Armenian pundit: Azerbaijan achieves great military, political successes in region

Armenian Aghasi Yenokyan has said that Azerbaijan achieved great military and political successes in the region.

"The CSTO [The Collective Security Treaty Organization] has shown that it cannot, or rather does not want to ensure our security. NATO is presented as an alternative to the CSTO. However, Armenia has the biggest problems with NATO, the first of which is that NATO is in no hurry to enter our country and ensure our security. The Alliance has its own reasons for that," Yenokyan writes in an article published in Armenian media, Caliber.Az reports.

“Firstly, Russian hegemony has been established here, and it is problematic for NATO to create a new source of conflict with Russia. Armenia is at war with its neighbours, and NATO tries to avoid getting into war zones, preferring to work with countries in peacetime and thereby prevent wars. Added to this are the Armenian characteristics of poor democratic governance and widespread corruption, which NATO considers serious obstacles to its post-Cold War expansion.

If NATO cannot ensure our security, should we rely on the CSTO, which also does not want to ensure our security? Such a dilemma is often presented as an inevitability, a fatalistic choice to remain under Russian influence, to follow its political dictates and whims.

‘Either/or’, such a question paralyzes the security of Armenia, as well as the political system, making room for nonsense like ‘Putin will save us at some point’ or ‘crossroads of the world.’

To get out of this vicious circle, you just need to look at the world more broadly. The problem is that the mechanism of confrontation between military and political blocs is purely a Cold War approach, where this dilemma of 'either NATO or the Warsaw Pact Organization (now CSTO)' was formed.

A good example of the success of bilateral agreements is Azerbaijan, which was able to use the necessary strategic moment without creating a formal trilateral Azerbaijan-Turkey-Russia bloc, was able to unite the interests of these countries and achieve great military and political successes in the region.

What to do with the CSTO? The answer is very simple, nothing. The CSTO is on the path to collapse; it is not even able to ban the supply of weapons to Armenia from outside the bloc. We must understand that there is not much benefit from this, but we should not lose chances to take advantage of it, for example, not recall a representative from the CSTO, block decisions that are unpleasant for us during voting, etc.,” writes the political scientist.