A PAPER SHIELD. #Armenia just published the “peace” agreement initialed with Azerbaijan in Washington. Unfortunately, it will not halt an already-emboldened #Azerbaijan from completing its conquest of Armenia. You see, the real story is what’s not in the text. There is no mention of #NagornoKarabakh, no sign of Armenian #POWs, no word of international security guarantees, and no Azerbaijani withdrawal from Armenian territory. This is the gift of Armenia’s appeasement-based approach to peace. “If we just lower the bar on Artsakh,” the Armenian PM said in April 2022, “the international community will help us.” Three years on, he’s not even permitted to use the word “Artsakh”. That said, the “peace” treaty does a few things really well. It normalizes Azerbaijan’s ongoing (and multiple) military aggressions against Armenia and #Artsakh. It whitewashes Baku’s ongoing genocidal intent (remember the exterminator in the Hazmat suit, the blockade and ethnic cleansing, the ongoing destruction of Armenian cultural heritage, the “Western Azerbaijan” narrative). And it lays bare Armenia in a hyper-militarized South Caucasus (no foreign troops in Armenia, while Azerbaijan surely will ask Turkey and Israel to take their weapons, logistics and foreign intelligence and just leave). How can this go wrong for Armenia? The ridiculous double-speak in the text is almost as blatant as the spinsters trying to put lipstick on this pig. For example, the new partners in “peace” claim to champion consistency with international law in the text—yet, in the very same breath, they agree to withdraw the international cases against Azerbaijan and kill enforcement of the #ICJ decisions which hold Baku in violation of international law. Yup, that makes sense. Sadly, the world has been here before. Hitler signed the Munich Treaty promising peace—right before engulfing Europe in war and genocide, slaughtering millions of human beings. That “peace” treaty polled quite well in Europe in 1938—until, of course, it enabled the execution of the Holocaust. The lesson? Appeasement does not work, particularly where there is genocidal intent. History really is a tough teacher. And I am afraid that, here too, history will prove more dispositive as to what comes next than this paper shield ever will.