Armenian drift from Moscow to Washington
Protection does not come for free

ANALYTICS  23 January 2023 - 15:22

Unlike its regional neighbours of Türkiye and Azerbaijan, Armenia has very limited trade and economic opportunities. They know how to turn count every penny of their possible gains and losses in the West, especially in the US. That is why the Republic of Armenia is so unattractive to the States, although the influential Armenian lobby of both American continents is trying to prove the opposite wherever it can, especially in the White House and the Capitol.

However, despite the fact that it is in Armenia that the largest American embassy in terms of staff, size and functions is based, all efforts of both the Armenian authorities and the foreign lobby to push Yerevan under the care of Washington remain almost unsuccessful. But the US is not going to discount Armenia as a conduit for its interests. Those same bio-labs are undoubtedly an indicator of the far-reaching plans of Americans in the region. Armenia is the best option for their implementation because there is no other alternative in the South Caucasus to this declining and dependent country, which is therefore ready for the crumbs of “humanitarian” aid to perform any American wishes, right up to providing its territory as a springboard in crisis situations.

While Baku and Ankara are protecting their national interests in every possible way, as stipulated in the state strategy approved by their leadership and approved by the people, the main engine of US-Armenian relations is considered to be the Armenian ethnic lobby in the USA, second largest in the world. The main institutions of the Armenian lobby are the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) and the Armenian Assembly of America (AAA).

One should recall, that the ANCA was established in 1941 as a successor to the American Committee for Support of the Independence of Armenia - an organization of Armenian nationalists associated with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation of “Dashnaktsutyun”, which opposed the integration of Armenia into the USSR. It was this position that brought the ANCA closer to the American leadership, including the Congress, where annual hearings were held within the framework of the “week of conquered peoples”. Later, the Armenian Assembly of America, formed in 1972, became an alternative to the ANCA.

It is also known that the ANCA directly lobbies members of Congress and publicly presents their “grades” to each of them on a scale from A+ (outstanding success) to F (total failure) every two years, depending on the positions taken by members of the Congress on issues important for the American Armenians.

Undoubtedly, the US financial assistance to Armenia and Karabakh and support to Armenia in its confrontation with Türkiye and Azerbaijan are the main goals of the Armenian lobby. However, repeated attempts of Armenians to punish Azerbaijan through US hands and to bring the whole world to mourn the “victims of genocide” did not succeed to date.

It is true, that the Armenian lobby succeeded in securing the adoption of resolutions calling on the US administration to recognize the «genocide of Armenians» by the legislative assemblies of several states in 2012-2014, yet the White House and its allies continued to block the adoption of this resolution by the Houses of Congress. At the time, the Armenian lobby had high hopes for the Bush administration and then Obama, but ended in both cases with a fiasco.

It is worth mentioning, that in the course of the election campaign in 2000, presidential candidate Bush Junior made a promise to recognize the “Armenian genocide”, but once he moved into the White House, he refused to do so. In response, ANCA and AAA did not support Bush in the 2004 presidential election, but having miscalculated here again: after his victory, which led to a significant limitation of the maneuvering space of the Armenian lobby in Washington, the development of US-Armenian relations significantly stalled. However, in one way or another, the interaction between the Armenian lobby and Congress plays a key role in securing the significant financial assistance provided to Armenia by American legislators. Since the recognition of Armenia’s independence by the US in 1991 up to 2016, Congress has allocated about $2 billion to finance various programs related to Armenia.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that US congressmen visiting Karabakh repeatedly appealed to the US president with proposals to establish official inter-state cooperation between Washington and Khankendi, all these efforts were in vain, because the US has always recognized the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, demonstrating a balanced approach to the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict.

It is also worth recalling that ANCA, other Armenian lobbyists and their allies in the congress failed to convince the consortia of oil and gas companies at the end of the 90s/beginning of 2000s, which were building pipelines for the supply of hydrocarbons from the Azerbaijani deposits, to expand them through the territory of Armenia. The massive Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline stretch from Azerbaijan to Türkiye through the territory of Georgia. This is also an indication of Washington’s sober assessment of the prospects of cooperation with Azerbaijan and the interest in preserving security in the region, to which Baku, unlike Yerevan, aspires.

So it is quite understandable, that, in the post-conflict period, the US is more active in the negotiations, calling on Baku and Yerevan to normalize relations and sign a peace treaty, which is not in Armenia’s plans. Another provocation in the US Congress, when Armenian lobbyists called on President Joe Biden “to exert maximum pressure on the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev” due to the supposedly ongoing “blockade» of the Lachin road” clearly confirms this. According to Armenian media citing ANCA, “the congressmen propose to immediately stop all US military assistance to Azerbaijan, to impose sanctions against the Azerbaijani leaders for the ongoing war crimes and to immediately transfer humanitarian aid by air to save the people of Karabakh”.

Not surprisingly, this time too, well-known pro-Armenian congressmen like Adam Schiff, Frank Pallone, Gus Bilirakis, Jackie Speer, and David Valadao, all of whom made a fortune from ANCA donations, were calling for help. These same congressmen rose to defend the “universal sufferers” and “condemned the blocking of the road connecting Karabakh with Armenia” by Azerbaijanis, and immediately after the start of the action of environmental activists in December started taking provocative decisions against Türkiye. However, the Armenian “agitprop” (propaganda campaign) overlooks a very important detail: the presence of the anti-Azerbaijani and anti-Turkish factors in the US Congress does not affect official Washington’s policy towards Baku and Ankara, whatever manipulation the Armenian lobby may have used. And the successful development of US-Turkish and US-Azerbaijani relations confirms this.

Caliber.Az