Contours of Azerbaijani foreign policy in new era
President Aliyev's Munich master class

ANALYTICS  17 February 2024 - 18:16

The week ended with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's trip to Munich, where a security conference is being held. He arrived in Munich, having presented his thoughts on the future policy of the country in the Parliament the day before.

The atmosphere in Baku and Munich was strikingly different: the Western hosts of the conference started it with a report full of unprecedentedly gloomy expectations about the future of their countries and the world order they have built.

Participation in the conference is a matter of choice for the Azerbaijani leadership, unlike Nikol Pashinyan, whose role as an "unrecognised European" and limited financial resources do not allow him to skip events involving Western powers.

Once again going to Munich, Aliyev continued to outline the contours of the country's foreign policy in the new era - the transition from the elimination of the consequences of Armenian aggression not only to the restoration of the historical unity of the inclusive South Caucasus, but also further building a multidimensional foreign policy.

To protect one's rights, not to seek conflicts

To clarify the situation around Munich, let us recall that President Aliyev - as pro-Western Armenian authors still like to refer to him - ignored a couple of international summits last year despite invitations. From their ideological point of view, this was something blatant - how can one reject an invitation from the West!

You can and you should if the sovereignty of your people is at stake. Aliyev did not go to the summit in Granada - a mega-event for the EU and states close to it - because it was about the national interests of Azerbaijan. He did not go because he knew that at the summit some EU countries planned to "help" Armenia to continue its revanchist policy, to turn the negotiations into a cheating game and to collectively pressurize the Azerbaijani delegation.

Now the situation is radically different, and Aliyev went because there is no goal to oppose anyone - neither the West, nor the East, much less Armenia. When a position is reduced to being "anti" towards something, it is always a vulnerable position, with a minimal constructive agenda.

In this sense, the second president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, really missed the mark in formulating the idea of "Ukraine is not Russia" and tying his concept to a fundamental confrontation instead of stating the indisputable existence of the Ukrainian people and their state.

As one can judge from the foreign policy of the Azerbaijani leader, his government's position in the international arena is not a fundamental opposition to any country, but a firm defense of its righteousness in the face of any opponent - if necessary, even superpowers. And it is working, as evidenced by a series of meetings on the sidelines of the Munich conference - among others, with OSCE Chairman Ian Borg, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Israeli President Isaac Herzog, and the head of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, Nechirvan Barzani.

In addition, Aliyev talked to prominent persons from the field of economy, in particular Odile Renaud-Basso. She is the head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which is involved both in building up the Azerbaijani civilian fleet and in the development of the Middle Corridor, a key intra-continental transit route between Europe and Asia running through the territory of Azerbaijan.

Despite the diversity of interlocutors and issues discussed, the meetings were held at the suggestion of the opposite side, which shows that for the sake of successful positioning of the country in the international arena it is necessary not to grovel (yesterday before some, and today - before others), but a firm and thoughtful position, readiness, if anything, to say "no" even to the world hegemons.

A systematic expansion of horizons

Participation in the Munich Conference also means that Azerbaijan will not be a state tied to a single issue. The raison d'être of Azerbaijan as a responsible state is not hatred and revenge against anyone, but the ability of its citizens to build their lives in accordance with their own ideas of life, including the ability to collectively defend their individual and collective rights against the encroachments of external forces.

For many years, after losing control over the Karabakh region and overcoming the consequences of economic recession and political instability, it was difficult for Baku to avoid reducing its foreign policy to the issue of conflict with Armenia. But once the country gained strength, for example, it joined the Non-Aligned Movement in 2011 - at the same time finalizing preparations to launch a campaign to restore territorial integrity.

That campaign has now been successfully concluded and, despite the temporary absence of a peace treaty and border incidents, at least it no longer needs to spend resources on dealing with the Armenian occupation. Speaking at the inauguration ceremony in Milli Majlis (parliament) on the eve of Munich, President Aliyev said: “We should open up new horizons in the direction of foreign policy in this new era. Whereas in the previous period the main direction of our foreign policy was the solution of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, today this issue is almost no longer on the agenda. This is why new directions of our foreign policy should prevail.”

However, the deployment of new areas of foreign relations will still help overcome the heavy legacy of Armenian expansionism in the Caucasus and prevent attempts to revive it. After all, the key factor in the success of Armenian territorial expansion was the ability of the chauvinistic elements of the Armenian establishment to integrate their expansionist projects into the policies of the major world players and draw them into South Caucasus politics.

The best-known aspect was, of course, the interaction of Armenian nationalists with Gorbachev's leadership of the USSR, but Armenian extremists also owed their success in territorial seizures to other external forces - from Western powers, which were engaged through the Armenian diaspora, to some Middle Eastern countries (which initially nurtured ASALA for years in order to engage it against Türkiye).

In other words, the Azerbaijani state in Karabakh had to solve a problem created not primarily by local but by external, sometimes overseas, global players. And the current multi-vector foreign policy will help prevent possible attempts inside and outside the region to resume Greater Armenian projects. External players used to get involved in the South Caucasus not because they saw some special value in Armenia, but because it was easy to get involved and the risk of "getting hit back" was minimal.

The situation is different now, which is why Paris prefers to shift the issues of assistance to the Armenian government to the European Union if possible. After all, the Azerbaijani army already controls the situation on the ground, and Azerbaijani diplomacy and Azerbaijan's allies are acting on the international arena. It is becoming more and more difficult to rescue the Armenian revanchists.

Opportunity and necessity

The participation of the Azerbaijani leadership in international forums continues to strengthen the country's position abroad. The Munich Conference is a special platform due to its greater openness.

