In support of Armenia - short of set-in-stone guarantees Contemplations with Orkhan Amashov/VIDEO

In his latest Contemplation, Orkhan Amashov reflects on the implications of the 5 April EU-US-Armenia convocation and draws upon superficial similarities in the official statements issued by Baku and Moscow regarding this, explaining their differing, sometimes conflicting, underpinnings, which serve to elucidate how the strategic interests of Azerbaijan and Russia in the South Caucasus contrast.

The 5 April meeting of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan; President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen; US State Secretary, Antony Blinken; and EU High Commissioner, Joseph Borrell, with the latter being an unexpected addition, has not spawned the kind of security guarantees from the West that Yerevan had been ostensibly expecting and Azerbaijan had warned against, prior to this congregation. If to judge by the pre-meeting press conference, and on the basis of externally visible, verifiable and officially declared statements, the Western espousal for Armenia, couched in the language of “growth and resilience”, is currently centred on the economy, with a modicum of security elements.

Three different explanations could be offered in this regard. Firstly, the process of enabling Armenia to pivot away from Russia and the Kremlin-dominated military and economic alliances is bound to be lengthy, and incremental and, consequently, what was officially declared on 5 April reflects the present degree of Western preparedness in investing in Armenia and the true scope of the anti-Russian potential of post-war Yerevan. Let us be very clear: 270 million Euros of grants during the next four years from the EU and 65 million dollars in assistance from the US budget are not sums of gargantuan proportions.

The second explanation, which is equally plausible, is that the preponderant part of that agreed between the parties in the spheres of security, military assistance and so forth was deliberately kept under wraps, being the subject of a clandestine behind-closed-doors meeting.

Thirdly, in view of strident telephone calls made to President Aliyev by Antony Blinken and Ursula von der Leyen, during which they made some erstwhile efforts to convince the Azerbaijani leader that the congregation was not directed against Azerbaijan, it may have presented itself as a necessity not to make the security-military component of support for Armenia visibly conspicuous.

These three explanations offered should not be viewed as mutually exclusive, and perhaps the truth lies in their midst, or maybe found in their combination.

What I would like to focus on is the question as to why the official statements emanating from the Azerbaijani and Russian foreign ministries regarding the 5 April meeting have had so many similarities, with some of the key rhetorical devices and arguments employed, such as “fuelling tensions in the South Caucasus” and “creating new dividing lines” seemingly being driven by the same logic. In this respect, behind what seems superficially similar lies completely different, sometimes conflicting, underpinnings. Allow me to explain.

For the Kremlin, the idea of Yerevan seeking closer interaction with the US and the EU, preparing the ground for the increase in Western economic-military presence in Armenia, is detestable for understandable reasons. The argument regularly presented by Pashinyan that Russia and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) failed Armenia is viewed in Moscow as disingenuous, false and ungrateful. Although the venom manifestly expressed via the statements of Maria Zakharova, Spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry, embodies that very Russian sensibility, when it comes to practical actions vis-à-vis Yerevan, the Kremlin remains very measured and calm. 

Taking note of the true reach of its military-economic stranglehold and footprint in Armenia, and all the difficulties coming in the wake of Western penetration into this country, Moscow is currently averse to taking radical steps, not least due to the ongoing situation over Ukraine.

In addition, the genuineness of Armenia’s intention to withdraw from the CSTO, which should, in principle, be followed by Yerevan extricating itself from the Eurasian Economic Union, which is not at all within the interests of Yerevan at present, due to the economic benefits offered by this organisation, is doubted in Moscow.

When it comes to the concerns expressed by Azerbaijan as to the 5 April meeting, Baku is by no means against Armenia turning towards the West and rearranging its security arrangements away from the Russosphere. It is not a source of concern for Azerbaijan that Armenia wants to drift towards the realm of the EU. In fact, by defeating Armenia in the Second Karabakh War, and fully restoring its sovereignty over Karabakh in September 2023, Baku has contributed towards the establishment of those geopolitical circumstances that now enable Armenia to doubt the so-called self-benefiting security guarantees offered by Moscow, on a bilateral level, and by the CSTO. Azerbaijan’s victory in 2020 and subsequent developments induced shockwaves eroding that pernicious Russian-Armenian understanding, whereby Yerevan had surrendered its sovereignty to the Kremlin for the sake of retaining its illegal occupation in Karabakh.

Armenia’s disappointment with Russia, in many ways, is unjustified, for it is predicated on false and unsubstantiated expectations that Moscow should have defended Yerevan’s policy of occupation in Karabakh ad infinitum and have backed it militarily in the skirmishes on the conditional and undelimited border against Azerbaijan in May 2021 and September 2022. Nevertheless, however unjustified Armenia’s dissatisfaction with Russia may be, its desire to pivot away from Moscow and lurch towards the West is perfectly legitimate, provided, and this is from Baku’s perspective, any military assistance furnished from the West, with concomitant guarantees, is not used against Azerbaijan. In the past, Armenia tried to leverage its alliance with Moscow and membership of the CSTO against Baku, before, during and after the Second Karabakh War, and fundamentally and spectacularly failed.

Given this, at a knife-edge time when the Azerbaijan-Armenia border remains undefined, and with frictions on the path to a peace deal proving thorny, it is not entirely inconceivable that the government of Nikol Pashinyan will now try to use the military support garnered from the US and EU against Baku. On 3 April, President Aliyev, in his telephone conversation with Antony Blinken, warned of the consequences of Armenia’s possible armament through the European Peace Facility and via the US budget, and the provocative establishment of military infrastructure in the border areas of Azerbaijan. More than that, in his meeting with Mevlut Cavusoglu, head of the Turkish delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the Azerbaijani leader described the EU-US efforts in the South Caucasus as the harbinger of a “great catastrophe”. One hopes such an eventuality is out of the question. But, if emboldened by Western support, Armenia continues regular movements of its army units along the border, opening fire on Azerbaijani positions, not necessarily with the genuine purpose of provoking the other side into a large-scale escalation, but merely to induce some strong-worded statements from Baku in order to increase the level of support from the West, then the circumstances on the ground may get truly catastrophic.