Strategic hybridity at the semi-periphery: anti-colonialism and the global green agenda in post-2020 war Azerbaijan

This article examines the paradox whereby semi-peripheral states articulate anti-colonial rhetoric and calls for global justice internationally, while deploying contradictory practices closer to home. Focusing on Azerbaijan after the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, it proposes the concept of strategic hybridity to explain how Azerbaijan selectively rejects the Western-dominated liberal order by leveraging postcolonial nationalism, while seeking to gain a more advantageous place in the unequal economic structures on which that order rests. The article places Azerbaijan’s anti-colonialism in conversation with the political economy of the global green transition, showing how seemingly emancipatory agendas are mobilized by an assemblage of state and non-state actors to legitimize authoritarian peace. The article builds on qualitative data issued from fieldwork and the analysis of secondary sources. Overall, it advances a multi-scalar approach for understanding how contemporary (ab)uses of anti-colonialism are constituted through the interaction of global capitalism, state policies and civil society.