Armenia: The Dream of Complementarity and the Reality of Dependency
PINR – The Power and Interest News Report
Sept 27 2004
The stepchild of the Transcaucasus, Armenia occupies the weakest
geostrategic position in the region. Landlocked, poor in natural
resources and dependent on energy and agricultural imports, its
borders blockaded to trade from the east by Azerbaijan and from the
west by Turkey, and engaged in a simmering war with Azerbaijan over
the mini-state of Nagorno-Karabakh, the country has had to resort
to Russian protection for lack of any other options. As Russia has
begun to court oil-rich Azerbaijan in order to counter U.S. influence
there, Yerevan’s dependence on Moscow has become more problematic,
threatening Armenia with isolation from the West and the loss of a
reliable and committed advocate and protector.
The authoritarian-tending strong presidential regime of Robert
Kocharian sees Armenia’s vital interests as securing reliable energy
supplies and foreign investment, opening its borders to trade,
preventing Azerbaijan from reasserting sovereignty over ethnically
Armenian Karabakh, and forging closer military and economic relations
with the West without impairing its essential ties to Russia.
Complementarity
In pursuit of its perceived interests, Yerevan has adopted a foreign
policy of “complementarity,” which involves cultivating friendly
relations with the world and regional powers — Russia, the United
States and Iran — that impinge upon it. The aim of the complementarity
policy is to place Armenia into a network of relations among the
impinging powers that is based on convergent interests. The best-case
scenario for Yerevan would be an agreement among the impinging powers
to guarantee the security of the three Transcaucasian republics —
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia — and treat them as interdependent
components of a single region. This ideal solution would protect
Armenia’s autonomy, which is always problematic as a result of its
basic geostrategic weakness.
Yerevan’s policy of complementarity contrasts with Tbilisi’s
pro-Western orientation since the Rose Revolution and with Baku’s
“balanced” policy. Armenia cannot take a decisive turn in favor
of N.A.T.O. because the Western alliance includes Turkey, covets
Azerbaijan and has a primary interest in the security of the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Yerevan is just not important enough
to the West for its powers to sacrifice their other interests for
Armenia’s benefit. Yerevan also does not have the cards to pursue a
balance of power strategy of playing impinging forces against each
other, as Baku, with its Caspian oil reserves, attempts to do.
Since Yerevan lacks the resources to execute its complementarity
policy successfully, that policy has become a hopeful facade covering
continued dependence on Russia. Yerevan can point to no instance
in which it has been able to engineer or contribute to great-power
convergence in the Transcaucasus. The impinging powers cooperate
with one another when it is to their interest to do so and compete
with each other when they perceive that alternative to be in their
advantage. None of the impinging powers seeks direct confrontation and
none of them is ready for a grand bargain, because the Transcaucasian
situation is still fluid enough to allow each one the prospect of
improving its position.
Armenia’s weakness leaves it stranded as the junior partner in the
emerging Moscow-Yerevan-Tehran axis and excluded from the far more
lucrative Baku-Tbilisi-Ankara axis presided over by N.A.T.O. Those
two axes define the power structure of the Transcaucasus, with
each of its three republics constrained to adapt to the pushes and
pulls of the contending impinging powers. As the state with the best
prospects, Azerbaijan has a limited freedom to play all sides against
the middle. As the center of the east-west axis and the Baku-Ceyhan
pipeline, it is intelligible that Georgia would be a willing junior
partner in that formation. Armenia is left with an increasingly
unsatisfactory second-best situation.
Russia
Armenia’s primary dependence on Russia is difficult to deny.
Militarily, Russia has 2,500 troops in the country and provides
forces to protect its borders with Iran and Turkey. Russia is also
Armenia’s major trading partner, its largest source of investment,
the main destination of its surplus labor, the provider of its energy
needs and military equipment, and its biggest creditor. Armenia is
firmly tied to Russia as a cooperative member of the Commonwealth of
Independent States (C.I.S.) and the Russian-led Collective Security
Treaty Organization.
