NATO chief's strategic visit to Armenia amid Yerevan-Moscow confrontation
Stoltenberg's Armenia visit sparks Moscow's ire

REGION  26 March 2024 - 13:34

After visiting Baku and Tbilisi, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg went to Yerevan. His trip was linked to the confrontation between the collective West and Russia and, at first glance, Stoltenberg’s visit to Armenia was an encouragement to Pashinyan. After all, the day before, the Armenian authorities announced a freeze of membership in the CSTO and ordered the withdrawal of Russian border guards from Zvartnots airport. And Armenian banks stopped servicing Russian Mir cards.

However, in material terms, the Armenian elites have so far received mainly symbolic declarations and assistance from the West. But this back and forth between Yerevan between Russia and the West, instead of peace with its neighbors, continued to undermine the foundations of the peace process and normalization in the region.

Ceremonial visit

In light of the latest diplomatic developments, liberal commentators have rushed to paint a rosy picture for the pro-Western leadership in Yerevan. The Moscow Kommersant noted with satisfaction: “NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg visited Armenia on a visit that became the culmination of his tour of the South Caucasus. The negotiations in Yerevan outlined NATO’s updated strategy in the region, in which Armenia claims to be the main partner with a chance of joining the alliance.”

It is difficult to agree with such an assessment. Stoltenberg arrived in Yerevan at the very end of his trip to the South Caucasus, and this already indicates not for the better the nature of the visit. The content of the three-country visits also points not to a “climax,” but rather to a ceremonial end to the tour in Yerevan. It is enough to compare official information, for example, on the visit of the NATO Secretary General to Azerbaijan and Armenia. It immediately strikes the eye that if we abstract from the usual rhetoric, then Stoltenberg did not discuss anything concrete in Yerevan, except the need to develop a new partnership program and a peace treaty. In Baku, let us remind you, they talked about transit and the importance of supplies of Azerbaijani and Caspian energy resources to Europe, energy transition, etc.

And by the way, it seems that in Yerevan Stoltenberg took a position that was not the most favorable for Pashinyan - emphasizing the importance of the peace treaty between Azerbaijan and Armenia for the strategic plans of the West. Let us recall that at a press conference in Yerevan he said: “We discussed the importance of stability in the South Caucasus, which is important for Euro-Atlantic security in a more dangerous world. Armenia and Azerbaijan today have a chance to achieve lasting peace after years of conflict. “I therefore call for an agreement that will pave the way for normalization of relations.” If we remember that a day earlier Pashinyan finally spoke about agreeing to begin returning to Azerbaijan the territories occupied by Armenian forces on the conventional border of the two countries, then Stoltenberg’s words take on a special meaning.

Sargsyan and his developement mega-plans for the Caucasus

It is, of course, possible to talk about the possibility of the existence of some secret part, within which the Armenian leaders discussed some insidious plans with Stoltenberg, but in this case we risk moving from analysis to political astrology and fortune-telling. In fact, there are much fewer completely secret negotiations even in the military sphere than ordinary people think. The point is that it almost always makes sense to hide the technical details of a force buildup or military cooperation, but there is no point in building your defense without telling the world anything about it. That is why Israeli leaders, without showing their nuclear weapons, have nevertheless allegedly “accidentally” been talking about them since the 1970s. After all, military force accomplishes its tasks not only through kinetic influence on the enemy on the battlefield, but also through its very existence and demonstration.

Therefore, it is hardly worth talking about even some secret assistance from France to Pashinyan. At the beginning of the month, the head of the Armenian Security Council, Armen Grigoryan, again either hinted at some kind of cooperation with Paris, or decided to prick Moscow in this way. He announced: “As of 2020, 96% of all Armenian military-technical cooperation was with Russia. Since January 2021, Armenia has concluded contracts worth several billion dollars with different countries. In these contracts, Russian volumes account for less than 10%. That is, military-technical cooperation with Russia has decreased from 96% to less than 10%.”

According to him, these are the consequences of the decisions of the Russian leadership, which forced the Armenians to go to Paris: “France is of key importance in the field of security. France supplies us with first-class weapons, as you understand, this issue loves silence, and we cannot declare everything we receive.”

