America’s Relations with Azerbaijan and Russia, A Case Study in Double Standards
By Mark Adomanis
May 25, 2012
I think I have been clear and consistent both in my support for a
strictly realist foreign policy and in my exasperation for the naive
and usually counterproductive effort to inject `morality’ into the
international arena. I’m obviously not against democracy, reform, free
trade, or political liberalism, but it is exceedingly difficult to
promote any of these things in countries that either don’t have or
don’t want them, and it is disastrous to do so in a selective and
cynical way. I say `disastrous’ not because my delicate feelings are
injured when the US supports `democracy’ in pro-American country X and
has no problem supporting dictatorship in anit-American country Y, but
because, over time, such a self-interested and bad-faith approach
corrodes support for the values that are supposedly being promoted. Is
there anyone out there prepared to say, for example, that US
`democracy promotion’ efforts became easier after the Iraq war? Or
that our paternalistic lectures about the `rule of law’ are better
received than before the war on terror? Maybe there are a few brave
souls prepared to accept the challenge, but it seems quite obvious to
me that America will have a much more difficult time in getting other
countries to follow its advice on such matters and that this is a bad
thing because both democracy and the rule of law are extremely
important.
Azerbaijan and Russia present a very nice case study of the deep
hypocrisy of contemporary US `values promotion,’ one of the starkest
examples I can think of. They’re both post-Soviet autocracies that are
heavily energy-dependent and which regularly abuse, detain, and
generally harass any organized political opposition. And although
Russia’s `tandem’ has attracted quite a lot of scorn from the Western
press for its backwardness, at least Putin isn’t Medvedev’s biological
father. This is actually the case in Azerbaijan where the current
president, Ilham Aliyev, is the only son of the previous one, Heydar
Aliyev.
If we look at actual quantitative ratings of press freedom and
political democracy, Azerbaijan isn’t just comparable to Russia, it’s
much worse than it. Reporters without borders ranks Russia 142nd in
the world. This is quite bad but is actually marginally better than
several democratic US allies like Columbia, Mexico, and Turkey.
Azerbaijan, meanwhile, checks in at 162nd, behind places like Saudi
Arabia and Uzbekistan, i.e. behind some of the most violently
repressive regimes on the planet. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s
Democracy Index places Russia at 117th place in the world, with
Russia’s score placing it just outside of the `hybrid’ category and
just into the `authoritarian’ one. This is, to be clear, a very poor
performance, but it’s much less poor than Azerbaijan’s 140th.
Azerbaijan is, according to this measure, actually slightly more
authoritarian than Belarus, a country whose leadership is scorned with
virtual unanimity by all Western countries as being permanently
stained by their dictatorial and repressive ways. And although much
fanfare was made about US diplomatic cables that called Russia a
`virtual mafia state,’ US diplomats in Azerbaijan apparently had even
less flattering things to say, comparing the country’s political and
economic system to `the feudalism found in Europe during the middle
ages.’
The point is that Azerbaijan is, by any reckoning, not just an simple
abuser of democratic rights and freedoms but a country that abuses
these rights far more comprehensively than Russia. If US policy were
genuinely aimed at promoting democracy, freedom, and the rule of law,
you would expect it to take an extremely hard line towards a nasty
sultanistic dicatorship like Azerbaijan. So, how does the US treat
Azerbaijan? Not that badly! There is a good deal of military
cooperation and partnership, and the United States conveyed `most
favored nation’ status on Azerbaijan all the way back in 1995. More
generally, the Azerbaijan-United States relationship is focused solely
on the positive outcomes of their `partnership’ and persistently
underplays the nagging little problem that Azerbaijan is an awful
dictatorship. As just one example, consider the milquetoast comments
by the last US ambassador during a farewell press conference*
[]:
“I humbly submit that together we’ve done a pretty good job in
restoring trust in U.S.-Azerbaijan relations as well as restoring a
sense not only of partnership or strategic partnership, but of
friendship between our two countries. That should be the normal state
of being in our bilateral relationship because we are friends and
because we do share such significant strategic interests. We’re able
to return to a state of normalcy not because of anything I did, but
because of the incredibly warm and collaborative reception that I
enjoyed from my team at the embassy and from all of you – not only
journalists but Azerbaijanis everywhere across the country… Whatever
issue we were dealing with, there was always, always a friendly
partner on the Azerbaijani side with which our embassy – whether
again, those colleagues in the Azerbaijani side were in the media,
were government officials, were civil society, or just common
Azerbaijanis.”
