Armenia-US-Azerbaijan TRIPP nexus: a geostrategic ambition to reshape the face of the South Caucasus

In light of the coexistence of routes with distinct geostrategic mandates, the third corridor emerging in the region surrounds the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP). Its development has two dimensions. One lies in the degree of dynamism in Armenia-Azerbaijan relations, which should translate into the full demarcation of state borders, paving the way for a peace agreement. The other hinges on US-Armenia coordination on the corridor’s construction. In both cases, due to the unstable political landscape, which has not subsided since the 7 June legislative elections, Armenian authorities must weigh every decision to prevent opposition from politicising the matter and provoking public resistance. The building of the TRIPP elements within Armenia remains less of a challenge than the interconnections with Azerbaijan, which require the peace deal to reach finalisation or a very advanced stage.

Armenia-US TRIPP arrangements – a future security guarantee

Due to its geostrategic and technical features, the TRIPP project is significant for Armenia’s integration into the connectivity agenda pursued by external actors vis-à-vis the South Caucasus. Its planned multimodal capacity includes installing a mix of critical infrastructure in Armenia, through around 40 km of land in the Syunik region. The corridor includes plans to lay railways, highways, tunnels, and bridges, as well as energy infrastructure for oil, electricity, and gas supply, and fibre-optic infrastructure for internet connectivity. This scale of infrastructure load on a corridor has not yet been seen in the South Caucasus. In the long run, TRIPP will also likely serve as a transit hub for critical minerals from the South Caucasus and Central Asia to the US, as stipulated in the May 2026 US-Armenia agreement on critical minerals and earth security supply.

The exclusive involvement of the US lends the project strong geopolitical connotations, which are also linked to future security considerations for Armenia. Although the project does not enshrine any direct security guarantees for the critical infrastructure, such motivations could crystallise at a later stage under specific circumstances. For example, if US citizens hired as personnel operating the corridor (overseas personnel) are at risk, or if the inherent self-defence clause applies, the security situation on the ground could trigger a reaction from the US, playing a deterrence role. Historically, the US has sent conventional troops or rapid military units to evacuate US citizens or protect critical assets.

Under the terms of the publicly announced TRIPP implementation, the US-dominated TRIPP Development Company would oversee the construction of critical infrastructure along the TRIPP in Armenia. The US will hold 74% of the company, with a dominant role for the first 49 years of the TRIPP’s operationalisation. The planned infrastructure will enable the flow of people, goods, energy and data from Azerbaijan’s mainland to its exclave Nakhichevan and further to Türkiye. Washington has already pledged USD 200 million as an initial investment fund, managed by a Russian-born, Trump-leaning businessman, Konstantin Sokolov, to support the construction effort. Some sources indicated that the US has allocated USD 400 million to support the initiative by the end of 2025, without any indication of what the money will be used for. The management of the project will be entrusted to the TRIPP Development Company, in which the US will hold 74% for the first 49 years of the project implementation. Following the initial term of the agreement, Armenia will be able to increase its share in the company to 49%, which could still leave up to 51% of the shares in the hands of the US.

The TRIPP remains geopolitically charged. The US is ready to pull its weight in bringing the corridor to life. However, its realisation is linked to the outcome of Armenia’s dialogue with Azerbaijan on peace institutionalisation and with Türkiye on normalisation. This is also tied to Armenia’s 2023 ‘Crossroads of Peace’ approach, which seeks to institute more contacts at the border with Turkish and Azerbaijani sides by establishing more checkpoints. In doing so, the TRIPP corridor will offer the US a way to access supplies from the wider Caspian region – in terms of energy and critical minerals – through an alternative to the traditional transit route via Georgia and the still irreplaceable Black Sea option, both of which are unstable and sufficiently militarised to remain so after the war against Ukraine freezes, in one way or another. The connectivity between Azerbaijan, Armenia and Türkiye opens the way for flows from Central Asia – gas, oil, and minerals – towards the Mediterranean Sea.

The security dimension of the TRIPP project is reflected in its integration into the renewed US-Armenia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, unveiled in May 2026. Similarly, the TRIPP implementation framework explicitly mentions the bilateral Strategic Partnership. The updated parameters of the partnership signal security benefits for Armenia by leaving open the possibility of a US contribution to strengthen Armenia’s defence capability and the effectiveness of its ‘security agencies’ in fulfilling border-protection and/or border-management roles. This way, the partnership anchors US commitment to inject more capacity-building into Armenian state institutions, which will likely be employed to secure the flows of goods and people through the TRIPP corridor.

Box: Chronology of the TRIPP project’s development

The Azerbaijani dimension of TRIPP

Azerbaijan plays a central role in transforming the TRIPP project from a domestic network of critical infrastructure into a regional transit corridor. Through Azerbaijan’s mainland and the Nakhichevan exclave, Armenia can be connected to the Trans-Caspian trade routes and further linked to Turkish territory. TRIPP is useful for building transport and trade links across all Azerbaijani territories following Baku’s restoration of control over Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding territories. Nevertheless, the TRIPP project is not essential for Azerbaijan’s access to regional connectivity between Europe and Central Asia, given the existing transit capacities through Georgian territory. In this sense, Baku has no pressing deadline, which it can leverage to its strategic advantage in the delimitation of the borders with Armenia and other elements of the peace settlement.

