Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis
October 14, 2009 Wednesday
Special Report;
Turkey-Armenia Accord Stirs a Multitude of Strategic Issues and
Potential Outcomes, as US Abandons Azerbaijan to Woo Iran’s Clerical
Leaders
by Gregory R Copley
Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, and Yossef Bodansky, Senior
Editor, GIS.
An accord to normalize diplomatic relations between Turkey and
Armenia, signed in Zurich, Switzerland, on October 10, 2009, raises
more strategically-significant concerns than it seems to address.
Moreover, it raises significant political concerns of different types
in the US, UK, Cyprus, and elsewhere.The accord, signed by Turkish
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Armenian Foreign Minister Edward
Nalbandian, provides for mutual diplomatic recognition and the opening
of their common border for the first time since Armenia became
independent of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), with
the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1991 and the first mutual
diplomatic recognition since the Turkish occupation of the Western
part of Armenia, and the killing of mass numbers of Armenians, in
1915.
But the entire rapprochement was orchestrated by the Russian
Federation , represented at the ceremony by Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov; US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was present, but
in helping to bring the accord to fruition was serving Russian, more
than US, interests. Despite Moscow designing the strategic
architecture, the US, for its own reasons, was the driving force in
bringing the Armenians and the Turks together. The Russians promised
Yerevan that they — the Russians — would protect them. However,
State Department did most of the heavy lifting. The US considers the
Turkish-Armenian rapprochement as the first step toward re-engagement
of Iran. Iran is now considered by the US as the primary source of
natural gas to the coming Nabucco pipeline with the secondary source
being gas from south-eastern Turkmenistan shipped via Iran.
In mid-September 2009, the Obama Administration decided that
Azerbaijan was an unimportant source of gas for Nabucco and Europe as
a whole. The calculations of State Department showed that Azerbaijan
could supply no more than 10- to 15-billion cubic meters a year, or
between a third and a half of Nabucco’s projected capacity of
31-billion cubic meters a year. By the calculations of State
Department, Iranian and Turkmenistani reserves could easily fill the
entire capacity of Nabucco, thus making Azerbaijani gas superfluous.
This approach marginalizes Azerbaijan while giving Turkey an economic
incentive to go along with the US against Azerbaijan. The US also
promised to use both Nabucco and the agreement with Armenia as major
levers to expedite Turkey’s accession to the EU (even though the US
has no real leverage over EU members who have grown increasingly angry
at US attempts to manipulate EU decisionmaking).
One characteristic of the entire Turkish-Armenian situation in recent
years has been the reality that the "Armenian lobby" in the United
States, Canada, Britain, and Australia (in particular) has always
strenuously worked solely on the question of affixing blame for the
1915 massacres, specifically labeled as genocide, on the Turkish
Government. The Armenian lobbies in the West have scarcely worked to
promote the interests of the post-Soviet, independent Republic of
Armenia, focusing their considerable wealth and lobbying on Western
governments to officially recognize the "Turkish genocide" against
Armenians.
The Armenian lobbies, particularly in the US, have been very
successful in this, and have considerable influence on many US members
of Congress and, indeed, the Barack Obama Administration. As a result,
the bilateral Turkish-Armenian rapprochement, struck in Geneva on
October 10, 2009, will not result in a diminution of pressures on
Ankara to acknowledge the "genocide". The reason for this dichotomy
within the Armenian diaspora and the Armenians remaining in the
Republic of Armenia is that most of the expatriates are refugees, or
the descendants of refugees, from what is still Turkish-occupied
Western Armenia, and not from the territory of the present Republic.
Thus, the expatriates feel betrayed by the decision of the Armenian
Government to enter into an accord with Turkey.
Thus, the pressures on the US Congress and Administration will not
cease, and many of the very wealthy US-Armenian supporters of the
Democratic Party, and particularly House of Representatives Speaker
Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, California), will feel aggrieved that the
Obama Administration and the Democratic Party — which they supported
— has now betrayed them.
