UN Security Council and squabbles in Yerevan
Analytics by Sergey Bogdan

ANALYTICS  20 August 2023 - 15:29

On August 16, at Armenia's request, the UN Security Council met to discuss the situation in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. However, this attempt to put pressure on Baku failed - the Azerbaijani side prevented Armenia's allies from intercepting the peace process. The UN Security Council did not go further than an exchange of views. No documents were adopted, and the world press paid minimum attention to this event. Perhaps, even less than the various rounds of Azerbaijani-Armenian negotiations.

Pashinyan, of course, claimed "victory" in New York, but he seems to have used the UN address mainly to fend off opposition within Armenia. After all, despite the melting strength of the Armenian state, its establishment continues to be slow to break the geopolitical deadlock of recent decades through the normalisation of relations with its neighbours.

Gabon and France are worried

Armenian media even before the session in New York recognised that at least a statement of the UN Security Council would be a success for the Armenian side, while a resolution was out of the question. They were right: the Armenian side did not achieve anything during this event.

The facts speak for themselves. The first speaker at the meeting was Edem Wosornu, Director of the Operations and Advocacy Division of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. This is a UN official of far from the highest rank. According to her, the UN is "aware of regular reports of shortages of food and medicine, as well as interruption of electricity supplies" to the Karabakh region, but cannot confirm the reliability of information about the situation. At the same time, Wosornu urged everyone, including Armenia, "not to politicise humanitarian efforts."

Only France unconditionally supported the Armenian position. It was probably this country that encouraged a representative of the European Union, of which France is a key member, to voice a similar statement. As a result, Silvio Gonzato, deputy head of the EU delegation to the UN, also demanded: "The Lachin corridor should be opened immediately. The Azerbaijani authorities must guarantee security and freedom of movement". The diplomats of the other three countries of the "collective West" - Great Britain, Switzerland and Japan - were much more restrained, albeit with curtsies toward Yerevan.

The speech of the representative of Gabon was connected with the attempts to portray global support for the Armenian policy. It looks impressive if you do not know the details.

The African state of Gabon is unique in terms of the level of vicious connections between its leaders and Parisian politicians. They are closely connected with each other in a corrupt way since the official independence of Gabon. The first president of this country, Omar Bongo, having kept his people in staggering poverty even by African standards for half a century, brought so much loot to France that even the French became uncomfortable in the end and they began “seemingly” an investigation against him, which ended in nothing. Therefore, when the Gabonese diplomat spoke about his concern about the “state of the civilian population” in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, it looked like a natural mockery of common sense.

By the way, it is not quite clear who this diplomat represents at all. Officially, the president of Gabon is now Ali Bongo, son of the late "friend of France" Omar Bongo. He inherits his father's traditions, including with regard to the corruption practised in the Gabonese state and the alliance with France. But this is inaccurate, as there are rumours that Ali actually passed away back in 2018. The fact is that after his stroke, he almost stopped appearing in public, and when he did, he looked so strange that people started whispering about a possible double. These are the kind of friends the "democratic" French government had to call for help to lecture Azerbaijan about "rights".

Azerbaijan was supported not only by Türkiye. China was de facto also on Baku's side: it did not repeat the versions of events heard from Yerevan and Western capitals but called on the countries themselves to seek compromise. Russia took a similar position - expressing "concern" about the situation on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border, the Russian delegate emphasised that "the problems, in any case, should be solved between Baku and Yerevan, and no externally imposed schemes and solutions will replace their dialogue". And even US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who chaired the meeting, although calling for the restoration of "free movement along the corridor," suggested that "all sides should start direct negotiations.

Actually, given the confrontation between the West and the Russian Federation and China, it is really curious that the meeting turned out to be so insignificant in terms of its results. It was held at a minimal level - the deputies (!) of the permanent representatives of the respective countries mostly spoke at the event. The procedural framework initially almost ruled out the possibility of adopting a resolution in the context of a global confrontation, but the alleged allies of Armenia could adopt their document, the chairman of the Security Council could issue a statement, someone could make a demarche in the end ... No one did absolutely nothing - again showing that their alliance with Armenia is very conditional and is rather a sign behind which hides the desire to use this Caucasian country for their own purposes.

