MEDVEDEV FAILS IN MEDIATING A COMPROMISE BETWEEN ARMENIA AND AZERBAIJAN
Georgian Daily
June 27 2011
Georgia
The Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani summit in Kazan on June 24 was
intended to be an event of greater significance than any of the
long series of trilateral meetings that had much elaborated the
“agreeing-to-disagree” agenda. A leak from the Kremlin indicated that
the two Caucasian states that had been locked in confrontation since
the collapse of the USSR 20 years ago were ready to sign a “road
map” of steps towards a solution to the conflict around Karabakh
(Kommersant, June 24).
Skeptics expertly pointed to the solid record of failed attempts,
and indeed the hopes for a symbolic deal at the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summit in Astana last
December were proven false much to the disappointment of President
Nursultan Nazarbayev, who grandly presided over that all-European
gathering (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, RIA Novosti, June 24). Skeptics were
proved correct yet again as the Kazan “road map” remained an unsigned
draft, but there is more to this failure than just another setback
to best intentions caused by parochial animosities.
One significant difference is created by the eruption of revolutionary
energy in the Middle East and North Africa since the start of
this year, which has shown with shocking clarity that stagnant
dictatorships can collapse from absurdly insignificant triggers with
no external conspiracies. This impact is less pronounced in Armenia,
where political opposition was able to stage massive protests on many
occasions, but more so in Azerbaijan, where the corrupt hereditary
regime resembles too closely the Arab oil monarchies (Moskovskiy
Novosti, June 23). President Ilham Aliyev used to be treated as a
guest of honor in Western capitals, but now he is perceived as just
another authoritarian leader smoking hookah on a tinderbox. Moscow
has assumed that it would make him more dependent upon support from
Russia and thus more agreeable in strategic bargaining. Aliyev,
however, assumes that the messy violence in Libya, Syria and Yemen
is changing the attitude to the “Arab spring,” so now he is pushing
for an official visit to Washington (Regnum, June 23).
Another change is the decline of the geopolitical profile of the South
Caucasus as the competition between the US and Russia has essentially
disappeared. Local political elites have fancied their intrigues
as a contribution to a “Great Game,” but now they discover that
their options for playing on the differences between the “majors”
have narrowed to irrelevance. For that matter, the postponement
with implementation of the Nabucco pipeline project, which was
one of the key symbols of geopolitical struggle for resources,
has produced little if any impression (Ekspert, May 10; Kommersant,
June 8). Moscow obviously is interested in asserting its central role
in managing the Karabakh conflict, but instead of inventing its own
solution, it insisted on the basic principles adopted by the OSCE
mediators in 2007 and reiterated by US President Barack Obama at the
G8 Deauville summit in May (The Moscow Times, June 24). Neither party
to the conflict is prepared to make all the required concessions,
nor can Russian guarantees convince them to accept the risks.
The fiasco in Kazan is a very personal setback for President Dmitry
Medvedev who has invested much effort in this mediation seeking to
gain a better entry in the history books than a Commander-in-Chief who
took holidays on the eve of the war with Georgia and compensated by
recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states (Regnum,
June 24). Despite the persistent networking, he has not developed good
chemistry with either Aliyev or Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan,
but more importantly he has gained little respect from either. They
cannot see him as a leader who has authority to make real decisions,
but can see through his urge to score a diplomatic triumph before the
fast-approaching reconfiguration of Russia’s leadership. They also
understand that his chance for staying in the second presidential
term is slim at best, so his reassurances would expire in less than
one year. Russia commands serious influence in the South Caucasus,
but Medvedev is not a credible messenger.
The non-agreement in Kazan was perfectly amicable in the sense that
Armenia and Azerbaijan blamed one another in deliberate sabotage and
confirmed readiness to continue the trialogue. There is, however,
a risk of a breakdown of the fragile ceasefire that has held since
mid-1994 without any international monitoring. The status-quo is more
unacceptable for Azerbaijan than it is for Armenia, and the balance
of military power is also shifting in its favor as in 2010 it spent
3.5 times more on defense than the “enemy” and has increased its 2011
military budget by as much as 50 percent (, June 26).
Aliyev has flatly turned down Medvedev’s idea to energize the peace
process by signing a legally binding document on non-use of force
and maintains the position that his country has the right to liberate
the occupied territories by military means (RIA Novosti, June 24).
Azerbaijani elites are enjoying the petro-prosperity too much to
contemplate a “total war,” but a limited military operation aimed at
capturing a symbolically rather than strategically significant piece
of no-man’s-land could be attempted. Armenia, deeply worried about
Azerbaijan’s rearmament, cannot afford even a minor defeat and so
would have to respond disproportionally setting in motion a spiral
of escalation.
Experts have been speculating about such scenarios for years measuring
the grain of salt to take with the increasingly militant official
rhetoric in Baku, and this created a body of prophecies, which could
turn out to be self-fulfilling. Medvedev cannot check these dangerous
dynamics but the problem is more than just his inability to compel
the two parties to behave. It is useful to remember that Moscow’s
failure to organize a peacekeeping operation in Karabakh back in 1994
was caused by the deepening instability in the North Caucasus leading
to the first Chechen war. The North Caucasus is now again engulfed by
violence, which cuts into the much-valued political stability of the
country and threatens to undermine its integrity. Stagnating Russia
cannot project any stability in its neighborhood, the feebleness of
its leadership aggravates every conflict from the brewing revolution
in Belarus to the state failure in Kyrgyzstan, and Karabakh could
become an “angry bird” that hits the shaky construct of collapsible
institutions.
Source:
http://www.jamestown.org/programs/edm/
www.newsru.com