Brussels meeting targeted Russia, undermined peace in South Caucasus Armenia’s Pashinyan left Brussels empty-handed

On April 5, Brussels has hosted a trilateral meeting of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Western participants held it in the context of their confrontation with Russia, while the Armenian side viewed it as an instrument of war against Azerbaijan. The summit ended with minimal results for Armenia, but hit the peace process in the South Caucasus - the Armenian side's military activity on the borders with Azerbaijan increased.

Pashinyan in Brussels: All for naught

The Brussels meeting participants talked about peace. But against the background of absence of Azerbaijani representatives, the words about "peace" looked hypocritical. Western participants promised Yerevan assistance and pro-Western liberal media assured that "the EU and the US will allocate hundreds of millions to Armenia".

The figures announced and other statistics pointed to a different reality. This week, the Chairman of the European Integration Committee of the Armenian National Assembly Arman Yeghoyan released curious figures.  He proudly reminded that in 2021 the EU promised Armenia an economic and investment program worth 2.6 billion euros. However, it turned out that so far Armenians have received only 550 million euros out of this amount, i.e. a pitiful handout of about 150 million a year. Most of it was lent and not even to the government, but to businesses, i.e. the EU made an exemplary choice in a country where the government is already extremely weak. Apparently, the 270 million euros that Leyen promised Pashinyan in Brussels are part of the aforementioned 2021 package.

The US aid turned out to be even more modest. In Brussels on April 5, Blinken announced the allocation of $65 million from the US budget for Armenia this fiscal year - for all programs. According to him, that's half as much as two years ago. Nominally, he is right, but the figure itself is small (the budget of a small town in the West is larger), and in addition, if we take into account real inflation, it will turn out that Washington has increased the amount by some pennies.

Yerevan has miscalculated even more in receiving support for its strategic projects. The main idea of Pashinyan's team, of course, by now has become the “Crossroads of Peace" initiative. Struggling to gain support for this plan, Pashinyan even rebranded it. The inauguration of Crossroads took place at a Silk Road event related to Chinese initiatives in Tbilisi. In Brussels, the Armenian prime minister tried to sell Crossroads to the opposite side by proposing to integrate it with the EU's Global Gateway strategy, conceived as a means to combat Chinese initiatives in Eurasia!

Such opportunism did not help the Armenian leader. Leyen only welcomed the Crossroads project and dismissed Pashinyan's further projections, saying that "the EU will study cross-border transportation when conditions allow". And Blinken limited himself to the polite excuse that the American side "supports the ideas behind the Crossroads project." In diplomatic parlance, this means politely refusing to make any promises in this regard.

Yes, Leyen promised EU investments in infrastructure projects in Armenia, but among them were mentioned only: 1) the Black Sea Energy submarine cable project, much more closely linked not to Armenia but to Georgia; 2) abstract renewable energy production projects.

In short, Western support for the Armenian government remains largely verbal. Only a few ideologized or directly connected to Armenian structures Western politicians have consistently advocate these issues. For example, in the context of the Brussels summit, Prime Minister Pashinyan at the Armenian Embassy met with Samantha Power, Administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a longtime friend of Moscow oligarch and former Karabakh separatist leader Vardanyan.

And the day before, the Paris-based Le Monde published an article by former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Repeating the usual ideological clichés of the liberal crusade "for democracy", he calls on the European Union to support the Armenian nationalists. First of all, he demands "abandoning the erroneous notion that the EU should be a neutral party in relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan," because "Armenia has chosen the community of European democracies, while Azerbaijan is in the camp of aggressive autocracies." According to him, this is not about Armenia and Azerbaijan: the logic of Armenian support is blatantly linked to other considerations - "despite historical, economic, energy and military dependence on Russia, and the physical presence of thousands of Russian soldiers on its soil, the Armenian government has made bold efforts to consolidate Armenia's democracy and build closer relations with the democratic West."

There is no consensus on Armenia in the West

But these are all loud words of the "former", and Pashinyan returned from Belgium practically empty-handed. The minimal results of the summit in Brussels should not be surprising. The very configuration of the meeting indicates that not only is there no broad consensus among the members of the "collective West" to support the Armenian leadership, things are much worse. Its participants are acting in a largely adventurous manner, trying to earn political points by ostentatiously fighting Russia, since they all have wobbly chairs under them, and are in no hurry to invest their own real resources in the implementation of the discussed scheme, let alone their willingness to dare to do something serious for the sake of a tiny country far from the EU. At the same time, despite all their adventurism, they realize that strategically the West has no alternative to building relations with Azerbaijan in this or that variant at least for the sake of energy and transit issues.

