Azerbaijan: The art of being everyone’s exception

Baku does not balance between friends and enemies. It balances between the interests of its friends, its neighbours and its own survival. In an age increasingly obsessed with blocs, Azerbaijan offers a rather different lesson. The strongest position for a small state may not be choosing a side. It may be making every side need a relationship with you

Azerbaijan is one of those countries that makes conventional geopolitics look strangely inadequate. Here is a predominantly Shia country that is deeply secular, culturally Turkic and strategically close to Israel. It is bound to Turkey by an almost fraternal alliance, maintains a strategic partnership with Pakistan, is deepening ties with China, and yet remains obliged by geography to keep talking to Iran, its fellow Shia neighbour.

On paper, it is a collection of contradictions. In practice, it is a remarkably coherent strategy. Baku has mastered the art of being close without being captive. Azerbaijan does not appear to organise its foreign policy around ideological camps. It organises it around interests. Religion does not dictate its diplomacy. Neither does geography. Neither does friendship.

That is why Israel and Turkey can coexist comfortably in Baku’s foreign-policy architecture. Turkey provides strategic depth and an intimate political relationship. Israel provides defence, intelligence, technology and energy cooperation. Pakistan provides political solidarity and a useful partnership in the Muslim world. China offers capital, connectivity and another great-power relationship. Iran, meanwhile, is the unavoidable neighbour whose hostility can never be allowed to become a permanent rupture.

The remarkable thing is not that Azerbaijan has all these relationships. It is that it has managed to keep them from cancelling one another out. This is strategic ambiguity, but not ambiguity in the sense of not knowing where one stands. Baku is remarkably clear about its interests. The ambiguity lies in refusing to let those interests be reduced to membership in a single geopolitical camp. And that distinction matters.

Azerbaijan can be Israel’s strategic partner without becoming Israel’s proxy. It can be Turkey’s closest ally without becoming merely an extension of Ankara. It can cultivate Pakistan without adopting Pakistan’s worldview wholesale. It can deepen relations with China without joining a Chinese bloc. And it can quarrel with Iran while still recognising that Iran will remain next door tomorrow, next year and for decades to come. That is the essence of strategic balance among the unnatural and the unthinkable.

The relationship with Iran is perhaps the most revealing. Shared Shia identity has done remarkably little to eliminate geopolitical suspicion. Iran has long been uneasy about Baku’s relations with Israel and Turkey, while Azerbaijan has had its own grievances with Tehran. Yet the two sides have repeatedly tried to restore practical cooperation when their interests converge.

Baku’s relationship with Pakistan is equally instructive and particularly uncomfortable for India. Azerbaijan and Pakistan call their relationship a strategic partnership and have steadily expanded cooperation in defence, energy, transport and diplomacy. On Kashmir, Baku has consistently backed a settlement based on international law and relevant UN Security Council resolutions. During the India-Pakistan crisis of May 2025, Azerbaijan went further, expressing solidarity with Pakistan after Indian strikes. Yet this has not stopped Azerbaijan from maintaining economic links with India.

Again, there is no contradiction if one understands the Azerbaijani method. A country can separate strategic relationships from individual disputes. The 2026 Iran war provided the ultimate test of this formula and punctured one popular misconception. Azerbaijan was not simply “neutral”, nor was it immune from the conflict. On March 5, Iranian drones struck Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, damaging an airport terminal and injuring civilians. Baku formally protested and demanded an explanation from Tehran.

Yet Azerbaijan simultaneously avoided allowing the confrontation to turn into a wider war. Analysts at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies have described Baku’s posture as “alignment tempered by restraint” rather than neutrality, strategically close to Israel and the West, but careful to preserve working relations with Tehran and avoid being dragged into the conflict. That may be the clearest description of Azerbaijan’s foreign policy. Aligned, but not subordinate. Friendly, but not ideological. Pragmatic, but not neutral.

This is why Azerbaijan is so fascinating. Its real strategic asset is not oil, geography or even its military, important though all three are. It is optionality.

Baku has constructed a foreign policy in which several competing powers have reasons to value Azerbaijan simultaneously. Turkey needs it. Israel values it. Pakistan embraces it. China is investing in its connectivity. Iran cannot ignore it. And Russia, Europe and the United States all have interests in the South Caucasus that intersect with Baku. For a country of Azerbaijan’s size, that is an extraordinary position. It has not achieved it by choosing the perfect ally. It has achieved it by ensuring that no single ally ever becomes indispensable enough to dictate the whole of Azerbaijani foreign policy.

That is the Azerbaijani paradox and perhaps its strategic genius. Baku does not balance between friends and enemies. It balances between the interests of its friends, its neighbours and its own survival. In an age increasingly obsessed with blocs, Azerbaijan offers a rather different lesson. The strongest position for a small state may not be choosing a side. It may be making every side need a relationship with you.

Baku’s relationship with Pakistan is equally instructive and particularly uncomfortable for India. Azerbaijan and Pakistan call their relationship a strategic partnership and have steadily expanded cooperation in defence, energy, transport and diplomacy

The writer is a former Lieutenant Governor of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Puducherry, and a military veteran; Views presented are personal.