The TRIPP implementation document cites the realisation of Armenia-Azerbaijan peace as a precondition for the corridor. It implies, without any clear specification, that Armenia would address Azerbaijan’s request to remove territorial revisionist provisions from the Armenian constitution. Despite the outcome of the 7 June legislative elections, which fell short of resulting in a constitutional majority, Baku refuses to drop its request regarding Armenian constitutional provisions. The Azerbaijani Presidential Office has suggested two options – the adoption of a new constitution or other legal mechanisms – to settle the issue, any of which could, however, have explosive effects for TRIPP as well, if they fail.

Two separate issues need to be addressed by Azerbaijan to prepare itself for when the TRIPP project comes to life:

One aspect concerns the delimitation and demarcation of the borders with Armenia. Due to the North-to-South approach to border confirmation, the demarcation along the Syunik region, where the TRIPP corridor will be laid down, has not yet been initiated. Unlike other segments of the bilateral borders, the Syunik region is one of the largest because it accounts for the territory bordering Azerbaijan’s mainland (272 km) to the East and that bordering the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic to the West (110 km). By the end of 2024, delimitation procedures were conducted in the Tavush and Gazakh regions of Armenia. Four abandoned border villages – Baganis Ayrum, Asagi Eskipara, Heyrimlia and Kyzyl-Hajili – were returned to Azerbaijan. This was part of the effective demarcation of 13 km of the state border out of the total of about 1,000 km. The process will likely accelerate in the coming weeks and months due to the time pressure to make some initial parts of TRIPP available, or at least before the end of Donald Trump’s second term in 2029. Since March 2022, the specialised State Border Delimitation Committees of the two countries have held 13 meetings (roughly four times per year). Consequently, despite the expressed political willingness, the demarcation process could face delays until the Syunik region is also demarcated. The largest source of uncertainty stems from the high potential for politicisation of the subject. The peace process comprises territorial concessions by Armenia towards Azerbaijan to return to the 1991 Alma-Ata Protocol, which defines the post-Soviet administrative borders. These are portrayed by the public figures associated with the Armenian opposition as an alleged ‘betrayal’, forming part of local disinformation campaigns on some of the most sensitive issues for Armenia.

The second dimension Baku takes seriously in the TRIPP project is the technical preparation of its territory to enable connectivity with  Armenia. While keeping the Armenian side fully engaged in delimitation and demarcation cooperation, which is a precondition for a peace deal, Azerbaijani authorities have accelerated the construction of transport infrastructure all the way to the Armenian border. The latest estimates indicate that 90% of the highway and 70% of the railway, foreseen to be attached to the US-Armenia TRIPP corridor, are ready on Azerbaijani territory. Azerbaijan treats all elements of the route from its border to Armenia and Türkiye as part of the “Zangezur” corridor, which is intended to ensure the smooth flow of people and goods between Azerbaijani territories and the eastern part of Türkiye – from Kars to Igdir to Dilicu to the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic. Furthermore, the route appears to be a complementary artery for the ‘Middle Corridor’, which currently passes through Georgian transport infrastructure that has reached maximum capacity and requires an upgrade. Despite being highly effective, the project will take up to five years to complete on Turkish territory, which comprises about 224 km of railway to be built from scratch or modernised. Baku and Ankara signed a memorandum to synchronise their efforts to advance the project. The estimated budget for building transport infrastructure in Azerbaijan and Türkiye is expected to reach up to 2.5 billion euros.

Alongside the Turkish segment of the corridor, where the infrastructure facelift could take half a decade or more, Baku is also well aware that the US-Armenia TRIPP corridor construction is expected at a later stage. Consequently, Azerbaijan’s political motivation and financial resources alone are insufficient to complete a transnational transport project. The risk of the project heading towards a stalemate is also linked to its overlap with the future absorption of available construction capacities in the Black Sea region for the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine, if a peace deal is ultimately agreed.

Conclusions

The TRIPP’s construction aligns with a pragmatic objective of facilitating energy and critical minerals exports from Central Asia and the Caspian region to Europe. Its realisation, however, has an intrinsic peace-oriented logic, as the linkages created will make any future military tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan costly for both sides, though to different extents.

The interests and resources that the involved parties have at their disposal differ significantly. While Azerbaijan is capable of building its segment faster, construction by its strategic partner Türkiye is likely to take longer, creating uncertainty about launching the corridor before 2031. Although Armenia possesses the shortest segment – 42 km –, TRIPP implementation could face time issues due to the corridor’s complexity, which involves bridges, roads, railways and optic fibres for internet connections.

A strong guarantee that the US-Armenia TRIPP and Azerbaijan-Türkiye ‘Zangezur’ corridor will have a positive outcome is the role this route plays in the EU’s investments in the ‘Middle Corridor’ to reduce overreliance on Georgia’s transit role, and in Russia’s progress in enhancing the capacity of the North-South Corridor by making use of the critical infrastructure that Azerbaijan is developing to transport commodities to Türkiye. Finally, cooperation between regional and external actors surrounding the TRIPP project development gives it a somewhat positive outlook. TRIPP’s most visible weakness lies in Armenia’s domestic politics and whether Russia can derail its stability to restore its influence in the South Caucasus.