Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Well, this is awesome. I'm so happy to welcome you to my new studio, which is in Republic Square in Yerevan, which you can see a few of. This is the National Gallery of Armenia, and it's amazing.
But I'm here today with a retired colonel of the US Army, Greg Pipes. And Greg was also the military attache to the embassy here. Did I get that right?
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Is that right? Okay. And we met at the time when you were serving here. And so now we're back in Yerevan, and I heard you give a really interesting talk about what now the US Is doing or helping to broker here in Armenia. And I want to talk about that.
The Trump Road.
And what is the IPP International?
[00:01:07] Speaker B: The Trump Road for International Peace and Prosperity.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: That's right. The trip. The trip.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: The trip road.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: That's awesome. Okay, well, all right, so tell me a little bit about it, because you had some really interesting thoughts to share about this.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: So I'm really excited about the trip for a variety of reasons, but I think first and foremost, because it addresses a problem that we've been trying to fix for decades.
Since 1994, the US together with Russia and France in the Minsk Group, has been trying to solve Armenian, Azerbaijan and Armenia, Azerbaijan, the South Caucuses.
That's a problem that we studied in our military schools as an example of a wicked problem, a problem that is so complex, it has no clear solution. And over the years, those countries went at it, trying to solve. Those countries being us, France and Russia, trying to get Armenia and Azerbaijan to. To agree and to stop fighting.
In my personal opinion, we were just going at it, saying, please stop fighting. Oh, please, please, please stop. Why? Because you shouldn't. War is not the answer.
I don't like war at all. As a military guy, I don't want war. However, that doesn't stop people from pursuing it. And so Trump, in six months, is able to get Aliyev and Pashinyan, the two leaders of these two countries, to shake hands and agree on a new framework for an actual peace.
And traveling here, back here after two years being gone, I see a hope here that we don't see before. So let me get into the details.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: So the road is going to go along the very south of Armenia and right above the Iranian border, incidentally. That makes it a little bit dicey and complex, but it goes along an old rail route that was existing during the Soviet times.
I've driven that road. It still is basically a rail bed that you can drive from one end of Armenia to the other. And what it does if it works, is it connects Azerbaijan to Nahijivan. Now, Nahijivan is Azerbaijan's exclave on the other side of Armenia. It's totally non contiguous with Azerbaijan.
So right now the borders are closed between these two places. And in order for Azerbaijan to get anything to Nahitiv on, it has to go through Georgia, then down through Turkey. This could allow that transit to go super smooth. I forget exactly how far, but it's, it's only. It's less than 100 kilometers, I believe.
So what that's going to do is if you open that up for trade, then you have Azerbaijan being able to connect to their other country, their other exclave. And that exclave borders Turkey. Turkey borders the Mediterranean.
So now Azerbaijan, which is a landlocked nation, can now get into the Mediterranean.
And not only them, because if you go, keep on going back and you have the Caspian Sea after Azerbaijan, and then after Azerbaijan, there's Azer, the Caspian is Kazakhstan and the rest of the Central Asian states.
So suddenly the Central Asian states, if you look, you gotta look on a map and maybe in your podcast, yeah.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: I should do B roll of the map.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: You look at that and you see that all those other states, if they want to get anything out, they got to go through Russia or China or Iran or Afghanistan. I mean, not good options.
So you get this route working and you'll be able to get things, products from all the way deep in the Central Asian states to the Mediterranean.
[00:04:37] Speaker A: Do you think is this what Trump had in mind, like to transcend just conflict that nobody's heard of? Armenia, Azerbaijan, unfortunately, not many people are aware of it.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: I don't think that this is about just because he wanted peace. I think it's because those markets are huge for American interests.
Trump's policy is America first. So why is he doing this?
Just recently he held a big conference with all members nations from all those states, all the five Central Asian states, and brought them together. And all of these guys are talking about the Trump road for international peace and prosperity because they want their goods to be able to get to the Mediterranean. And so that's how they're gonna do it.
This is great for them. And then Armenia can be. If this is done right, there's so much stuff to work out. This is a hard thing. I mean, engineering the road is gonna be hard. Getting all the agreements. The trans shipment, what can be shipped? Can military supplies be shipped across? That's a crazy hard question.
How are they gonna pay transshipment fees and stuff like that? It opens up lots of possibilities. There's a lot of challenges still to.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Be will Iran be able to continue to travel north, south, that Iran had.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: Always said that that's a deal breaker and that they are going to have major problems. So as I understand, that is still in the cards because Armenia gets a whole lot of supplies from Iran. Right. And, and so Iran is very limited in what they can do, but they are, they're, they're a friend in here in Armenia, which is just a crazy thing to think about, but it is.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: It'S like politics makes for strange bedfellows.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: And yeah, so, but, but that aside, so Iran, but its only outlet of shipping to the north is through Armenia.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: It really is because they're not very good friends with Azerbaijan. Their relationship with Turkey is really rough and that's who's borders them. So.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: Right.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: And Russia. So.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: All right, so before you also mentioned Central Asia and you specifically mentioned Kazakhstan.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: And Kazakhstan was like the big surprise announcement just like a couple of weeks ago that Kazakhstan never mentioned before in all of the speculation is joining the Abraham Accords, which is the normalization agreements between Israel and outlying Muslim nations because.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: These Central Asian nations are Muslim majority nations. And so Kazakhstan killing the Abraham Accords got me thinking, wait a second, there might be a connection with trip on this too. So this is just pure conjecture from my side, but how in the world is Kazakhstan going to get their goods to Israel?