The extent of Moscow’s hegemony is evidenced by a 2002 agreement in
which Yerevan settled its $93.7 million debt to Moscow by transferring
five of Armenia’s key industrial plants to Russian ownership.
In order to loosen its dependence on Moscow, Yerevan has moved to
establish ties with N.A.T.O. and the United States. The Kocharian
regime has sent peacekeepers to Kosovo and is planning to send a
small contingent of support troops to Iraq to assist the American-led
coalition. It was also primed to participate in N.A.T.O.’s Cooperative
Best Effort military exercises in Azerbaijan, but they were canceled
after Baku refused to let Armenian officers into the country to
attend them.
Yerevan has also drawn closer to Tehran and is preparing to sign an
agreement to construct a pipeline that would carry natural gas from
Iran to Armenia, with substantial financing from Tehran. The pipeline
would ease Armenia’s dependence on Russia for energy supplies, but
would not alter the country’s fundamental strategic situation.
Finally, Yerevan has taken cautious steps to approach Ankara about
their long standing dispute over the Turkish persecution of Armenians
(genocide in the Armenian view) at the end of the Ottoman Empire.
Yerevan, pressured by nationalist sectors of its own population
and by the large Armenian diaspora, demands that Ankara admit to
genocide. Although it is in the economic and strategic interest of
Armenia to open up the border with Turkey, nationalist interests
continue to impede progress toward that goal.
Moscow has responded with skepticism to Yerevan’s efforts to achieve
diplomatic elbow room. In May 2004, Kocharian visited Moscow for
talks about Russia’s displeasure with Yerevan’s initiatives. Moscow
wants Yerevan to limit or curtail its relations with N.A.T.O., and
its assurance that the Iranian pipeline will not be extended through
Georgia and under the Black Sea to Ukraine, bypassing Russia and
depriving it of a market for its gas. Moscow is also essential as
a go-between in any effort to open Yerevan-Ankara relations, and is
reportedly discussing restoring rail links between Armenia and Turkey.
Yerevan is restricted by its dependence on Moscow from moving too
far toward an independent foreign policy. For its own interests,
Moscow will permit the Kocharian regime some leeway so that Armenia
does not become a ward of Russia, but it has the power to squeeze
Armenia’s lifeline if Yerevan exceeds its limits.
Nagorno-Karabakh
When Azerbaijan was incorporated into the Soviet Union as a republic
after the Russian Revolution, it was given the ethnically Armenian
region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Over 90 percent Armenian on its accession
to Azerbaijan, Azeri migration to the region brought the proportion
of Armenians down to 75 percent by 1991, when Azerbaijan and Armenia
became independent states and the Armenians in Karabakh fought a war
of independence from Azerbaijan. That war, which resulted in 30,000
deaths and was attended by massacres, pogroms and ethnic cleansing, was
successful. Aided by Yerevan’s military intervention, a mini-state of
Karabakh was created, linked to Armenia by a corridor and buffered by
an Armenian occupation of areas of Azerbaijan outside the mini-state.
Since then, Karabakh has stabilized as the most successful mini-state
that resulted from the splitting process that occurred after the fall
of the Soviet Union. It has received large infusions of investment
from the Armenian diaspora and has moved from a state-dependent to a
mixed, mainly capitalist economy. Karabakh has a stable government,
which has begun to democratize and has held municipal elections in
which some offices were won by independents. Its population, which
has returned to 90 percent ethnic Armenian, is militantly opposed to
reassertion of Baku’s sovereignty over the region.
Karabakh is Azerbaijan’s open wound — a humiliation, a severe
impairment of its territorial integrity and the source of a serious
refugee problem. Ever since Karabakh gained de facto independence, Baku
has been preoccupied with reasserting sovereignty over the region and
has met with no success. Unable at present to retake Karabakh by force,
Baku has stuck to a hard line, threatening a military solution when
circumstances become favorable. The Karabakh problem is a significant
detriment to Baku’s foreign policy, diverting it from taking full
advantage of its geostrategic and geoeconomic opportunities.
The case is different for Armenia, for which Karabakh is an asset
that demonstrates its military prowess and forces world powers to
reckon with it, because Yerevan is essential to any resolution of the
conflict. From Yerevan’s perspective, the best-case scenario would
be incorporation of Karabakh into Armenia. A strong international
guarantee of self-rule for the region, including Armenian protective
rights, would satisfy Yerevan. At worst, Yerevan contemplates
prolongation of the status quo through dragging out the mediation
process undertaken by the O.S.C.E. Minsk Group, led by Russia.
Yerevan is not likely to realize either of its satisfactory outcomes
in the foreseeable future and must try to perpetuate the status quo.
The problem with that strategy, which remains Yerevan’s best option,
is that Karabakh is a wasting asset. When Azerbaijan’s oil begins to
flow full throttle, it will be able to build up a military advantage
over Armenia that will allow it to retake Karabakh or to persuade
world and regional powers to pressure Yerevan to make unacceptable
concessions in order to prevent a war. In addition, as Azerbaijan
becomes more prosperous and powerful, Armenia’s relative importance
to world and regional powers will diminish, leading them to pay
less attention to Yerevan’s requirements. Yerevan has responded to
the threats in its future by embarking on a program of rearmament,
straining its meager budget.
At present, the mediation process is stalled and ongoing. The former
Russian co-chairman of the Minsk Group, Vladimir Kazimirov, believes
that both Baku and Yerevan are deliberately delaying a settlement
of the Karabakh dispute, the former because it sees the balance of
power shifting in its favor and the latter because it hopes that all
interested parties will get used to the status quo.
The two sides are equally intransigent. Baku insists that Armenian
troops withdraw from all areas of Azerbaijan outside Karabakh and
that all displaced persons be allowed to return to their homes before
the status of Karabakh can be discussed. Yerevan does not even admit
that Karabakh is legally part of Azerbaijan, arguing that because the
region declared independence at the same time that Azerbaijan became
an independent state, both of them are equally successor states of
the Soviet Union. Yerevan insists that the government of Karabakh
be part of any discussions on the region’s future and rejects ceding
occupied territory or allowing refugees to return prior to talks on
the region’s status.
With such diametrically opposed and inflexible positions, it was to be
expected that a meeting between Kocharian and Azerbaijan’s President
Ilham Aliyev at the C.I.S. summit in Astana, Kazakhstan on September
15 did not result in any breakthroughs. In a joint news conference,
Kocharian said, “We cannot boast of any particular success. We must
continue to quietly and patiently discuss this problem which we have
inherited.” Similarly, Aliyev remarked, “We must as usual content
ourselves with making fairly vague declarations.”
The difficulty of bringing the two sides together is illustrated by
a report of a proposal circulated by Moscow at the Astana meeting,
in which Yerevan would trade the withdrawal of its troops from
areas of Azerbaijan outside Karabakh for referenda on the region’s
status to be held in the mini-state and in Azerbaijan. Since the
proposed referenda would lead to opposed results and only compound
the deadlock, the actual trade would be Armenia’s sacrifice of its
military advantage for the international legitimacy gained for the
Karabakh mini-state. The Russian proposal did not bear fruit because
Yerevan’s military presence in Azerbaijan is its highest card and
because Baku refuses to grant the Karabakh mini-state any legitimacy.
Conclusion
As the balance of power in the Transcaucasus shifts in favor of Baku,
the prospects for Yerevan become increasingly dim. Its vital interests
are unlikely to be adequately satisfied, as it is brought closer to the
choice of conceding on Karabakh or going to war, and as it is forced
to remain dependent on a Moscow seeking greater influence with Baku.
The most likely future for Armenia is to remain the junior partner
in the Moscow-Yerevan-Tehran axis, directing its economy toward the
Russian-dominated Single Economic Space. The weakest player in the
Transcaucasus, Armenia faces the diminution of the power and autonomy
that it currently possesses.
Report Drafted By:
Dr. