In the latest episode of humanity’s favorite sitcom, 'Who Can Monetize a Blood Feud Fastest?', we are introduced to the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity—or TRIPP, for those who find the full title too cumbersome to vomit. Because if there is one thing the scarred, ancient landscapes of the Caucasus were missing, it was a brand-name infrastructure project named after a man whose primary experience with 'corridors' involves golden elevators and subpoena delivery. It is a masterpiece of narcissistic naming, transforming a centuries-old ethnic meat grinder into something that sounds like a mid-tier travel agency’s summer promotion.

As the United States and Armenia huddle over technical designs, one cannot help but admire the sheer, unadulterated cynicism of it all. We are told this is a 'peace pact.' In reality, it is a transit agreement for the 21st century: a way to ensure that while people on either side of the border still harbor enough mutual loathing to power a small sun, they can at least charge each other for the privilege of driving trucks full of cheap plastic garbage through their backyard. Peace, in the modern lexicon, is no longer the absence of war; it is the presence of billable logistics.

Naturally, the neighbors are thrilled. Iran, a regime whose geopolitical strategy usually involves squinting suspiciously at anything that isn’t a prayer rug, has already voiced its delightful paranoia. To Tehran, TRIPP isn't a bridge to prosperity; it’s a 'US-backed encroachment' in the Syunik region. They see the ghost of the Zangezur corridor rising from the grave, only this time it’s wearing a red tie and demanding a licensing fee. Iran’s concern is, of course, entirely self-serving. They don’t care about Armenian sovereignty any more than a vulture cares about the feelings of the carcass it’s picking; they just hate the idea of a Western-branded toll road cutting off their northern influence. It’s a classic standoff: a group of religious zealots in Tehran versus a group of corporate zealots in Washington, all arguing over a strip of land that none of them could find on a map without an aide pointing at it.

The technical design of TRIPP is being discussed with the kind of gravity usually reserved for heart surgery or the selection of a new Pope. But let’s be honest about what we’re looking at. This is the 'functional successor' to a plan that has already failed to bring anything but tension. To suggest that adding the word 'Prosperity' to a map will suddenly erase the memory of drone strikes and border skirmishes is a level of delusion that would be impressive if it weren't so pathologically stupid. It’s the triumph of marketing over history. We’ve reached the point in our collective decline where we believe that if we just build a nice enough road, the people who have been killing each other since the Bronze Age will suddenly drop their rifles and open Cinnabon franchises.

And what of the Armenians and Azerbaijanis? They are the involuntary extras in this high-stakes production. Armenia is being wooed with promises of 'technical design' and 'cooperative implementation,' which is diplomatic speak for 'we’re going to build this thing and you’re going to like it because your other options involve being swallowed by your neighbors.' Meanwhile, the trade-link gains are being touted as if they’re the second coming of the Silk Road. In reality, it’s just another way to bypass the inconvenient reality of geography. It’s a corridor designed to move capital, not people. It’s a bypass for the human condition.

The irony is thick enough to choke a horse: a 'peace' pact that creates a new flashpoint of international tension with Iran. We are witnessing the birth of a 'Route for Prosperity' that will likely be guarded by more soldiers than travelers. This is the hallmark of the modern era: we don’t solve problems, we just rebrand them. We take a territorial dispute, wrap it in a trade agreement, slap a famous name on the front, and call it progress.

Eventually, the TRIPP will either be built as a monument to mercantile necrophilia, or it will collapse under the weight of its own hubris. Either way, the outcome is the same. The elites in Washington will claim a diplomatic victory, the mullahs in Tehran will continue their performative shivering, and the actual inhabitants of the Syunik region will remain exactly where they have always been: stuck in the middle of a game being played by people who see their home as nothing more than a convenient line on a spreadsheet. It’s enough to make one nostalgic for the days when empires at least had the decency to be honest about their greed, rather than dressing it up in the moth-eaten robes of 'International Peace.'