Maybe through trip. So now if Abraham Accords goes all the way up to the rest of Central Asia, then we have Israel now being interested. And here's what this does, Nicole, is that as a result, there's so many reasons why President Aliyev in Azerbaijan wouldn't want to attack across this corridor to reunite on Hegemon. And Azerbaijan, not only does he have a major US investment because the US Is going to be the one funding this road major US investment that the US Would be very upset. He would have now all these states, these Central Asian states trying to get their goods across. Now he potentially has Israel upset with him. And last I checked, Israel provides a lot of military hardware to Azerbaijan. So what it does is it disincentivizes conflict. So in this world, I don't think we can have true peace, but we can have do a lot of things to pull back conflict and disincentivize nations so that they're not inclined to do that. They see the cost and I believe during the Minsk years there was so little cost to Azerbaijan to doing the harassing things and the pushing in things they were doing against Armenia and no one was stopping them. But now a lot of people are paying attention. So it's exciting times.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: Okay, that's interesting because it's not necessarily, necessarily the opinion held by some Armenians. Like, I don't know what the breakdown is if it's 50, 50 or if it's majority are against or a majority are for. But a lot of Armenians are skeptical, especially in the diaspora, they're very skeptical of peace with Azerbaijan.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: I understand that. I mean, the Armenian history has every reason to not to have concern about anybody of Turkic background. Right. Azerbaijanis or Turks or anything.
And the fear that Armenia, who is a very vulnerable nation geographically in the middle of nowhere, dependent on external forces to external countries to get anything out.
Yeah, I really, I respect and understand that, but I don't know of a better solution and bringing in, you know, Armenia has been a country that over the years they were either under the influence of the Ottomans or the Persians or the Russians and others.
Now we're bringing in the West a lot more in the United States having an influence here. That could be a very positive thing. And of course, there's a few Armenians in the United States as well, like.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: In, in that city called la.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Which I think stands for Little Armenia. Yes, yes, I've heard.
[00:09:37] Speaker B: Well, and I grew up in. I didn't grow up in Fresno, but my family's from Fresno, where there's a lot of Armenians.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: Right, that's right. That's right.
Well, it's interesting.
One of the other topics that it was part of this whole, you know, surrounding the trip road is the potential for new commerce for Armenia.
So I'm just looking at it and thinking, okay, is this what are we looking at in southern Armenia and actually in Armenia in general because of this.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: Right.
Who knows? We had a really neat panel discussion where I was on the panel as more of the security military expert, but with some, some banking guys and also a. An industry entrepreneur. And there's discussions of, you know, if we could actually have things going cross border where a factory can be on both sides and they're working to support each other or, you know, Armenia could have a lot of factories down there that then is exporting along that road and getting it out to the Mediterranean. So yeah, there's. Who knows what's going to happen with it. But it could be not only bringing peace, but also that's why it's the peace and prosperity road, because it could bring prosperity to Armenia and also more broadly to the region.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: So, yeah, it's Just very interesting when you broadened it to the, to Central Asia and, you know, just thinking, Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Armenia onward, this is. It's more. I think there's more to. Than meets the eye or more than I assumed.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: And if this first, whatever, nine, ten months of the Trump presidency, he often brags about all the peace deals he signed. And I got to be very involved with one of those, with India, Pakistan. I was working in the White House when that happened.
And you saw Cambodia, Thailand, and some in Africa and et cetera, those paled in comparison, in my opinion, to this one, because this was the hardest challenge. Like I said, it's the wicked problem. How can you possibly solve this? And he solved it by making incentives and, and economic desires. Because, you know, does Aliyev want peace? You know, everybody thought, oh, he doesn't like that. It doesn't really matter what he wants. But he definitely wants prosperity, you know, because he needs, like, every, every leader. If they don't have prosperity in their country, they're going to lose power. And so bring prosperity to your people and you'll do better politically yourself. So it's just absolutely brilliant. My only complaint is that, that this was announced on a Friday, and in the US News cycle, if it happens on a Friday, you forget about it by Monday. And I thought this was the best thing ever done. I was like, why couldn't you have waited till Monday? But, yeah, that's a silly aspect of it.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: It really took me by surprise, too. I think it was in the US when this was announced, and I was just like, what? What just happened even worse in Israel on a Friday because everything shut down. So that's when they announced that. Yeah, the Friday news. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But this is amazing. This is really food for thought. And the geopolitical complications of this region, I think it's going to.
It's going to be interesting, right?
[00:12:33] Speaker B: I can't wait to watch it.
And looking here, it's dominating the news cycle. Everybody talks about trip all the time. So really excited to see how it's going to work out and praying for peace and prosperity for Armenia and the region.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, that's awesome. Well, thank you for sharing your expertise. This was really, really, really great.
[00:12:53] Speaker B: Love it.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: Than.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: Sam.
