A SIGHT FROM YEREVAN: WILL THE WEST SUPPORT AZERBAIJAN?

[Yervant1]

A SIGHT FROM YEREVAN: WILL THE WEST SUPPORT AZERBAIJAN?

by David Stepanyan

 

arminfo

Monday, November 19, 21:38

 

The West will support Azerbaijan if its oil and gas infrastructure is

under threat. This is the title of an article by the Senior Research

Fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies and International Energy

Policy at the Heritage Foundation, Ariel Cohen, on the Voice of

America website. Even if we do not discuss in details the ideas of

an American expert, in general, this opus may be characterized like

an open provocation directed at removal of the status-quo which today

is the only stabilizing factor in the Karabakh conflict zone.

 

By the way, Mr Cohen's thread of thoughts is clear and obvious,

taking into consideration the fact that the problem of oil extraction

and transportation in Caspian Sea zone, is one of the key spheres

of professional expertise of this international expert, and ethnic

conflicts and Russia's relations with CIS countries. It is no secret,

that the world community in its approaches to the third countries

was always guided by material but not ideological factors. As for

the old Nagornyy Karabakh conflict, because of the same reasons, the

West cannot ignore oil and gas boreholes, that is to say, territorial

integrity of Azerbaijan for fair settlement of the Karabakh conflict

on the basis the peoples' right for self-determination. For this

reason, one should look for the logic of the ideas of an American

expert-"oilman" just in the oil and gas holes of the Aliyev's

Azerbaijan.

 

This logic is simple but not perfect. Forgetting about bellicose

statements by the dynastical regime of Azerbaijan, heroization of a

scum Safarov, numerous threats to Stepanakert and Yerevan, Cohen made

the last statements by President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan, the key

of his article. But the expert "forgot" that president of Armenia just

promised Baku to take relevant response measures, if Aliyev will be the

first to start an open aggression against the two Armenian republics,

and addressed these threats nit only to Baku but also "to the energy

and strategic interests of the West in the Caspian region".

 

Cohen grounded the warning by Serzh Sargsyan with the forthcoming

presidential election in Armenia, and said that the statements may

be followed by the actions which will have rather tragic consequences.

 

Taking into consideration an unprecidentally large military exercise

recently held in Nagornyy Karabakh, during which the Armed Forces

selected the options of the missile blow with a distance more than

300 km, Yerevan obviously watches the option of attacking the energy

infrastructure of Azerbaijan, Cohen said.

 

Not disproving justice of Cohen's idea, we can just say that such

attack by Yerevan cannot be of a preventive nature, as not political

suiciders are in the power in Armenia. The attacking of the energy

infrastructure of Azerbaijan may follow only as a response to the mass

attacking of the Karabakh positions, when Armenia will have no other

way out than to protect Karabakh residents by all the forces that it

owns. But putting aside this key argument in favor of breaking the

status-quo, the American expert preferred to touch in his article

only, how Armenia will be punished by the West for confrontation

to the Azerbaijani aggression. He thinks that protection of their

territory of the Armenians will contradict not only the interests

of the West, Israel and Turkey, which set hopes on the gas of the

Caspian region and have been cooperation with Baku in the sphere of

oil and gas production, but also the interests of the key ally of

Armenia - Russia. He explained his position by the threat to foreign

investments in Azerbaijan, the plans of the EU on diversification of

the gas sources and decrease of dependence on the Russian "Gasprom",

as well as to construction of TANAP gas pipeline. So, taking into

consideration that attaching of Azerbaijan's infrastructure will become

catastrophe for all the South Caucasus, Russia, Europe and the USA,

Cohen calls on the West to take efforts to refuse "the policy of

escalation and to prevent tragic development of events".

 

To be honest, we have to agree to the last part of the statement

by an American expert. Taking into consideration the capacity and

the types of weapon placed at both sides of the front line of the

Karabakhi-Azerbaijani confrontation, the new Karabakh war will

strongly damage not only the South Caucasus but also the bordering

countries. There is also no doubt that the response blows by Armenian

and Karabakhi armed forces will pock to pieces the entire energy

infrastructure of Azerbaijan, the major part of which belongs to

Western companies and British Petroleum first of all. I think that

in this context it would be more logical not to threat the Armenian

parties to Nagornyy Karabakh conflict, demanding from Yerevan and

Stepanakert to refuse an intention to protect their own people from

Aliyev's endless aggression. Today, the only way to prevent another

escalation of Nagornyy Karabakh conflict is to preserve the existing

status-quo, which Aliyev, sitting at the bags full of the oil dollars,

does not like at all.

 

So, Mr.Cohen and other such experts have to stop disseminating

political well-paid provocation, and start true political analyzing

of the situation. There is only one reality that has no alternative.

 

Neither Armenia nor NKR, Georgia, Turkey, Iran, the EU, the USA, Russia

and even Azerbaijan, though it is paradoxical, are not interested in

the new regional war. The reasons of it are obvious. For this reason,

only peaceful negotiating process, based on mutual compromises,

may lead to certain progress in settlement of Nagornyy Karabakh

conflict. And not only the parties to the Karabakh conflict but also

the superpowers, presented in the OSCE Minsk Group, should be ready to

these compromises. Today the frozen Karabakh conflict is a conditional

button, which superpowers manipulate with if they want.

 

For this reason, they are not going to settle the Karabakh conflict

today. However, today nobody needs true but not declarative resolving

of the Karabakh conflict. Adventurism and inadequacy, but not the

wish of the Armenian leadership to protect their own people, as some

persons have been trying to plant in our minds, are the only true

threat to the everlasting energy interests of the West.