The South Caucasus is increasingly operating within a configuration without an arbiter where the disappearance of a mediating function has ceased to be a temporary deviation and has instead become a durable feature of the regional order. The formal cessation of active hostilities has not produced an institutionalized peace while the absence of an enforcement mechanism has deprived the region of its customary corrective constraints. As a result security is no longer anchored in guarantees or institutional frameworks but is instead shaped as a dynamic process sustained through deterrence signaling and recurring crises of limited scale.

Empirical experience in the South Caucasus demonstrates that the cessation of hostilities in the absence of effective arbitration and enforcement typically fixes a temporary pause rather than producing lasting stability. After active fighting ended in Abkhazia South Ossetia and Karabakh in the early 1990s conflicts were halted but not resolved. Russian presence served as a conflict freezing mechanism but did not ensure political settlement. As a consequence formal stability proved temporary accumulated instability culminated in the 2008 war when frozen conflicts were reactivated through force. Peace existed but the balance was illusory.

A similar logic is evident in the Karabakh confrontation that culminated after 2020. The 1994 ceasefire reached without effective international arbitration created a prolonged phase of managed but fragile stabilization. Local escalations in 2014 and especially in 2016 served as early indicators of balance erosion. The absence of enforcement mechanisms and credible guarantees led to a systemic breakdown in 2020. The war was not a sudden event but the endpoint of a recurring cycle. Once the Karabakh conflict entered its post conflict stage it ceased to be the central source of regional instability giving way to risks of a different nature.

This pattern is not unique to the South Caucasus. The Transnistrian conflict after 1992 was stabilized without full arbitration and transformed into a long term grey zone. As long as the balance of interests among external actors was preserved the crisis remained frozen. However the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in 2022 exposed the vulnerability of this arrangement. The frozen conflict did not disappear but re emerged as a potential source of renewed instability in the absence of an external regulator.

The history of the Balkans offers a comparable lesson. In the 1990s international intervention halted the wars but only rigid arbitration exercised by NATO and the EU temporarily stabilized the region. The subsequent weakening of external pressure led to the return of political and ethnic tensions confirming that the cessation of hostilities without a sustainable enforcement mechanism does not generate long term stability.

In such an environment forecasting discrete events becomes analytically meaningless. The issue is not predicting war but identifying the types of crises that reproduce themselves in a region without an arbiter. The South Caucasus does not generate large scale interstate wars but rather a sequence of localized incidents political and military signaling and crises of limited intensity. Conflict dynamics increasingly shift from the interstate to the domestic level electoral cycles crises of legitimacy and institutional weakness become key sources of regional risk. Formal agreements unsupported by enforcement mechanisms lose their stabilizing function while informal balances and situational arrangements gain decisive importance.

The region’s historical dynamics confirm the cyclical nature of this model. Phases of formal stabilization are invariably followed by erosion of constraints and the accumulation of unresolved contradictions. The localized escalation of 2016 signaled accumulated instability while 2020 represented a systemic breakdown following a series of unresolved crises. Regional history unfolds not along a linear war peace trajectory but along a spiral temporary stabilization degradation of governance mechanisms crisis and a new equally vulnerable equilibrium.

The post conflict reality has not eliminated this logic but has altered its form. The baseline trajectory becomes one of managed cyclicality in which crises recur with varying intensity yet are repeatedly halted short of large scale escalation. Peace in this mode is not a stable condition but exists as a pause between corrective incidents. This trajectory persists as long as key actors view predictability as a rational choice and treat instability as a cost rather than as an instrument.

A more dangerous trajectory is that of accumulated instability. Each new crisis fails to resolve structural problems and instead reduces trust and manageability. In such a configuration even a limited incident can trigger a systemic breakdown not because of its intensity but because of its cumulative effect. A particular threat is posed by an external trigger scenario in which a global or regional crisis such as the war in Ukraine overlays local tensions and dismantles existing constraints.

In the absence of an external arbiter an increasing role in sustaining regional stability is assumed by those actors who not only possess sufficient resources but are also objectively interested in maintaining predictability. Where strategic objectives have already been achieved escalation ceases to be an instrument of policy and becomes a cost. Consequently balance is increasingly maintained not through mediation but through the actions of a dominant participant in the regional configuration which after the active phase of the Karabakh confrontation shifted from a logic of goal attainment to a logic of managing what has been achieved treating stability as an element of long term calculation rather than a temporary tactic.

It is important to emphasize that the early warning logic applied here does not assume linear causality. Individual signals such as rising rhetorical polarization protest activity or the frequency of localized incidents are not causes of crisis in themselves and do not operate in isolation. Their analytical significance lies in their dynamics convergence and accumulation over time. The assessment is probabilistic and concerns the growth of systemic vulnerability applicable to all regional actors without exception.

For an international audience it is essential to understand that the absence of an arbiter does not imply a security vacuum. It signifies a change in the logic of risk management. Strategies based on expectations of restoring previous mediation formats prove ineffective because they ignore the reproducibility of crises. The key threat to the region lies not in the likelihood of a new large scale war but in the repetition of limited crises that gradually increase costs and erode manageability.

In the current configuration peace in the South Caucasus is sustained not by agreements or missions but by rational management of what has been achieved. A breakdown of this governing logic would not lead to an immediate catastrophe but to a return of a harsher and more costly cycle of instability. Preserving the existing balance by contrast means the continuation of a fragile yet functional order in which the absence of an arbiter is compensated by the responsible behavior of key regional actors.