The U.S. is seen taking active steps to re-insert itself into the South Caucasus. The broader aim is to reshape the South Caucasus into a n effective transit and security space aligned with U.S. interests. Limits to what Washington can do remain but the country’s policy t\oward the South Caucasus is now more realistic and transactional than what it used to be.

Marco Rubio’s visit to Armenia and the near-simultaneous high-level State Department delegations to Tbilisi and Baku mark a clearer American attempt to re-enter the South Caucasus as a strategic actor after years in which Washington often ceded initiative to other powers. The emerging U.S. policy is not a return to the old democracy-promotion template alone, nor is it a purely security-driven approach. It is a hybrid policy: transactional and connectivity-centered, in its strategic logic.

The central feature of Washington’s current approach is the elevation of connectivity into geopolitics. The South Caucasus is now treated as a corridor space linking Europe, Turkey, the Caspian basin, Central Asia, and potentially South Asian routes. This explains the U.S. focus on the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, or TRIPP, through southern Armenia. For Washington, TRIPP is a physical and political instrument designed to reduce Russian leverage over regional transport, limit Iran’s role as an unavoidable transit actor, and insert U.S.-backed commercial architecture into the Middle Corridor.

Rubio’s Armenia visit therefore carried meaning beyond the signing ceremony. It signaled that Washington sees Yerevan as the most dynamic opening in the South Caucasus. Armenia’s post-2020 and post-2023 security trauma has pushed it to diversify away from Russia, and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s government has tried to turn defeat into a foreign-policy reorientation. The United States is now attempting to consolidate this shift by offering diplomatic support, infrastructure cooperation, strategic partnership mechanisms, critical minerals cooperation, and a role in the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace framework. The message to Yerevan is that Western alignment can produce tangible benefits, not merely rhetorical sympathy.

At the same time, Washington’s Armenia policy is not risk-free. The U.S. is investing in a country where Russia retains economic, media, security, and social channels of influence. Moscow’s pressure on Armenia before and after the elections showed that Russia still has tools: energy dependence, labor migration, trade restrictions, and support for pro-Russian domestic forces. Washington’s challenge will be to help Armenia diversify without forcing a rupture that Yerevan cannot economically or militarily absorb. In this sense, the U.S. policy toward Armenia is best understood as diversification without immediate decoupling from Russia.

Azerbaijan occupies a different place in the American strategy. Washington views Azerbaijan as a state that won the war and sits at the energy and transport crossroads between the Caspian and Turkey. The U.S. wants Azerbaijani participation in TRIPP and the broader Middle Corridor. Indeed, Washington needs Azerbaijan for connectivity and Caspian strategy, but it also needs to reassure Armenia that peace will not mean capitulation under another name.

Then there is Georgia. For three decades, Georgia was Washington’s most natural partner in the South Caucasus. Over the past years the cooling in the relations took place. This is however changing with active engagement between US and Georgian officials over the past months. The language coming from Washington suggests engagement. For the United States Georgia remains indispensable to the Middle Corridor, Black Sea security, and Caspian-Europe connectivity. It is therefore expected that notable improvement of ties will take place in the coming months.

The U.S. approach also reflects a broader shift in American foreign policy style. Washington wants a South Caucasus that is more independent, interconnected, open to U.S. business and less dependent on other actors, especially Russia and China. The the United States does not seek exclusive dominance simply because it lacks the military footprint and geographic proximity. 

For the U.S. to maintain its influence in the region Turkey’s role is particularly important. The United States cannot build a South Caucasus connectivity strategy without Ankara’s suppor. TRIPP helps Washington insert itself into a corridor that would largely be defined by Turkey and Azerbaijan. This creates convergence with Ankara on opening east-west routes, but also quiet competition over who sets the rules of regional connectivity.

Washington’s South Caucasus policy is therefore best defined as selective re-engagement through connectivity and transactional relations. The broader aim is to reshape the South Caucasus into a managed transit and security space aligned with U.S. interests. Rubio’s visit to Armenia and the State Department delegation’s talks in Tbilisi and Baku show that Washington is increasingly an active player in the region. But whether this becomes a durable strategy will depend on whether the United States can turn the visits into sustained investment, credible security assurances, and political leverage that does not collapse under local resistance.

Emil Avdaliani is a professor of international relations at the European University in Tbilisi, Georgia, and a scholar of Silk Roads. He can be reached on Twitter/X at @emilavdaliani.