Why “America First” makes wars in other places more likely

MORE THAN 200 people, mostly soldiers, have been killed in the past ten days. Shells are falling on towns in and around Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkish-made drones are loitering in the sky before blasting targets on the ground—and filming the destruction, to be posted on YouTube (see ). This is not just a small war in a far-off place. It already involves bigger powers, and it could get much bloodier and nastier.Nagorno-Karabakh is a disputed enclave populated largely by (Christian) Armenians. It broke away from (Muslim) Azerbaijan as the Soviet Union collapsed. Armenia supported it, and seized a huge chunk of Azerbaijani territory to connect with it, during a war that killed tens of thousands of people and displaced perhaps 1m more. A ceasefire was reached in 1994, but there have been repeated flare-ups since then—and this one is easily the worst. The Azerbaijanis are again trying to take their land back by force. Russia has a collective-security agreement with Armenia. Turkey backs Azerbaijan, whose people are ethnically and culturally close to Turks. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sees the conflict as a chance to assert himself as a regional hegemon and Muslim champion, as he is already doing in Syria and Libya. Russia has so far acquiesced, but that may not last. Iran borders both countries and has a large Azeri minority; it could easily be sucked in. Pipelines carrying gas from the Caspian Sea run near the front lines.