Internal political application

Insignificant foreign policy results should not be misleading regarding the strategic logic of Yerevan. They are well aware that appeals to the UN Security Council were usually ineffective before, and after the aggravation of the confrontation between Russia and the West, it simply became dysfunctional. Then why? The idea of the Armenian leadership with the convening of the UN Security Council, probably, provided mainly for the internal political application of this event. And the pretentious statement of the Armenian prime minister following the meeting makes sense if we take into account that this was precisely the goal - to respond to the pressure that the Pashinyan team is facing inside Armenia.

Let us recall what he said: "We can record: the truth about the illegal blockade of the Lachin corridor and the humanitarian crisis that has arisen in Nagorno-Karabakh has been made public in the highest international instance. The international community has issued a collective appeal to Azerbaijan to lift the illegal blockade of the Lachin corridor".

Putting ideological tinsel aside, Prime Minister Pashinyan is thus telling his critics in Armenia something like this: here, we have voiced our grievances at the allegedly global level. The result: France, France again (EU) and Gabon criticized Azerbaijan. So, they say, do not ask us anymore - the Karabakh separatists cannot be saved.

On the one hand, Pashinyan made a concession to revanchist circles. But on the other hand, he tried to convey with this step to his sensible fellow citizens the idea that there is no such thing as an Armenian-centered world. And the "genocide" theme that is currently being promoted will not "take off" because of its obvious inadequacy for everyone but Armenian radicals. In general, it looks like an illustration of the well-known demagogic technique of reducing the polemics to comparing the opponent "with Hitler".

Stirring up passions, the revenge-seekers even turned to Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, who retired a long time ago. On August 7, he released a certain report calling "genocide" the gradual establishment of control over its borders by Azerbaijan. In fact, he expresses only the personal opinion of the former prosecutor, and this is the maximum international support on this issue that Yerevan could enlist. It seems that there was no choice, because the authority of Ocampo was badly undermined by the fact that he was seen not only in possession of indistinct offshore accounts, but also in business connections with extremely dubious characters on the Libyan political scene.

In short, revanchist circles in Armenia and its diaspora are trying to create the impression that Yerevan has no need to curtail the separatist project in Karabakh. They say that the outraged international community would give the Armenian nationalists everything they want if it were not for the current leadership in Yerevan. As a well-known Armenian publication lamented recently, commenting on Pashinyan's statement on the results of the meeting in New York, "The world is about genocide, Pashinyan is again about the peace agenda”.

Revanchist circles are not limited to words. Azerbaijani authorities regularly note that Russian peacekeepers do not stop the ongoing actions of Armenian armed forces in Karabakh. On August 14, the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan published video footage of the construction of fortifications on Azerbaijani territory by Armenian militants, and on August 16 it became known about the detention of a member of the Armenian sabotage and reconnaissance team in Azerbaijan.

Everything is done with the appropriate propaganda accompaniment - while continuing military activities on the territory and along the borders of Azerbaijan, the Armenian authorities simultaneously accuse the Azerbaijani military of creating a danger for the civilian population. But even the inspectors of the EU police-civilian mission invited by Yerevan to its territory confirm that there is a military confrontation along the border. Head of the EU mission in Armenia Markus Ritter has recently said that since the deployment of the mission in February, "military incidents sometimes occur, but I can say for sure that there have been no civilian casualties since we have been here."

What is the margin of safety for Armenia?

The Armenian politicians who are taking these unpromising steps in the military-political sense are clearly betting on a change in the political situation. Do they have a chance of success? They certainly think that there is, and indeed, one can recall how the famous British politician Winston Churchill proclaimed “Never give up on something that you can't go a day without thinking about” as the most important principle of political activity. And he applied it both to himself and to the country. This quote by Churchill is often cited as a rationale for refusing to compromise. After all, the British Prime Minister achieved victory over Germany.