Strategically, however, this is of secondary importance. The
Turkish-Armenian rapprochement was, at the highest levels of its
architecture, engineered by the Russian Government following its
successful wooing, in late 2008, of Turkey into the Russian strategic
bloc . This, possibly the most significant geopolitical shift in the
post-Cold War era, followed the collapse of US influence and ability
to support its allies in the Black Sea/Caspian Sea basins and Central
Asia with the failure of the US-supported Georgian military moves to
attack the enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in August 2008. That
may have been the denouement, but US influence had been on the wane in
Central Asia and the Caspian since the US move to undermine the
pro-Western Kyrgyz Republic Presidency of Dr Askar Akaev in 2005, and
to force its ally, Azerbaijan, into a delicate position vis-a-vis
Russia and Iran by insisting in 2007-08 on the deployment of
anti-ballistic missiles on Azerbaijani territory. See Copley, Gregory,
"Turkey Makes its Strategic Choice: Russia" in Defense & Foreign
Affairs Special Analysis, March 3, 2009, and "Turkey’s Strategic
Options Shift as the Country Becomes Increasing Isolated" in Defense &
Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, February 27, 2009. Also see:
Bodansky, Yossef: "A New Strategic Framework Emerges Gradually,
Post-Georgia, in European, Russian, and Central Asian Energy,
Marginalizing the US", in Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis,
September 23, 2008. Also: "US Loses Further Ground in Caucasus,
Snubbing Aliyev Swearing-In", in Defense & Foreign Affairs Special
Analysis, October 25, 2008.
It was, however, the US support for the Georgian military action,
essentially directly against Russian interests, in August 2008,
followed by the clear US impotence to come to Georgia’s assistance in
the aftermath of the conflict, which showed Ankara that Turkey had no
option but to switch its strategic allegiance from Washington to
Moscow. As well, by 2008, Russia had become Turkey’s largest trading
partner, and when the Russian Government informed Baku that Azerbaijan
henceforth would be shipping its energy via Russian pipelines, rather
than Turkish, the Turkish Government realized that its economic
livelihood — largely dependent on the transshipment of energy from
East to West — was jeopardized.That process changed everything, and
gave Russia back its control of Central Asia and the Caucasus, while
adding Turkey to the matrix, enabling it to be able to dictate that,
for example, the pipelines via Turkey would henceforth also need to
consider taking Iranian energy to Western Europe, effectively ensuring
that a US-led embargo of Iran would be meaningless. Now, the new
accord opens the prospect that the Cold War era Soviet Army re-supply
pipeline, which moves from southern Russia and Azerbaijan across
Armenia to the Turkish border could be re-built, utilizing, as it
does, natural gradients to make oil shipment more economical.But there
are other ramifications.
Essentially, the Armenian Government has been led to believe —
largely by US Secretary of State Clinton — that the US would support
Armenia’s demand to offer independence to the ethnic Armenians in the
Azerbaijani area of Nagorno-Karabakh. This territory has been the
subject of protracted warfare and political stalemate between
Azerbaijan and Armenia and, in the past, Turkey has supported the
Turkic-dominated Azerbaijan Government in the Nagorno-Karabakh
dispute. Clearly, none of the players — Armenia included — can do
without the goodwill of Azerbaijan if the entire region is to prosper,
given that much of the Caspian Basin energy flows through Azerbaijan.
Still, the US, which had promised to support the Azerbaijan Government
(in order to gain US energy concessions in the Caspian), had
consistently waffled on the question of supporting the territorial
integrity of Azerbaijan, which includes the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Now, the approaches taken by US Secretary of State Clinton indicate
that Azerbaijan has been abandoned to Russian influence. Russia has
traditionally supported Christian Armenia over nominally Muslim
Azerbaijan. Russian favoritism of Armenia was one of the driving
factors in Azerbaijan seeking not only its independence from Russia in
1990-91, but also in building its alliances with the US, NATO, and
other former Soviet satellites such as Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova
(which, with Azerbaijan, formed the GUAM alliance). However, in the
aftermath of the US-engineered unilateral independence of Kosovo and
the Georgia-Russia war, the Kremlin has shifted position to supporting
the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. Moscow is apprehensive about
the spread of separatism in the Caucasus and considers South Ossetia
and Abkhazia exceptions to the rule. An independent Nagorno-Karabakh
would thus spark a wave of separatism in other parts of the Russian
Federation which Moscow would not be able to contain. Moreover, Moscow
believes, and rightly so, that the main reason for the US-led support
for Georgia stemmed from the presence of oil and gas pipelines on
Georgian territory. Therefore, the construction of alternate
south-track-pipelines from Azerbaijan via Armenia to Turkey would
reduce the importance of Georgia. However, for such pipelines to be
built, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict must be resolved to Azerbaijan’s
satisfaction and Armenian forces must withdraw from the occupied
territory of Azerbaijan (where the pipelines would be constructed).
The fate of Nagorno-Karabakh might seem, at first glance, to be
peripheral to external interests. However, as with the Kosovo
separation from Serbia, and the subsequent and directly-related
consequence of the Russian recognition of the sovereignty of South
Ossetia and Abkhazia, the matter of secessionist states once again
comes into play.
The US Government had officially attempted to forestall any
secessionist claims for recognition by saying that its decision to
support Kosovo independence was "sui generis " — unrelated to any
other issues — although clearly that has proven not to be the case.
