While the rest of the world struggles with the first crisis of globalisation, the Caucasus is still stuck in a pre-1914 age of clashing Great Powers. As last August’s conflict in Georgia painfully showed, nowhere else in the wider Europe is war such a danger.

Yet this May could be a bright moment. Russia, the US, the European Union and Turkey – the constellation of powers with an interest in this unfortunate region – are in brief alignment. They have an opportunity to begin to defuse what is the least visible and the most dangerous threat to the region and its many energy pipelines: the unresolved Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.