Some Western diplomats fret that Armenia’s strife might tempt a bellicose Azerbaijan to try and regain control of the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Azeris are said to be spooked by Kosovo’s successful campaign for independence and fear that Nagorno-Karabakh might win international recognition. Ominously, Azerbaijan threatened to pull out of international peace talks after America, Russia and France voted against a UN resolution calling for the withdrawal of Armenian forces from Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding region. This follows some of the deadliest border skirmishes between Azeri and Armenian forces in years. ~The Economist

That’s not surprising to me, since I have argued here many times before and again in my column a few weeks ago that recognising Kosovo would embolden separatists, and so long as other governments around the world believe this the political consequences may well be the same regardless of what the separatists do.  I would add that the mere fear that separatists might be emboldened and might succeed in gaining international recognition is likely to create backlashes by some states against enclaves that they fear may be stripped from them.  Legally, Karabakh is in a similar position as Kosovo: officially part of Azerbaijan, but in the hands of the majority Armenians (who also drove out the Azeris living there), seeking nominal independence with the understanding on the part of everyone involved that the neighbouring mother country will effectively be propping it up and will probably eventually annex it.  An important difference is that the assignment of Karabakh to the old Azerbaijan S.S.R. was a deliberate Stalinist effort to divide and rule the two Caucasian peoples by putting an ethnic Armenian enclave inside Azeri territory, while the Albanians in Kosovo owe whatever claim to autonomy that they ever had to the Titoist system.  In both cases you have a Muslim state or would-be state trying to exploit the structures of defunct communist regimes to justify their goals, and in the case of Kosovo you have a mostly credulous West willing to help out.  It remains to be seen whether Westerners are as gullible and short-sighted when it comes to Armenia.