Will Pashinyan follow Willy Brandt's example? Life after the peace treaty

All armed conflicts end one way or another. Even the 100-year war between England and France, which lasted from 1337 to 1453, ended. Once archfoes England and France, Germany and France, Spain and the Netherlands (who fought for 80 years) today peacefully coexist within the EU (the UK, however, left the EU, but this does not change much), with no borders or territorial claims.

Undoubtedly, peace will come between Azerbaijan and Armenia someday. I do not undertake to forecast the exact or at least approximate date, for example, before the end of this year, next year, in 5-10 years. But the peace treaty will still be signed. Here we come to an interesting point. There is much talk about the possibility of signing a peace treaty, and few talk about what will happen afterward. Right, an agreement that recognizes the territorial integrity and sovereignty of countries, the inviolability of borders (which have yet to be established) is important, but not paramount. In my opinion, what will happen after the signing of the peace treaty is much more important. Will Armenia follow the path of postwar Germany or Japan? There is a significant difference.

The defeat of militaristic Japan in 1945, the writing of a new constitution in 1947 (moreover, the text was written mainly by officials of the American occupation administration), the prohibition of having an army (later self-defense forces were created), the rejection of territorial claims and acquisitions, opened the way to the Japanese economic miracle. But underneath it all, in Japanese society and among the political elite (mostly on the right) there was strong dissatisfaction with the ban on militarization and the accusations of war crimes in the 1930s and 1940s that still resound to this day against Tokyo. The Japanese military committed terrible crimes in occupied China and Korea. Take for instance the tragedy in the Chinese city of Nanjing where the Japanese, according to the Chinese side, killed almost four hundred thousand people. At the international military tribunal in Tokyo after the war, the figure of two hundred and sixty thousand was mentioned. Japan itself rejects these figures and speaks of thirty to forty thousand dead (but even that is a terrible figure). The Japanese say that many of the accusations made against them are inventions and that the Chinese are trying to smear Japan, but in reality, the Japanese occupation army only killed Chinese soldiers, only on the battlefield, while the Japanese soldiers treated Chinese and Korean civilians with respect, although it has been proved historically the opposite. So we can see that the very recent past, or rather its assessment, continues to stir Japanese society. For example, under Shinzo Abe (killed on July 8, 2022, in an armed attack) the government demanded that publishers not print books about the atrocities committed by the Japanese army during World War II. The authorities deny that Japan bears any responsibility for the atrocities committed at that time. Could that be because Americans were too lenient on the defeated Japan? After all, the Tokyo trials charged only 29 people, mostly Japan's top military and civilian leaders. The commander of the Japanese army in China, General Matsui, was on trial, but both Emperor Hirohito and his uncle, Prince Asaka, who had just given the order to kill all Chinese prisoners, escaped punishment...

Defeated Germany is another matter. The Nuremberg Trial, denazification, during which German society, culture, press, education, and politics were cleansed from the influence of Nazi ideology. Psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung believed: what happened to the Germans is a disease. "All Germans are sick, regardless of their attitude to Hitler and membership in the NSDAP." To "cure" the Germans, they were shown the horrors committed by the Nazis during the war, they were taken on "excursions" to concentration camps, forced to look at piles of human corpses and rebury them with their bare hands. After such excursions, the Germans often went crazy or shot themselves. But the re-education of the Germans succeeded. Moreover, both in the west and in the east of the divided country. The Germans took the blame for the outbreak of war, for the Holocaust, for the murders in the occupied territories. Germany has been paying compensation to the victims of the Holocaust in the amount of $845 million for many years, in addition, Israel received 3 billion marks. Over time, the payment of reparations, the construction of memorials, and the creation of works of art about the crimes of the National Socialists during World War II have become an inseparable part of the lives of most Germans. Evidence of this is the event that occurred on December 7, 1970. On that day, German Chancellor Willy Brandt arrived on a visit to Poland (in those years, the Polish People's Republic). Brandt became the first German chancellor to visit Poland after World War II. Brandt came to Warsaw to open a new page in relations between the two countries – recall that the Second World War just began on September 1, 1939, with the attack of Nazi Germany on Poland. On the morning of December 7, 1970, Brandt laid a wreath at the memorial dedicated to the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto - the desperate resistance of Jews doomed to death. The Chancellor adjusted the black-red-gold (the colors of the German flag) ribbon on the wreath and then, bowing his head, knelt on the cold granite. These pictures and the Chancellor's act itself have gone down in history.

Finally, we come to Armenia. Like Japan and Germany, Armenia has lost the bloody war it unleashed. But which way will it go? Will it repent like Germany, or will it deny everything, like Japan? A peace treaty between Azerbaijan and Armenia looms on the horizon, and sooner or later it will be signed. But what will happen next? Will there be a rethinking of the recent past in Armenian consciousness? Will Armenians renounce their false exclusivity? Will Armenia renounce its territorial claims against its neighbors, Azerbaijan and Türkiye? Will the preamble to the text of the Constitution, which refers to the Declaration of Independence, which mentions "the reunification of the Armenian SSR and Nagorno-Karabakh", be removed? Will Armenians stop displaying on a monitor at one of the Yerevan metro stations the map of "Greater Armenia" on which, as former Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Tofig Zulfugarov aptly put it in a recent interview with Gela Vasadze, not only Azerbaijan but also Türkiye and Georgia, are absent? Will Armenians stop inculcating hatred towards Azerbaijanis and Turks in the young minds of children? Will school textbooks with distorted history be changed? Will Armenians ask the Azerbaijani people for forgiveness for all the crimes they committed, for Khojaly, Malibeyli, Askipara, Beganis Ayrum, Agdaban, and Qaradaghli? The day before my colleague Samit Aliyev in his article "Culture as a magnifying glass - 2" paid attention to the literature of our neighbors which is full of hatred towards everything Turkic. Will there be a rejection of literature that reeks of blatant Nazism? And finally, will Pashinyan or future leaders find the courage to come to Azerbaijan and repeat Willy Brandt's courageous act of kneeling before the monument "Mother's Cry" dedicated to the victims of the Khojaly genocide?

Unfortunately, so far all this seems unbelievable. Apparently, the Armenians, even after the defeat in the fall of 2020, are ready to follow the Japanese path morally and ethically. And even much further. It is no coincidence that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev is drawing the world's attention to the fact that Armenia is arming at an accelerated pace.

"Today, revanchist forces are raising their heads again in Armenia and territorial claims against Azerbaijan are continuing. If Armenia really wants peace with Azerbaijan, why is it buying weapons worth hundreds of millions of dollars? Such Armenian policy can lead to new threats for the region," Ilham Aliyev said, recently accepting the credentials of India's new ambassador to Baku, Sridharan Madhusudhanan. The hint is more than transparent, by the way, taking into account New Delhi's growing military-technical cooperation with Yerevan.

That means Azerbaijan will again have to spend huge funds to maintain the high combat efficiency of its army, which is inevitable, having a neighbor, though defeated, but a neighbor that threatens you. Although, this money could be used for the socio-economic development of the country, including the reconstruction of Karabakh, devastated by Armenians. There is no hint that Armenia is ready for the return to Zangazur of its indigenous population – Azerbaijanis, who were expelled from there in 1988-1990. Revanchist forces in Armenia are raising their heads higher and higher. Should Azerbaijan do the same as the Americans did to the Japanese? Demilitarization, a new constitution, and a "cure" for blatant nationalism with the demolition of monuments to Nzhdeh and "Nemesis"? The tumor must be surgically removed when conservative and medical treatment no longer works.

Indeed, a peace agreement is a good thing. But what's next?