The key newly-appointed State Department officials responsible for
Nagorno-Karabakh — Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European
and Eurasian Affairs Tina Kaidanow and Ambassador Robert Bradtke, the
US co-chair of the OSCE’s Minsk Group — are veterans of the Kosovo
independence campaign and have repeatedly stated in closed forums
(including Kaidanow in meetings with the American-Armenian Lobby) that
they consider Kosovo to be a precedent for Nagorno-Karabakh. Publicly,
the US Government has said that the Kosovo independence movement was
sui generis, and could not be allowed to be used by other secessionist
movements. To date, the entire career of Ambassador Kaidanow has been
focused on facilitating the quest of minorities for self-determination
through unilaterally-declared independence in the Balkans. In essence,
this has meant, almost exclusively, that she has worked merely against
the Serbs.
In the mid-1990s, she was instrumental in the political and legal
aspects of the US decision to recognize the Muslim minority in Bosnia
as "the Bosniak people", who, she felt, deserved an independent state
of their own. This decision led to the military and intelligence
intervention of the US and NATO in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Officially, she was Director for South-East European Affairs at the US
National Security Council. However, she worked a lot with senior State
Dept. officials Christopher Hill and Richard Holbrooke in organizing
the Dayton Talks, which became the first US success in coercing a
"mediated agreement" on warring sides. After the signing of the Dayton
Agreement, Kaidanow was posted on assignments in Belgrade (1996-1997)
and Sarajevo (1997-1998) to ensure the enforcement and implementation
of the Dayton Accords. As the crisis in Kosovo escalated and the US
became directly involved, Kaidanow was nominated Special Assistant to
US Ambassador Christopher Hill in Skopje (1998-1999) with specific
responsibilities focused on the crisis in Kosovo. She was instrumental
in the US recognition of yet another minority which "deserved an
independent state of its own": this time the "Kosovar people". She
played major role in building political and international support for
the "Kosovar people" and their right for an independent state.
In 2001-2003, Kaidanow served as the Special Assistant for European
Affairs to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, still dealing
mainly US policies in the Balkans. In 2003-2006, she served as the
Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Sarajevo where she was
instrumental in furthering the various US- and EU-
"Bosniak"-empowerment and nation-building programs. In Spring 2006,
when the US push for granting unilateral independence for Kosovo began
to intensify, Kaidanow was nominated the Chief of Mission and Charge
d’Affaires at the US Office in Pristina (the de facto US Embassy in
Kosovo). In July 2008, after Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of
independence, Kaidanow was sworn in as the first US Ambassador to the
Republic of Kosovo. She served until a couple of months ago.Bradtke’s
career also revolved mostly around the Balkans and the support for the
separatist causes in Bosnia and Kosovo. Between 2001 and 2004, he
served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and
Eurasian Affairs with responsibility for NATO and OSCE (the
Organization for Security & Cooperation in Europe). His main
preoccupation was the Balkans, and especially the preparations for the
unilateral independence of Kosovo. Between 2005 and 2009, he served as
Ambassador to Croatia and remained involved in both Kosovo and Bosnia
affairs. Now, unwittingly (or perhaps more in ignorance and
arrogance), the process of throwing Nagorno-Karabakh’s fate open to
discussion, the matter of frozen conflicts over secession are now
reignited.
This means that the question of international recognition of the
independence of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) —
which occupies the northern 37 percent of Cyprus, under the military
occupation of Turkey — is once again open for discussion. Little
wonder, then, that the large Armenian population in Cyprus is unhappy
with the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement, and not merely because, as
expatriates, they see that the matter of Turkey’s 1915 massacre of
Western Armenians goes unaddressed. The Turkish-Armenian
rapprochement, and its consequent impact on Nagorno-Karabakh, also
raises the optimism of Algerian-backed moves to wrest Morocco’s Sahara
territory away from the Kingdom. It raises the question again as to
why the Republic of Somaliland, which had, in fact, legally dissolved
its union with Italian Somaliland (which together formed Somalia)
should go unrecognized by the international community. Or why the
Western Papua movement for independence from Indonesia (Free Papua
Movement/Organisasi Papua Merdeka : OPM), or the Sumatran Aceh
independence movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka: GAM) should not feel
energized to resume their activities. The same situation would apply
to the Uighur movement in Western China.
In summary, then, the Geneva accords on Turkish-Armenian normalization
acts as a substantial milestone in resumed and expanded Russian
control over the energy supply and distribution industry which is the
cornerstone of European stability and Russian economic success in the
coming decade. The normalization also reignites the question of frozen
conflicts around the world, and the question of the encouragement it
gives to secessionist movements. Thus, what is being viewed as a US
diplomatic success could also be considered a major US strategic
setback.