US-AZERBAIJAN: WHAT NEXT?
By Gulshan Pashayeva and Rashad Karimov
news.az
Aug 19 2010
Azerbaijan
When foreign relationships are discussed, there is a danger of
slipping into stereotypes – Country X is good, bad, right, wrong,
delete as appropriate. It is easy to forget that any discussion of
foreign affairs should start with an analysis of unique societies
with their different traditions or of entities with their distinct
sets of interests, be they military, security, or commercial.
Azerbaijan will be celebrating its 20th anniversary of independence
next year. As the old Azerbaijani proverb says, “bir iqidin omrudur”,
or “It’s a lifetime for a brave man”. Our forebears knew what they
were saying. In the past two decades not only the Azerbaijani people
and Azerbaijan, but the whole world has drastically changed.
The end of the last century saw tremendous advances in the human
condition – from increased economic prosperity to the spread of human
rights and the emergence of a truly global community. Humanity moved
from a bi-polar system in the early 1990s to to a multi-polar world at
the dawn of the new century. Today, alongside the great powers such
as the USA, and Russia, other powers are emerging – China, India,
Turkey, Indonesia and so on.
At the same time, in order to jointly tackle globally shared challenges
such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation, energy security, unresolved
conflicts and climate change, with which no country can cope alone,
the role of bilateral and multilateral cooperation has increased
dramatically and become much more significant.
Azerbaijan’s growing importance can be seen against the backdrop of
the difficult situation in the other countries of Central Asia and the
South Caucasus. Azerbaijan is a leader in the region with a stable
economy and foreign policy. But the road to this prosperity could
not be harder. Washington was quick to recognize the independence
of the former Soviet republics and provide financial and military
assistance to them. Yet, Azerbaijan became the only republic of
the former USSR to be denied direct government aid from the US. The
legislative bill about this, which became the infamous Section 907
to the Freedom Support Act, was passed with strong lobbying from the
powerful and wealthy Armenian diaspora in the US – an example of a
special interest group taking US foreign policy interests hostage.
Azerbaijan’s continued blockade of Armenia was given as the reason for
passing Section 907. However, it’s difficult not to agree with Thomas
Goltz when he says that “Baku imposed a trade embargo, and for the
very good reason that it thought that conducting business as usual
with the enemy is not a particularly good idea in time of war. Ask
Lincoln or Wilson or Roosevelt or Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon about that.”
To this day, all efforts by the Azerbaijani government and US
administration to reverse the prejudiced act of the Congress have
failed because of the close relations between lawmakers and Armenian
special interest groups.
The early years of US-Azerbaijani relations were overshadowed by
this piece of legislation, which led to an assumption that ethnic
groups such as the Armenian Americans could import their hatred into
US politics and turn it into government policy and legal precedent.
Section 907 significantly hindered bilateral relations between the
Azerbaijani and US governments. The US Administration was unable to
provide technical assistance to the Azerbaijani government on economic,
political and social reforms. Moreover, humanitarian assistance to
refugees and IDPs in Azerbaijan was also handicapped by the prohibition
on involving government structures in humanitarian aid.
Nevertheless, US-Azerbaijani relations started developing rapidly
during the Clinton administration (1993-2001). The US strategy,
aimed at the development of energy resources in non-OPEC countries,
had the positive result of transforming the Caspian region into a key
player in global energy security. Some experts may add that, unlike
the US government, business structures, particularly oil companies,
were quick to build close ties with the Azerbaijani government. One can
argue that Azerbaijan, as the cradle of the petroleum industry and a
country that still possesses large amounts of oil and gas reserves in
the Caspian Sea, was a tasty morsel for the multinational energy firms.
On 20 September 1994, the Contract of the Century was signed by
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey and a consortium of international
companies, among them the US companies Amoco, Pennzoil, McDermott
International and Unocal. It was a production-sharing contract,
based in Baku, to develop Azerbaijan’s Caspian oil reserves. This
was strategically a very important agreement which later profoundly
changed the economic landscape of the entire region. In the following
years the two pipelines – Baku-Tbilisi-Cheyhan (BTC) oil pipeline and
Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum natural gas pipeline (also known as the South
Caucasus Pipeline) – were successfully constructed and now run in
parallel, contributing to energy security and the diversification of
transport routes for energy resources worldwide.
US-Azerbaijani relations were further strengthened during the George
W. Bush Administration (2001-2009). After the 9/11 terrorist attacks,
the relationship between the two countries rose to a new, fresh,
upgraded level. Azerbaijan immediately condemned the terror attacks
and joined the US-led coalition in the war against international
terrorism. Baku provided Washington with blanket overflight clearances
for the US and other partner military forces operating in Afghanistan,
not to mention Azerbaijani peacekeeping troops in Afghanistan and,
not so long ago, Iraq.
