Turkey Tactics
Will Gaza and Ukraine go the way of Artsakh?
Between 27 September 2020 and 28 September 2023 - a period of three years and one day - the Republic of Azerbaijan took control of all territory previously ruled by the Republic of Artsakh. Prior to this event, Artsakh, which was also known as Nagorno-Karabakh, had been inhabited entirely (or nearly so) by people of Armenian language, culture, and ethnicity.
The conquest of Artsakh took place in five distinct steps:
a forty-four-day war (27 September 2020 - 10 November 2020)
twenty-five months of relative peace (11 November 2020 - 11 December 2022)
a ten-month blockade (12 December 2023 - 19 November 2023)
a one-day war (19 September 2023 - 20 September 2023)
negotiations leading to the dissolution of Artsakh
As a result of these events, nearly all of the people who had been living in Artsakh before 27 September 2020 sought refuge in the Republic of Armenia. In other words, the multi-stage annihilation of Artsakh resulted in the expulsion of one hundred and twenty thousand people. (Of these, twenty thousand or so left in the course of the forty-four day war of 2020. The rest departed soon after the end of the one-day war of 2023.)
The method used to annihilate Artsakh brings to mind the salami tactics so often discussed during the Cold War.1 However, rather than starting by carving a thin slice, Azerbaijan began its campaign with the rapid seizure of a third (more or less) of the territory in question. Thus, instead of looking like the incremental theft of a well-cured sausage, the effort bears a closer resemblance to the fate of a Thanksgiving turkey. That is to say, while the disposition of the unfortunate bird begins with a feast that consumes much, but far from all, of it, the process does not end until the remaining bits of flesh and bones have found their way into various sandwiches, soups, and casseroles.
Azerbaijani success with “turkey tactics” may have informed (if not actually inspired) the ongoing attempt by Israel to conquer the northern third of the Gaza Strip. Thus, if that campaign succeeds in clearing Northern Gaza of its inhabitants, we might well see, over the course of the near future, a long series of efforts resembling those used by Azerbaijan between the forty-four day war and the surrender of Artsakh. These will include blockades, periods of relative peace, and attempts to isolate the government of Gaza from its supporters in the world at large.
Russia may employ a similar approach to gain control over those Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine it has yet to occupy.2 That is, it may end hostilities before taking control of places like Odessa and Kharkiv, secure in the knowledge that, in the years to come, such things as financial exhaustion, diplomatic isolation, and, perhaps, a return engagement by “the Little Green Men,” will allow them to complete the conquest of “Little Russia” at relatively low cost in lives, shells, and rubles.
Each of these situations, of course, differs considerably from the others. The rapid collapse of Artsakh, for example, owes much to the warm welcome extended by both the people and the government of Armenia to refugees from that ill-fated exclave. Likewise, people from Odessa and Kharkiv who would rather not live under Russian rule will, like the Frenchmen who left Alsace and Lorraine in 1871, be able to move to locales that remain part of Ukraine. The same, however, does not apply to the people of Gaza, who, for the most part, have no place to go.
In much the same way, while Russia is able to fight a war measured in months (if not years), neither Israel nor Azerbaijan have been able to conduct substantial operations for more than a few weeks at a time. (To put things in the language of role-playing games, Russia needs fewer “long rests” than either of the smaller countries.) Nonetheless, the hope of “soup, sandwiches, and casseroles” in the years to come may lead it to exploit the opportunity created by the war in Gaza to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine.
For Further Reading:
For a classic description of salami tactics, see this 96-second scene from the television show Yes, Prime Minister.
I fully realize that, where Ukraine is concerned, the correlation between language and loyalty is less than perfect. Nonetheless, I use “Russian-speaking” and “Ukrainian-speaking” as shorthand for “people who would rather live under Russian rule” and “people who would rather live under Ukrainian rule.”