbaijan, Ziegler said the region is no longer as peripheral as it once was.

"What is clear is that the South Caucasus has become a pivot point in a much larger game. Vance’s visit was not about Armenia or Azerbaijan alone. It was about redefining how the U.S. manages regions it no longer wishes to dominate militarily, how it delegates order to allies, and how it reshapes Eurasia’s connective tissue as it prepares for a far more consequential contest in the Far East," said the expert.