The issue of ensuring Armenia’s security and territorial integrity is already reflected in the pre-election struggle. While the government under the slogan “either KP or war” proposes to continue the course of pacifying the enemy, the opposition promotes the idea of ”guaranteed peace”, and if the dangers and losses arising from the path adopted by the government are quite visible, the possibility of realizing the opposition’s idea is still unclear, and using this opportunity, the KP tries to discredit the approaches of its main political opponents.
The statement made by the country’s prime minister the other day was from this series, in which, in order to prove his truthfulness, he referred to Cyprus and Ukraine as examples of guaranteed but failed peace.
From the beginning, let’s emphasize that although the crises that arose in the two mentioned countries are often pointed out as cases of disappointment with “guaranteed peace”, their essence and the reason for the lack of resolution to date is not the imperfection of external security mechanisms. In both cases, internal political developments, conflict of interests and different interpretations of the obligations of external players played a decisive role.
Cyprus․ internal crisis as a prelude to external intervention
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The declaration of independence of Cyprus in 1960 was the result of international legal and political agreements. In addition to the Constitution, the Treaties on the Establishment of the Republic and the Union, an Agreement on Guarantees was also signed, the object of which was to guarantee the independence, territorial integrity, security and constitutional order of Cyprus, as well as to prevent both enosis (unification with Greece) and taksim (division of the island). In case of violation of the established order, consultations were planned between Greece, Turkey and Great Britain acting as guarantors, and in case of impossibility of joint actions, the right of everyone to act in order to restore the established order was recognized.
Already in 1963, the contradictions between the Greek and Turkish communities had turned into a sharp confrontation. In March, a UN peacekeeping mission was deployed on the island. Nevertheless, the tension did not subside, and in 1974 On July 15, the Cypriot National Guard, with the support of the Greek military junta, carried out a coup d’état in pursuit of the unification of Cyprus and Greece. Five days later, on the grounds of protecting the Turkish community of the island and fulfilling its commitment to the state as a guarantor, Turkey introduced its armed units to the island.
Thus, the security problems of Cyprus were due, first of all, to not because of the imperfection of the mechanisms for implementing external security guarantees, but because of internal political developments.
Ukraine. Assurances of safety in lieu of warranties
In 1994 on December 5, the USA, Great Britain and Russia signed three memorandums with Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan in Budapest. They contained security assurances in exchange for the abandonment of nuclear weapons by the mentioned countries. One of the memoranda referred to Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Accordingly, in 1996, all nuclear warheads were transferred from Ukraine to Russia, as a result of which the main goal of the Memorandum was realized – the denuclearization of Ukraine, and Ukraine, as a non-nuclear state, joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
According to the Budapest Memorandum, the USA, Great Britain and Russia committed to “respect the independence, sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine” and to “avoid economic coercion” in order to gain any advantage. The document also provided that the parties are obliged to consult if there are any issues related to the fulfillment of the assumed obligations. Moreover, the Memorandum did not envisage any mechanism of military assistance similar to Article 5 of NATO in case of armed aggression against Ukraine. Thus, the USA, Great Britain and Russia did not give security guarantees to Ukraine, but only assurances.
Security guarantees are clearly defined obligations, including providing unconditional military assistance to the attacked state. Unlike security guarantees, security assurances are merely promises and agreements of a political nature without a commitment to provide direct military assistance to the state that is the victim of aggression.
It should also be noted that the mechanism of multilateral political consultations defined by the Memorandum failed to be launched at the crucial moment. Therefore, Russia, as well as the other two powers that signed the Memorandumno considering him as a guarantor of Ukraine’s security is an unfounded claim.
Over time, it also became apparent that the Memorandum’s provisions on security assurances were not only legally insufficient to ensure Ukraine’s security, but also became the subject of conflicting interpretations, which, in turn, contributed to the unleashing of a full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war.
Russia’s position is conditioned by the logic that the Budapest memorandum was the first to violate the West, because it was the West that, contrary to the fundamental provisions of the document, resorted to economic pressure, openly interfered in the internal affairs of Ukraine and supported the violent change of power in 2014, violating the obligations to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and not to exert pressure for its own interests.
According to the Russian interpretation, under the guise of protecting democracy and human rights, the West itself violated the provisions of the Memorandum and, thus, freed Moscow’s hands in respecting the established restrictions.
The Western interpretation, on the contrary, stems from the perception that the main meaning of the Memorandum was the obligation of the three powers to respect the independence, sovereignty and borders of Ukraine, so it was Russia that grossly violated the Memorandum. According to this logic, the pressure used against Ukraine in the past, as well as the political support for democracy and human rights, cannot be considered a violation of the Memorandum, because they did not pursue the goal of making Ukraine serve their interests.
Consequences
The experience of Cyprus and Ukraine shows that it is very difficult to form multilateral legal and political conditions that will be able to fully ensure the security, sovereignty and territorial integrity of a vulnerable state. Both discussed cases show that even internationally established external mechanisms can be ineffective in practice if they from a juridical and political point of view, they are not sufficiently clear and binding, and their provisions leave room for conflicting interpretations.
Moreover, as a result of the wrong decisions of the government of a vulnerable country, the operation of external mechanisms is hindered and the full implementation of the obligations undertaken by the guarantor states is hindered.
In the created geopolitical conditions, the formation of a hybrid security model anchored on the combination of diversification of external support and fixing security with limited international mechanisms is of fundamental importance for the Republic of Armenia. Within its framework, the external mechanisms will not be primary, but will become a complementary function to the internal security tools.
ARMEN MARTIROSYAN
Deputy of the RA Supreme Council (1990-95)
Deputy of the RA National Assembly (1995-99)
RA Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
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