It sounds mysterious, but so far the main evidence of this assistance has been colonial-looking armored cars, which even the French army itself did not dare to take. Doubts are also growing against the backdrop of Paris’s attempts to steal money from European Union funds for Armenia’s armament. After all, Yerevan is unlikely to be able to pay the real price for significant quantities of weapons to the French, just as it did not pay the full price to the Russians.

However, these obvious points do not prevent Armenian politicians from hinting at grandiose regional development projects. The other day, Aram Sargsyan, leader of the Republic party and longtime ally of Pashinyan, spoke about another such idea: “1. The British are offering Armenia very serious things in the field of armaments, but this is classified information. 2. Britain proposes to build 12 reservoirs in Armenia and invest more money in this than they invested in the entire Azerbaijani oil industry. The goal is to then sell the excess water in the Middle East. The cost of the program is 6.4 billion. 3. British Airways is considering the possibility of making Yerevan a hub on the route from London to Bombay. We are talking about serving 60 million passengers a year. 60 million people are able to consume all Armenian agricultural products.”

Having listed all these points of the business plan -including transformation of the country into a subsidiary of British Airlines - Sargsyan rhetorically asks, what is Russia ready to give to Armenia?

Well, the British readiness to arm Armenia can be judged by their readiness to arm the much more strategically important and valuable Ukraine. And after Pashinyan’s new attacks against the Kremlin, the British limited themselves to only a statement by British Deputy Defense Minister James Heppy, who responded to a written request from the British Parliament regarding assistance to Yerevan. This statement says that London took note of the decision of the Armenian authorities to freeze membership in the CSTO and is ready to provide support in the face of threats emanating from Russia. The British avoided making clear promises, but quite clearly said that they did not want to help the Armenian nationalists in implementing their revanchist plans for Azerbaijan.

Sargsyan’s other statements are also dubious. Armenia simply does not have such volumes of water, just as there is no need for an Armenian hub between London and Bombay. Secretary of the Armenian Security Council Grigoryan recently told interesting facts about fabulous investments from the West: “In the first nine months of 2023, the leading investor in Armenia was the United Arab Emirates - approximately $250 million, Luxembourg took second place, followed by Russia - less than $50 million.”

He tried to boast about them, but there is no need to explain what kind of investments are coming from Luxembourg and the UAE, there is probably no point in pointing out the insignificance of the amounts listed. There is no money and promising projects inside Armenia either - the only money and projects that could lead it out of the deadlock are money and projects from neighboring Azerbaijan and Turkey, but they don’t want to talk about this in Yerevan.

RAND is authorized to declare: the United States does not guarantee the security of Armenia

But let’s return to Stoltenberg, who during his visit did not follow Macron’s line of supporting Armenian revanchism, which could be hastily associated with Turkey’s influence in NATO. It probably played a role, but there is reason to talk about the influence of other factors - in particular the position of the United States.

The fact is that recently analysts from the influential American “thought factory” RAND published an article with the eloquent title “The United States cannot guarantee the security of Armenia in the face of Azerbaijani threats, but it can help.” The text was carefully hidden in the official blog, but it was noticed, and Armenian activists were taken aback by the sophisticated American warnings to their Yerevan friends: “The United States and its European allies cannot provide Armenia with everything it wants and needs from its foreign partners. Yerevan is about to maintain complex economic, social and strategic relationships with its neighbors, including Russia and Iran, and it would be foolish to pressure them into making an all-or-nothing binary choice: alliance with the West or nothing. The West must recognize and accept Armenia's multi-alignment and focus on those areas where it is comparatively able and willing to deepen ties and promote stability."

Translated from diplomatic language, this means: the West will make beautiful declarations, but take the money from the Russians, and let the Iranians protect you from the wrath of your neighbors. And the oldest and, perhaps, the most influential research company writes about this, which in all respects except the nominal name can be considered an outgrowth of the US government.

The matter was not limited to words - recently, officials of the American State Department announced the allocation of as much as $52 million to Armenia in the new annual budget for “strengthening democracy and the economy.” There is such an old and reliable technique in the analysis of political processes - to track cash flows (follow the money). So, this amount says everything about the value of Armenia for overseas patrons, whom the Armenian elites have unrequitedly loved for many centuries despite the catastrophic consequences for their own people.

In the struggle for power, European Union politicians are shaking NATO

But perhaps, while American politicians are busy with other issues, the Armenian nationalists will be helped by Macron and similar politicians in the EU, who are just testing the possibility of creating a military structure of the European Union countries that partially duplicates NATO, as well as using the capabilities already available in the EU for military assistance to a number of countries. the perimeter of the borders of the Russian Federation? After all, the very next day after Pashinyan announced the CSTO ultimatum, threatening to leave the organization, he received the first, so far, consolation prize - from the European Parliament. On March 13, he adopted a resolution in which, citing Yerevan’s readiness to leave the CSTO, he proposed to consider the issue of declaring Armenia a candidate country for joining the EU. In addition, the resolution calls on the leadership of the European Union to allocate money from the European Peace Fund for arming Armenia. Pashinyan called on Armenian politicians to take seriously the decision of the European Parliament, which is indeed not the most important body in the EU.

However, in this case, he is right, since the promptly adopted resolution of the European Parliament complements the position of a number of people at the top of the European Union bureaucracy, who are trying to prolong their stay in their positions through the construction of new structures and the expansion of the EU - we are talking, first of all, about Ursula von der Leyen.

But in doing so, they are taking a shot at some of the money and power associated with the military operations of the “collective West,” which is fraught with consequences. In other words, soon such proactive EU figures, whom the Armenian elites hope for, will be given a slap on the wrist. So, in connection with such attempts, a scandal broke out. The head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, on Wednesday demanded that Ursula von der Leyen and the European Commission headed by her not exceed their powers and not interfere in military issues. Indeed, for the “collective West”, these games of Ursula and Emmanuel in the “war with Russia” look defiant, since they can undermine the foundations of NATO, which are important for the global hegemony of the Western camp.

Pashinyan’s “Trojan Horse” in Moscow

Under these conditions, Pashinyan decided to continue playing his proven role of a “Trojan horse,” undermining from within the international structures of the CSTO and the EAEU associated with the Russian Federation, and causing scandals in bilateral relations with Moscow. The West clearly likes this more than the prospect of taking over a distant and extremely poor country for support. In order to continue to disintegrate structures associated with the Russian Federation, it is important for the Yerevan establishment not to bring relations with the Kremlin to a complete breakdown - hence the fantastic somersaults of Armenian leaders in contacts with Russia and its opponents.

 A true masterpiece in this regard was demonstrated by Prime Minister Pashinyan, who congratulated Russian President Putin on his victory in the Russian presidential elections, wishing him “health, happiness and further success,” although just a couple of weeks ago he again hinted at the possibility of Putin’s arrest in Yerevan. Yes, by the way, there are signs that Pashinyan will even come to the May 9 parade in Moscow again, just like last year.

Or another example - last week, Pashinyan’s fellow party member, Deputy Chairman of the Parliamentary Commission on Regional and Eurasian Integration Vagharshak Hakobyan assured that “Armenia intends to fully perform the functions of chairmanship in the bodies of the EAEU: the signing of the Rome status of the International Criminal Court (ICC) will not interfere with this.” True, he did not clarify whether Russian President Putin would be able to come to EAEU events in Armenia if the ICC issued a warrant for his arrest, and Yerevan intends to comply with the ICC’s demands.

In general, the Armenian leaders are hedging their bets and, despite their hints about imminent help from the West, they themselves feel the weakness of their position in the risky international game they have started. Moreover, even with the best outcome of events, in the long term they will be included in the EU only with the rights of not even second-class members (which the Eastern Europeans were), but third-class members. This became clear from the voiced proposals of the European Commission to reform the union towards a transition to decision-making by majority vote (which would make new members even more powerless in defending their interests in the EU) and “selective integration” of new members (in which their capabilities in certain areas, e.g. , access to markets are limited).

In a word, against the backdrop of diplomatic miscalculations, it is not surprising that, talking about imaginary diplomatic successes, Pashinyan suddenly started talking about returning the occupied territories to Azerbaijan. However, there is no doubt that some irresponsible politicians in the West (and even in the East) will continue to fuel revanchist sentiments in their struggle for power and glory at the cost of the blood of the peoples of the South Caucasus.

Caliber.Az