But there are two nuances. First, Churchill himself, in order to defeat Germany, compromised with the Soviet Union, against which he fought for many years. That is, he gave up and compromised. By the way, he went to this compromise, first exploring the possibility of an opposite alliance. He didn't care at all, he was just looking for ways to secure Britain's interests. Flexibility and the ability to reconsider their political positions would clearly come in handy for the Armenian establishment to break the deadlock.

Secondly, both Britain, as a global empire at that time, and Churchill, as a descendant of the richest noble family at that time, had a conditional “margin of safety”. They could afford risky steps because, in case of failure, they would not lead them to fatal results.

Does modern Armenia have this margin of safety? There are doubts about this. The fact is that due to the expansionist policy of the Armenian nationalists, which included support for the Karabakh separatists, this country was locked along most of its borders and half-locked on the rest of the borders (the same border with Iran does little to help Yerevan, both due to the problematic relief and Iran under Western sanctions). For three decades, the Armenian leadership "did not give up" - almost according to Churchill - and did not make serious efforts to restore relations with its neighbours.

The result was a degradation that was noticeable not only from well-known demographic data. New illustrations of this appear all the time. Let us turn to the recently published assessment of the potential ability of the regions of the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union to industrial cooperation. Armenia received minimal scores within its framework, at the level of almost a statistical error due to the lack of promising high-tech industries. This is the result of degradation associated with the chosen course of expansion in the region, ethnic cleansing and the closure of the country.

Yerevan has lost its industrial and scientific potential, which it had by the end of the 1980s. The assessment was carried out by Russia's Higher School of Economics (HSE), which can hardly be suspected of tending to underestimate Armenia. The HSE is a stronghold of the liberal part of the Russian establishment, whose loyalty to Armenia and sympathy for Karabakh separatism have been part of their political creed since the Sakharov days.

Armenia's economic prospects look gloomy to this day. Yes, since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there have been deceptive signs of an economic recovery. But they are connected with transient processes that do not create sustainable growth - the transfers of money from Russians who save their funds through Armenian banks, the re-export of Western goods to the Russian Federation, etc. Yes, the trade turnover between Armenia and the Russian Federation increased by 86 per cent over the five months of 2023, but this is a speculative phenomenon that will end as soon as the West presses Pashinyan on the issue of sanctions against Russia. And this easy money will disappear, leaving no trace in Armenia.

Continuing such a policy, the Armenian establishment can indeed soon reach the level of African "friends of France" in this degradation. Trying to become part of the pro-French bloc, the Armenian leadership is pursuing a course that strikes with its paradoxical symbolism. Having joined the association of francophone countries, it approaches the world of francophone countries (mainly Africa) not through culture, but through economic degradation.

This course is also surprising because Armenia has a choice - it is the normalisation of relations with its neighbours and a real rejection of expansionist ambitions. This choice has become especially obvious after 2020 and the collapse of the nationalist expansion project. Azerbaijan constantly demonstrates that a responsible attitude to Armenia's future by its leadership is not only necessary but also inevitable. And the meeting in New York was another demonstration of this.

By the way, in conclusion, we emphasize that Yerevan's plans to put pressure on Baku through the UN failed not only because of the weak interest of world powers in the issue of the Azerbaijani-Armenian settlement. They would seize on this question as well, in order to annoy each other if they smelled "easy prey" in it. But it was not.

Azerbaijan does not let the peace process out of its hands. It was clear to Moscow, Washington and Brussels - one more unnecessary movement and Baku may stop negotiations with Yerevan on their platform. The Azerbaijani government keeps the peace process under its control and can at any time protect this process from encroachment by all means, including the military.

In addition, world powers understand that Azerbaijan is defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity in full format. And not in the truncated version that the superpowers offer to other countries, under pseudo-humanitarian pretexts, depriving these countries of the opportunity to control or do anything at all on their territory. The rights of the Azerbaijani people, consisting of Azerbaijanis of all ethnic origins, mean the need for their full sovereignty over their entire land.

Caliber.Az