Earlier, it was fundamentally open to all world players, but with the change of organizers in the last couple of years, the policy has changed somewhat, the doors were slammed not only in front of Russia, but also in front of Iran, instead of the governments of some countries began to invite representatives of the pro-Western (and sometimes feeding from the West) opposition, and the continuation will obviously follow. Nevertheless, participation in it so far does not entail association with any bloc.

And this coincides with one of the attitudes of Azerbaijani foreign policy, the depth of which many people do not even think about. It is forgotten now, but the great founding politicians of the Non-Aligned Movement - Sukarno, Nehru, Zhou Enlai, Tito - at the dawn of independence of former colonial and dependent countries warned about the danger of loss of sovereignty through joining blocs.

Time has proved how right they were - very few countries (for example, Türkiye or Hungary) manage to retain control over their own foreign and defense policy by joining NATO and similar organizations. Therefore, outlining the contours of a new independent foreign policy, President Aliyev reaffirmed Azerbaijan's desire for cooperation in a bilateral format based on the principles of equality, mutual respect, benevolence and non-interference in internal affairs.

The priority of the bilateral format does not mean the rejection of multilateral cooperation, while maintaining non-aligned status. Therefore, the most important priority of Azerbaijan's foreign relations will be cooperation with the Organization of Turkic States, which, according to Aliyev, is “the main international organization for the country because it is our family”.

Moreover, Azerbaijan intends to contribute to its further development: "We must make joint efforts to make the Organization of Turkic States an important actor and a center of power in the global arena". It is possible to achieve this goal - given the fact that we are talking about the states that control important, and at the moment non-alternative, routes of communication between Europe and Asia, in particular the aforementioned Middle Corridor.

But it is not only possible, but also necessary to achieve this goal - in the current situation of global confrontation, the parties of which are trying to draw Türkiye, Azerbaijan and Central Asian countries into it - as exemplified by the EU Transport Investment Forum held in Brussels on January 29-30. At the forum, EU diplomatic chief Borrell openly said that the EU intends to invest in the region precisely for political reasons and the investments will be directed "against Russia". In other words, he promised to turn the region into a battlefield.

To address the world majority

It is worth noting separately a block of priorities, on which President Aliyev dwelt in detail while outlining his foreign policy program, and which can be conventionally described as the intention to work on the international arena with the majority of humanity, not with the self-appointed "international community", but in fact with an expanded version of the "collective West".

First, there is the attention to the topic of climate change. Human-induced climate change (mainly the parasitic and anti-environmental development of Western economies) is not just an increasingly bleak reality - it threatens to bury humanity in the not-so-distant future. Talking about it and calling things by their proper names means not only fighting for the future of everyone, including Azerbaijan, but also addressing the urgent problems of the majority of humanity.

After all, it is non-Western countries that suffer from climate change many times more than world powers. Therefore, the forthcoming COP29 climate conference in November this year and its chairmanship will help Azerbaijan to reach the world level. Aliyev's meeting with John Kerry (former Secretary of State under President Obama), the US President's Special Representative on Climate Issues, should be viewed in the same context.

It makes sense to consider the fight against climate change not as a separate component of foreign policy, but as linked to the other two priorities mentioned by Aliyev - the fight against Islamophobia and neo-colonialism. This becomes obvious if we take into account the fact that the list of the countries most affected by all three phenomena is basically the same, and once again we are talking about the real majority of humanity.

But the interconnectedness of the three problems becomes obvious if we think about the fact that, in fact, at the heart of all three problems lies a single cause - the racist attitude of the former colonial empires towards "others", their arrogant desire to continue to dominate the world at the expense of the death and grief of others - as a result of the preservation of the predatory system of imperialism and neo-colonialism built by them, the prospect of ecological collapse looms before the planet.

In this regard, President Aliyev staked on solidarity with the majority of mankind when he said: "We are showing and will continue to show support in the fight for complete eradication of neo-colonialism and the remnants of that ugly history from the face of the Earth. Those responsible for neocolonialism should also know that they have unleashed a cold war on us in vain. We will not lag behind. We have never been on the defensive."

The Organization of Turkic States and the Non-Aligned Movement - which has a chance to play an important role in the struggle for peace, development and equality of countries and peoples in the atmosphere of growing global war hysteria - can be a platform for relevant initiatives. After all, it is through them that we can start uniting the very majority of humanity, which is constantly marginalized in favor of the shouting Western minority. There is no need to say what opportunities this gives Azerbaijan.

Western hegemony has already brought the world to a dead end. And even the program report of the current Munich Conference is characterized by extreme pessimism with a characteristic title - "Lose-Lose?", i.e. universal loss. The authors recognize "negative trends in world politics," "growing geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainty," and lament "the continuing fragmentation of the world order."

Let us summarize. Azerbaijan's foreign policy is reaching new frontiers, as the country has firmly entered the group of medium-sized countries capable of participating in international politics not only in its regions. But the new directions will also help to consolidate the achieved results.

After all, the revanchist elements in Armenia and the Armenian Diaspora are still playing on the imperialist instincts of the world players, appealing to the "world community" and, in fact, to the West. It makes sense to respond to this pressure not with heroic resistance alone, but in cooperation with the majority of humanity, the majority of the world's countries. After all, many of them have faced or are facing the same problems: the same African countries do not need to explain what French imperialism is trying to get into the Caucasus.

At the same time, from the Azerbaijani side, it is not just a question of a situational search for allies, but how to build a foreign policy of the future through the solution of current problems, which is more connected with global issues than before. By systematically expanding the range of directions, the Azerbaijani state will both strengthen its positions in the region and make a worthy contribution to the preservation of world peace and joint development in the world. 

Caliber.Az