Remember that those words are being spoken about a government which is
objectively a far worse abuser of civil rights than Vladimir Putin’s.
Take a moment and try to imagine what sort of earth-shaking political
firestorm would erupt if Michael McFaul ever said something similar
about Russia. Barack Obama has been roundly excoriated as a cowardly
sell-out for suggesting that the US and Russia try to cooperate on a
few specific and strictly limited areas. If he came out and said `the
Russians are our friends’ I would expect that there would be an actual
riot by GOP congressmen and senators, and people at some of the big DC
think tanks wouldn’t be far behind in rushing to the barricades.
Even more interesting, and revealing, is this remarkable Fred Hiatt
article [],
in which the usually irascible and confrontational Washington Post
columnist, a man who never tired of calling for confrontation with
Russia, manages to disparage Armenia (` a government that is
democratic more in form than substance’) without ever acknowledging
that Azerbaijan is a far more egregious violator of human rights. For
comparison’s sake Armenia is at 77th on the Reporters without Borders
rankings, and at 111th on the EIU’s Democracy Index, performances that
are heads and tails better than Azerbaijan. Hiatt skips around the
`but the Azeris are extremely and violently repressive’ objection by
basically shrugging his shoulders and saying `well other Very Serious
People say that we’re doing a good job cooperating with the Azeris so
who am I to disagree?’
Unfortunately I don’t have time to go and list every single instance
in which the United States underplayed, soft-peddled, or simply
ignored the manifestations of Azeri autocracy, but as I think is very
easily visible from the material to which I’ve linked the United
States is not nearly as aggressive in its condemnations of Azerbaijan
as it is with its condemnations of Russia. And, to a great extent, I
basically agree with this: Azerbaijan is an important energy producer
and have been extremely receptive to Western geopolitical interests:
it makes perfect sense to cultivate a close relationship with such a
strategically positioned and economically dynamic country. But the
stench of hypocrisy is overpowering. The United States Senate is
preparing to enact major legislation based off of the death in custody
of one man in Russia (the Sergei Magnitsky bill) but gave Azerbaijan,
which as I’ve demonstrated is objectively a far worse abuser of human
rights, most favored nation status almost 20 years ago and regularly
grants it a waiver from section 907 (a bill specifically designed to
prevent any aid to the Azeri government).
Such transparent cynicism, basically a realist policy paired with a
democratist PR campaign, works against American interests in the
long-term. People in the region can see for themselves how selectively
the United States applies its `values’ and many will eventually come
to the mistaken, but perfectly plausible, conclusion that American
policy is never genuinely interested in democracy or liberty but
purely at the expansion of power. This is absolutely not the case,
many civil servants and State Department personnel, not to mention
many people working at NGOs and think tanks, have a perfectly sincere
desire to see countries become more democratic, but such extreme
inconsistency in American policy is both dangerous and unsustainable.
* it seems like a bad joke but the speech addresses security
cooperation first, energy second, and `internal reform’ third. This
speech by William J. Burns
[] also adopts a security
first, energy second, democracy last approach.
From: A. Papazian
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2012/05/25/americas-relations-with-azerbaijan-and-russia-a-case-study-in-double-standards/
http://photos.state.gov/libraries/azerbaijan/366196/Press%20Transcripts/Bryza%20Farewell%20Press%20Conference%2012%2029%202011.pdf
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/special-interests-blocking-bryzas-appointment/2011/12/16/gIQAmT0fzO_story.html
http://www.state.gov/p/us/rm/2009a/129375.htm