"US diplomacy not interested in re-listening to Yerevan's same old story" Rahr, Krayev and Semivolos on Caliber.Az

On February 18, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev had a joint meeting with the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan in Munich.

"We believe that Armenia and Azerbaijan have a genuinely historic opportunity to secure an enduring peace after more than 30 years of conflict. The parties themselves have renewed their focus on a peace process, including through direct conversation as well as with the EU and ourselves," US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said on the spot. - US is committed to doing everything in its power to aid the Azerbaijan-Armenia peace process, whether directly with our friends, whether in a trilateral format such as this or with other international partners."

So, once again, there is the US factor at play. Who exactly has made the effort to organise these talks? Ilham Aliyev had a meeting with EU president Charles Michel the day before, but it was the US secretary of state who tried and arranged the meeting with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan. The EU head was very proactive last year, but after French President Macron came to the fore, his activity objectively came to a standstill. There are reasons for this. Baku agreed to Michel's mediation but did not understand why the French president, who clearly has sympathy for Yerevan, should suddenly jump in and stay in the Brussels format. And when the Azerbaijani side made it clear that it did not agree to such innovations, meetings under the auspices of the EU were suspended. Charles Michel should have let Macron know that his presence in the format was not necessary at all, but for some reason, this did not happen, and Pashinyan insisted that he was ready for negotiations under the auspices of Brussels only with Macron's participation.

Now Washington has once again come to the fore as a mediator. Although Blinken linked the US and EU efforts in his statement, it is clear that Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations on the Western track can be held only with American mediation.

So, is there any reason to hope that it will be the Americans who manage to lead the sides to a comprehensive peace treaty? And how much is Washington really interested in this? Does it have its own plans and interests in the South Caucasus, which are hindered by the absence of peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan under the current circumstances?

Foreign pundits shared their thoughts on these matters with Caliber.Az.

According to Alexander Rahr, professor at the WeltTrends Institute for International Policy (Potsdam, Germany), the trilateral meeting in Munich demonstrated - and Secretary Blinken openly announced it - that the US and the EU want to weaken Russia's influence in the South Caucasus region and take up peacekeeping themselves.

"The recent visit of the Armenian foreign minister to Türkiye shows that Armenia is willing to go towards rapprochement with the West. Azerbaijan is even more so, as it itself is strongly interested in supplying its energy resources to the West (replacing Russia's supplier), primarily to Germany. Berlin is now acting so strongly on foreign policy issues in the wake of American geopolitics that it is ready to support American leadership in the issue of resolving Armenian-Azerbaijani relations (if the US is really interested in it). Macron, who alone is trying to defend 'European autonomy' in European foreign policy, is isolated," says Professor Rahr.

As Oleksandr Krayev, an expert of the Ukrainian Prism Foreign Policy Council said, it is indeed becoming clear that after the Munich conference, and in general after the exchange of views that took place between Washington and Beijing, the Americans are really becoming more and more interested in all those regions that, conventionally speaking, surround China and Russia.

"In the near future, there will be a speech by Biden in Poland, which, as everyone is now saying, is designed to announce a new milestone in the Cold War that has started between Beijing and Washington. And first and foremost, it will be about just how new camps of influence are beginning to form. The conditional camp of Western democracy and those whom Americans call dictators, autocrats, but they themselves call an alternative democracy. That is, a new system of global confrontation is being formed now. Not necessarily military, but the two blocs will clash one way or another," the expert said.

In his opinion, that is why Americans are interested in becoming mediators, becoming crisis managers in many conflicts, and helping to solve them, to achieve real results. Especially now, when Russia is desperately looking for any allies it can find, because its actions in Ukraine are generally failing.

"So one way or another, the Americans are really interested in becoming mediators in the Armenian-Azerbaijani issue. The Americans can be successful there because we see that at one time they had influence in Azerbaijan, later they also had quite a weighty voice in Armenia's domestic politics. So, one way or another, they can find ways to reach both Baku and Yerevan. Therefore, they will be unique in this respect and, I hope, quite successful negotiators," Krayev believes.

"Personally, I believe that there is no separate EU and US plan, but there are principles shared by these political actors, which they offer to the conflicting parties," Igor Semivolos, director of the Ukrainian Centre for Middle East Studies, noted in turn.

According to him, if we proceed from the principle of the nonzero-sum game - that is, if we refuse the formula: I won, you lost, and vice versa, then we should offer an option when each party will feel not completely satisfied, but the damage from a possible continuation of the conflict will be even greater.

"I don't see such a formula yet. Or I'd like to say another way: a window of agreement - a compromising space within which a positive solution can be reached, is not yet completely obvious. Azerbaijan, taking advantage of its status as the victor in the war, refuses to talk about any formalised entity within the country and insists on recognising its territorial integrity. Armenia sort of agrees, but there are nuances.

What is important right now? We hear of a change of mood in Yerevan, of dissatisfaction with Kremlin policy there, and a search for new allies. But why? The status quo? I don't think American diplomacy is interested in re-listening to the same old story. That is, the Armenian leader needs to make a move that seems logical in this situation, and get the protection in a package, and from Moscow in the first place. The Americans, and we can see this from the Russia-Ukraine war, seem to finally have the time and the inspiration.

However, the US will not impose anything on its own. It is contrary to their approach. One only has to look at the long and grueling negotiation process in the Middle East to see what kind of prospect awaits everybody. But is there an alternative at a time of rapid weakening of Russia? That's the question," Semivolos concluded.