Azerbaijan has always been a reliable ally and strategic partner
of the US; however, bilateral relations have deteriorated in recent
years. Azerbaijan’s long-standing alignment with the United States
is rapidly unravelling in the wake of Washington’s recent policy
initiatives. As perceived from Baku, those US initiatives fly in the
face of Azerbaijan’s staunch support over the years for US strategic
interests and policies in the South Caucasus-Caspian region. President
Obama’s push for Armenian-Turkish rapprochement without any progress
on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, delays in the appointment of a
US ambassador to Azerbaijan, President Ilham Aliyev’s absence from
the Nuclear Security Summit attended by 47 states in Washington
and the US Congress decision to allocate $10 million direct aid to
Nagorno-Karabakh as a part of the fiscal year 2011 budget are the
most recent complicated issues in bilateral US-Azerbaijani relations.
“I am aware of the fact that there are serious issues in our
relationship, but I am confident that we can address them,” US
President Barack Obama said in his letter of 3 June 2010 to President
Ilham Aliyev. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates presented this letter
to President Ilham Aliyev during his short visit to Baku on 6 June
and told reporters that he wanted “to dispel concerns in Azerbaijan
that we weren’t paying enough attention to them”.
“We continue to support the efforts that are undertaken by the
government to expand and protect free expression and independent
media, and have called that more be done because we think these are
pillars of democracy,” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said
during her visit to Azerbaijan less than a month after Mr Gates. As
a result of a policy to ensure freedom of speech and information,
Azerbaijan is one of the CIS and Eastern European countries with the
most media outlets. Over 4,200 print media are registered with the
Ministry of Justice; more than 50 news agencies are registered by the
relevant state bodies. There are 36 daily, about 100 weekly and over
80 monthly newspapers in Azerbaijan. Freedom of conscience, speech
and information is an important part of politics and democracy and
one can understand that the government of Azerbaijan is determined to
continue meeting its obligations in the area of democratic development.
In this context, it is also important to resolve the awkward situation
over the appointment of a new US ambassador in Baku. Allowing the
position of ambassador to remain vacant for a year also diminishes
US-Azerbaijani relations. The influential Armenian American lobby
group, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), is working
to disrupt the nomination. Analysts based in Washington and Baku
are puzzled, even astonished, by the messages Capitol Hill seems
to be sending. Efforts to stymie the appointment, which meet a
one-dimensional, short-term political agenda, are at the cost of
America’s relationship with a critical ally in the Caucasus and are
misguided – another example of a special interest group taking real
US national security interests hostage.
Clearly, serious effort is required of the Obama Administration to
repeal in the near future Section 907 to the Freedom Support Act
and Jackson-Vanik Amendment [first passed in 1975, the amendment
imposes trade restrictions on countries that limit human rights,
especially emigration – Ed]. After the disintegration of the USSR the
Jackson-Vanik Amendment is more of a political “slap on the wrist”
and has lost its initial purpose of being used against countries that
curb Jewish emigration. The amendment has been cancelled for Armenia,
Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan so far. Azerbaijan, on other hand still
“enjoys” that Cold War legacy.
It is also difficult not to agree that “the US should repeal Section
907 immediately. This bill is not about money any more. It is
about principles, morals and justice. The US should have the wisdom
and courage to act independently from ethnic lobbies. As long as
Section 907 is there, Azerbaijan will always view the US as biased and
unjust.” As co-chairman of the Minsk Group, a forum created by the OSCE
to settle the Karabakh issue, the United States has a responsibility
to function as an honest broker (for the record – neither of the
other two co-chairmen, France and Russia, imposes sanctions against
Azerbaijan). Even though on 24 October 2001, the US Senate passed
a waiver on Section 907 which allows the US president to extend the
waiver on an annual basis and he has done so ever since, this is no
substitute for a repeal of Section 907 to the Freedom Support Act.
The US-Azerbaijani relationship has had its ups and downs, but it is
our job today to make a change – both countries need new, strong,
improved ties, which will be enduring and mutually beneficial,
and should work in unison to face global challenges, putting their
current disagreements aside and walking straight ahead. We owe that
to our children, to whom after “bir iqidin omru” or “the lifetime of
a brave man” we should show a new world – free of mucky politics and
stereotypes and full of peace. Full of peace and free of the fear
that can be heard in the question “What next?”
Rashad Karimov is a research fellow at the Foreign Policy Analysis
Department at the Centre for Strategic Studies under the President
of the Republic of Azerbaijan, while Gulshan Pashayeva is an analyst
at the Centre.
From: A. Papazian