In order to clarify our idea that under each participant of the Brussels summit "the chair is wobbling", let's take a closer look at each of them. We can start with the hostess of the Brussels venue - Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission. Perhaps no one in the EU establishment can compete with her in the anti-rating of politicians who cause the greatest irritation among voters. She ascended to the EU political Olympus as an accidental party nominee, after a scandalous career in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). Despite her weak position, Ursula would like to seek a second term in the near future, but there was a corruption investigation suddenly hanging over her. She is accused of colluding with pharmaceutical industry tycoons to purchase a multi-billion dollar shipment of Pfizer vaccines by exchanging text messages and then deleting the evidence.

In general, she, smelling the heat, has rushed ahead with radical initiatives, including scandalous military plans. She can rely on French President Macron with his strategic projects to escalate the confrontation with Moscow. The Brussels deal with Armenia is part of the same escalating military package through which Ursula is trying to portray herself as a global politician.

Secretary Blinken's position is little better than Ursula's. Representing the team of the weak President Biden, who is running for re-election, he cannot, in principle, take radical foreign policy steps in such exotic directions. It is important for the current US leadership to cope with Trump's election rivalry and not to get involved in petty projects like supporting Armenian nationalists, which would instantly lead to aggravation of relations with Türkiye, one of the largest military powers in NATO.

And finally, we see Pashinyan, who holds on to power in Armenia, desperately playing on the hopes of a part of Armenian society to go under the wing of the West, getting rid of the endless corruption, poverty and wars, where the current Armenian establishment has led them. The chair under Pashinyan is wobbling, and in order not to fall, he has to run forward, to the West, even when, as we noted above, nothing serious is offered to him in the West.

To make our point even clearer, let us outline what the meeting could have looked like, which would have signaled the West's readiness to turn Armenia into its citadel. First of all, there was no point in holding it now - against the backdrop of the crisis in the United States, which is still hopeless for the Biden administration. Secondly, it should have been attended by people more serious than Ursula - for example, NATO Secretary General. They would have been backed not by France, which had just lost in Africa with its chronic bluffing and blundering about "strategic autonomy," but by more authoritative players in the camp of the "collective West" - for example, the British or a cohesive coalition of other Western powers.  

Under such conditions, it is natural that the participants of the meeting were objectively unable to offer one another serious, constructive things for the South Caucasus. However, they could agree on steps destructive for the peace process. After all, breaking is not building, it is simpler and easier.

"European armies will not protect our borders"

Even some Armenian Euro-enthusiasts are talking about the dubiousness of the deal with some Western circles. One of Armenia's most radically pro-Western politicians, Daniel Ioannisyan, founder of the “Union of Informed Citizens” NGO, warned against excessive expectations of Western aid when he addressed a hearing on "New prospects and challenges for Armenia's European integration" in the Armenian parliament this week. According to him, "European armies will not defend our borders. The EU will help us develop through our hard work: to develop our economy, human rights, human capital, security." Ioannisyan, like many post-Soviet "liberals," turns out time after time to be an ordinary nationalist. Calling not to be afraid of Russia's reaction to Armenia's shift to the anti-Russian camp, Ioannisyan said that "Russia has already done all the worst" - separatist structures and plans for Armenian territorial expansion have been destroyed, and in general, Russia has weakened. It is true that at all Western events other assessments are heard, but pro-Western liberals in the former USSR exist in their own parallel universe.  

It is indicative that even while preparing to "go to the West," Pashinyan's fellow party members continue to speak very cautiously about the Russian presence. On April 3, Pashinyan faction MP Armen Khachatryan made another such curtsy towards the West, on the one hand hinting at the withdrawal of Russia's 102nd military base, and on the other, not daring to openly declare it: "The military base exists, in any case, the architecture of Armenia's new security system will make it clear how everything will be further. This military base did nothing when Armenia's sovereign territories occupied".

