By Dean Kalimniou
The Trump brokered peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan in August 2025 is, at its core, a parable about the reconfiguration of global power in an age where strategic interests are measured in transit corridors, energy pipelines, and exclusive development rights rather than in the painstaking pursuit of justice.
Signed beneath the chandeliers of the White House’s East Room, the accord inaugurated a new strategic passage through southern Armenia, the so-called Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity. This corridor, cutting through the historical Zangezur region, will link Azerbaijan with its distant exclave of Nakhchivan while maintaining a nominal Armenian sovereignty over the territory it traverses. In return, the United States acquired exclusive development rights for the corridor for a term of ninety-nine years, securing not merely a transport artery but more substantially, a permanent foothold in the South Caucasus at the expense of Russia’s long-standing primacy there.
The terms of the agreement, on their surface couched in the language of reconciliation and mutual respect for territorial integrity, carefully skirted the central wound of the Armenian–Azerbaijani conflict: the fate of Artsakh. The omission was not accidental. The real priorities lay elsewhere; in consolidating transit routes that serve the interests of multiple great powers, in redrawing the architecture of regional connectivity, and in staging a performance of statesmanship for an international audience eager for quick, marketable resolutions.
This is not the first time such a template has been applied in modern diplomacy. Its logic is echoed in the recent cascade of recognitions of Palestinian statehood, a cause to which Cyprus has long been committed, having formally recognised Palestine in 1988 and consistently advocating for a two-state solution within the parameters of international law.
At first glance, such recognitions might appear to affirm the principle that longstanding injustices cannot be ignored indefinitely. Yet the juxtaposition of these events is instructive in a less comfortable way. Both demonstrate that conflicts of profound moral and historical complexity can be reframed, “resolved” or at least diplomatically re-cast, not because the underlying injustices have been remedied, but because the strategic calculus of influential actors has shifted.
The Armenian–Azerbaijani settlement shows how swiftly new realities can be sanctified when they align with the interests of those who possess the means to enforce them. The Palestinian recognitions reveal how entrenched orthodoxies, sustained for decades by a mixture of inertia and rhetorical solidarity, can dissolve with surprising speed when political expediency dictates. In both cases, the moral weight of the issue did not diminish; it was simply overtaken by other imperatives.
For Cyprus, still cleft in two after more than fifty years, these developments are not distant curiosities. They are warnings, written in the new grammar of global diplomacy. For decades, Cyprus has rested, in part, upon the assumption that the injustice of its occupation, perpetuated by force in defiance of UN resolutions, would remain a fixture of international concern until rectified. That assumption is increasingly precarious. In a world where peace is brokered in weeks for the sake of securing transit routes, and where recognition can be bestowed or withheld according to the needs of shifting alliances, there is a genuine danger that the Cypriot question could be quietly redefined as an issue of stability management rather than one of decolonisation and restoration of sovereignty.
The vulnerabilities of Cyprus in this evolving landscape are numerous and mutually reinforcing. First, there is geostrategic marginalisation. The Zangezur Corridor serves as a tangible manifestation of Ankara’s long-standing vision of a contiguous Turkic world stretching from the Bosporus to the steppes of Central Asia. Even though the corridor is formally under American stewardship, it represents an ideological and infrastructural victory for Turkey, which for decades has sought to consolidate its position as a linchpin of Eurasian connectivity.
Cyprus, situated at the maritime crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa, lies in a zone that Turkey has already woven into its strategic calculations, through energy exploration in the Eastern Mediterranean, military posturing, and maritime boundary assertions that disregard Cypriot and Greek claims. The success of Ankara’s regional ambitions elsewhere strengthens its hand in shaping perceptions of Cyprus, both in Washington and in other capitals.
Second, there is the erosion of international attention. Global conflicts compete for limited diplomatic capital. The accelerated settlement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, coupled with the sudden momentum on Palestinian recognition, demonstrates that the bandwidth of the international system is finite. When new crises erupt, whether in the Taiwan Strait, the Sahel, or the South China Sea, diplomatic attention shifts accordingly. The Cyprus issue, frozen and familiar, risks being deprioritised, its urgency blunted by the perception that it is a “managed” conflict whose parameters are unlikely to change.
Third, there is the precedent of transactional diplomacy. The 2025 peace deal was not a triumph of moral persuasion. It was a trade, calibrated to serve the interests of the signatories and their sponsors. By the same token, the recognitions of Palestine were not born solely of principle; they were also a means of signalling alignment within a shifting global order. This approach, when normalised, presents a clear danger to Cyprus. It implies that if the strategic advantage of normalising the Turkish occupation and its regime in the north outweighs the costs of supporting the territorial integrity of the Republic of Cyprus, the moral argument will be overridden. A resolution could then be imposed that enshrines division rather than heals it.
Fourth, there is the challenge of allied reliability. Cyprus’s security and diplomatic posture has historically relied upon its membership of the European Union, its partnerships within the Commonwealth, and its relationships with regional actors such as Greece, Egypt, and Israel. Yet these alignments are not immutable. If the United States can recalibrate its position in the South Caucasus, and if the European Union can fracture over its stance on Palestine, then it is not inconceivable that positions on Cyprus could shift under the pressure of new trade routes, energy partnerships, or security arrangements in which Turkey plays a central role.
History offers analogies that Cyprus should not ignore. In 1974, the island’s plight was overshadowed by the Cold War détente and the preoccupations of the United States and NATO, which prioritised retaining Turkey within the Western security architecture over upholding Cypriot sovereignty. In 1990–91, as the Gulf War drew global attention and Turkey emerged as a vital staging ground, its leverage increased, and Cypriot appeals for renewed pressure on Ankara met with polite deferral. Even in the 2004 Annan Plan referendum, the framing of the issue by many external actors was less about justice for Cyprus and more about aligning the island with the timetable of European Union expansion. Each moment reveals the same pattern: when the strategic interests of the powerful are engaged elsewhere, the Cypriot cause becomes a negotiable variable.
Here, Turkey’s current strategy is both clear and consistent. It positions itself as indispensable to multiple actors; Russia, the United States, the European Union, and China, by offering transit, mediation, and access. In doing so, Ankara reduces the incentive for any of these actors to take a firm line against it on Cyprus. The more embedded Turkey becomes in the economic and security frameworks of the great powers, the less willing those powers will be to expend political capital on confronting it over a dispute they view as peripheral to their core interests.
For Cyprus, the lesson is stark. Moral arguments, while essential, cannot stand alone. The defence of sovereignty requires the creation of tangible value within the strategic calculations of the powers that shape outcomes. Cyprus must ensure it is seen as more than a petitioner for justice. It must become a participant whose contribution to regional stability, connectivity, and security is indispensable. This entails building coalitions not only with those who share its values, but also with those who can benefit materially from its partnership.
Practical steps exist. Cyprus can strengthen its role as a hub for humanitarian operations, as demonstrated by the Amalthea corridor, positioning itself as a reliable facilitator in times of regional crisis. It can invest in infrastructure that ties it into the energy and transport grids of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa in ways that make its stability a shared interest. It can deepen trilateral and multilateral security arrangements that ensure its ports, airspace, and intelligence networks become integral to the defence architectures of larger alliances.
The events of 2025 should serve as a spur to action. The Zangezur Corridor and the recognitions of Palestine are not isolated episodes; they are symptoms of a broader shift toward a diplomacy of swift deals, pragmatic alignments, and strategic trades. In such an environment, those who do not actively shape the agenda risk finding that the agenda has been shaped against them.
The fate of Cyprus will not be determined solely by the justice of its cause, but by the degree to which it can anchor itself within the frameworks that now determine the fortunes of states. History is littered with causes that once commanded passionate advocacy only to be left to languish when the great powers moved on. In 1959, the London–Zurich Agreements created the Republic of Cyprus in name, yet their provisions were devised in London and Zurich by Britain, Greece, and Turkey, without the Cypriot people seated at the table. The constitution and security architecture that emerged were shaped to serve the balance of interests among the guarantor powers, embedding structural fragilities that would later be exploited. The challenge for Cypriot statecraft is to ensure that such a silence is never repeated.
In an age when the treaties of others can redraw maps in weeks, when recognitions can cascade across capitals with little warning, and when the machinery of global diplomacy is driven as much by corridors and pipelines as by charters and resolutions, Cyprus must act with urgency and imagination. The ink of the 2025 peace deal is barely dry, yet its implications already ripple outward. If Cyprus does not wish to wake one morning to find its own page left blank in the ledger of nations, it must speak, act, and align with the force of those determined to write history rather than be written by it.
