The trajectory of defense relations between Azerbaijan and the United States over the past three decades is often explained by geography alone. Dr. İsmail Polat, a Eurasian scholar and Senior Expert at The Gulf Observer (thegulfobserver.com) and The Europe Today (theeuropetoday.com), argues that geography only sets the boundaries of the possible — and that what happens inside those boundaries is decided by how leaders in Baku and Washington read their own power, their threats and their responsibilities.
In an exclusive interview with AZERTAC, he applies the framework of neoclassical realism to the partnership, from the 1997 joint statement to the strategic partnership agreement signed in January 2026.
- Dr. Ismail Polat, you approach the Azerbaijan–US defense relations through neoclassical realism rather than through classical geopolitics. Why?
- Because classical accounts tell us what pressures exist, but not what states do about them. Neoclassical realism, as Gideon Rose set it out in 1998, works on two levels at once. The first is systemic — the international distribution of power, NATO–Russia dynamics, geopolitical competition in the Caucasus. The second is the set of intervening variables: leader perception, strategic culture, state–society relations. Ripsman, Taliaferro and Lobell describe leader perception as the mechanism that links the two. That is exactly what we observe here. The defense diplomacy between Baku and Washington has been shaped as much by how decision makers in both capitals define their state's position in the region as by the conditions the system imposes on them.
- So the international environment does not dictate outcomes?
- It constrains them. Walter Carlsnaes offered the useful notion of "binding conditions" — external factors create options rather than compelling behavior. Decision makers still face genuine strategic choices inside those conditions. Applied to our case, the systemic environment produces the binding conditions; leader perception determines which instruments are then selected from the available menu. That distinction matters, because it explains why two states facing similar pressures may choose very different tools.
- How would you characterize President Ilham Aliyev's perception of Azerbaijan's position since the 2020 Garabagh war?
- It is a perception of regional central power, and it is stated openly rather than merely inferred. The official documentation of the Ministry of Defense and the President's own statements both reflect it. In his March 2024 meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, President Aliyev described the NATO–Azerbaijan partnership as having a long history — more than thirty years of good partnership — and stressed that Azerbaijan remains committed to contributing to that partnership. In January 2026, addressing the media after the Section 907 waiver, he characterized relations with the United States as entering a new phase and called the signing of the strategic partnership agreement a historic event. That is the language of a leadership that sees its state as a subject of regional order, not an object of it.
- Dr., you place considerable weight on resources. What do the figures tell us?
- Jeffrey Taliaferro's 2006 work on the resource-extractive state is central here. His argument is that decision makers' perception of their capacity to mobilize resources can be as determinative of state behavior as the resources themselves — sometimes more so. Azerbaijan's case illustrates it well. The Ministry of Defense reports active personnel of 68,200 and reserve forces of 300,000, with the 2025 defense budget reaching five billion dollars, or 5.26 percent of GDP. Alongside that, the President's consistent commitment to directing energy revenues into military modernization reflects a resource perception formed by the 2020 victory. The convergence of perception and allocation is precisely what neoclassical realism predicts.
- Mr. Polat, turning to Washington — how do American decision makers perceive their role in the South Caucasus?
- As one of responsibility combined with practical partnership. And it has institutional depth. According to Department of Defense records, cooperation originates in the Joint Statement on Future Relations in the areas of Defense and Military of 31 July 1997, and has been systematically supported since 2002 through Foreign Military Financing, International Military Education and Training, and the Department of Defense Section 333 capacity-building programs. This is not an improvised relationship; it is thirty years of accumulated structure.
- Is that perception visible in the statements of American officials?
- Clearly. When Brigadier General Edward Vaughan of US European Command visited Baku in March 2023, the accompanying statement noted that meetings with Azerbaijani defense and security leaders underscore the importance of the partnership between the two nations. That is responsibility perception meeting practical engagement. It was reinforced politically by the Trump administration's role in the August 2025 Azerbaijan–Armenia peace accord, by President Trump's expressed appreciation for President Aliyev's contribution to peace, and by the strategic partnership agreement signed by Vice President J.D. Vance in January 2026.
- Through which concrete instruments does this perception operate?
- I would identify four dimensions. First, military personnel education — Azerbaijani officers attend American defense institutions while American instructors deliver training in Baku. Second, joint exercises, where the NATO Cooperative Partner framework enables Joint Task Force operations that build a shared military culture over time. Third, defense technology transfer. Fourth, intelligence and threat-reduction cooperation — the Director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Kenneth Myers, described the relationship with Azerbaijan on these projects as very good, with a long record of success. Each instrument is a choice, and each reflects the resource mobilization capacity behind it.
- Why has defense diplomacy, rather than harder instruments, remained the preferred channel?
- Because both sides are convinced that these tools minimize the risk of war while still delivering strategic objectives. That shared conviction is the single most important explanation for the continuity of the relationship across very different administrations in Washington and across a transformed security situation in the region. Where leaders believe an instrument both lowers risk and secures ends, they keep using it.
- And how has the transition to peace conditions affected leader perception?
- It has forced an adaptation, and that adaptation is already visible. In January 2026, President Aliyev observed that 2025 was a historic year because the Azerbaijan–Armenia war had concluded politically, and the country was living in conditions of peace. Perceptions formed in wartime do not automatically survive peace; they have to be reconstructed around new objectives. What we are watching now is that reconstruction in progress.
- What will determine the durability of this partnership?
- Adaptive capacity. The synthesis we see today — President Ilham Aliyev's perception of regional central power, American decision makers' perception of responsibility in the Caucasus, and the shared belief in defense diplomacy as the efficient instrument — is stable so long as the underlying conditions hold. Should geopolitical conditions shift, the question will not be whether the systemic pressure changed, but whether decision makers in both capitals can revise their perceptions quickly enough to meet it. Future stability depends on that capacity far more than on any document signed today.