However, the French ambassador in Yerevan also commented cautiously on Armenian strategic prospects in the context of the Brussels meeting. On April 3, Olivier Decotigny gave an interview in which he said that the Brussels meeting aimed to "ensure appropriate support for Armenia from the US and EU," and as for military issues, "France is responsible for Armenia's security." Moreover, Armenia has been receiving aid from the West for a long time, he said, while "Russia does not ensure Armenia's security".

However, Decotigny added some very curious details. First, he emphasized the bilateral nature of military cooperation between Paris and Yerevan: "I represent France, not Europe or the United States. We are the first NATO country to supply arms to a Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) member. The cooperation also includes retraining of the military and assistance of French training instructors in Armenia and in France."

Secondly, it turned out that Paris is not averse to shifting the responsibility for the fulfillment of its promises to Armenians to... Iran. According to him, "we have disagreements with Iran, but we are united in our concern for Armenia's territorial integrity and sovereignty. Iran has repeatedly reaffirmed its support for Armenia's territorial integrity".

The curious thing here is not even the fact that the West is unlikely to cooperate with Iran in supporting Armenian revanchists in the situation of increasingly tough confrontation between Western countries and Iranian allies in the vicinity of the Suez Canal. The fact is that Armenian media recently managed to get from Iranian Ambassador to Armenia Mehdi Sobhani only a reminder that Tehran is watching the processes in the South Caucasus and the exhortation "we strongly condemn those who want to create tension in the region". They, of course, hastened to interpret this in their favor, saying that the Iranians are against Azerbaijani proposals to restore the historical unity of the South Caucasus. But in general, the Iranian government has been much more opposed, especially recently, to Yerevan's attempts to draw extra-regional players into regional processes, especially from among the countries of the "collective West" and it is with them that Tehran associates the attempts to "create tension in the region".

The French will supply arms if someone pays for them

Despite its minimal material results, the Brussels meeting is dangerous as a political cover for a conspiracy between the revanchist circles of the Armenian establishment and imperialist elements in the West, primarily in France. The Parisian gentlemen are doing this as part of their current policy aimed at outplaying in their favor the strategic arrangements in the EU and NATO, even assuming an unexpected and unsupported role of a leader in the confrontation with Russia in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus.

The fact is that following the bellicose statements of the French ambassador about the supply of some combat arms (so far the facts refer only to minor supplies of colonial-type equipment), other information appeared, indicating Paris' firm will to shift the costs of arming the Armenian side to the EU. First, Head of the European Union (EU) Delegation to Armenia, Ambassador Vassilis Maragos announced his intention to provide Armenia with "substantial support" with weapons through the mechanisms of the European Peace Facility (EPF). Following that, Chairman of the Standing Committee on European Integration of Armenian National Assembly Arman Yeghoyan said that Yerevan seeks to include the mechanisms of the European Peace Facility in relation to Armenia in connection with the elaboration of a political document by the end of spring, which will define the mutual obligations of Armenia and the EU. In other words, the supply of arms and other military aid paid for by the EU, not France.

But it is not only interesting that the French do not intend to pay for weapons for Armenians. Their actions are already creating problems within Western structures. In fact, Paris has already failed in its attempts to involve NATO in building Armenian military power. It is impossible to do so because of Türkiye's position, which will undoubtedly be supported by a number of other member states. This week, the head of Türkiye’s delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Mevlut Cavusoglu, reiterated in Baku that Ankara does not trust the assurances of Armenia's allies that their actions are not directed against Azerbaijan. He meaningfully recalled the strategic alliance between Türkiye and Azerbaijan.

But the French leadership's actions are not only causing protests in Türkiye. After Macron's Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne on April 2 started praising Armenia as the only country "willing and trying to avoid conflict in this part of the world" and made threatening hints about holding the COP29 climate summit in Baku, the Italians could not stand it any longer. Italian Deputy Foreign Minister Edmondo Cirielli said the very next day: "It would be appropriate and useful for French Minister Sejourne not to undermine the efforts of those who, guided by common sense, are moving forward to achieve lasting peace in the region".

In conclusion, we can only repeat that destruction requires much less effort than creation. This is evident even in minimal examples: despite the very limited assistance Yerevan received from the West in the context of the Brussels meeting, it was enough to give new impetus to military revanchism and undermine the peace process. On Monday, the Azerbaijani military reported the deployment of additional Armenian troops on the border, building fortifications and placing artillery on them ...

The views and opinions by guest columnists in their op-eds may differ from and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff.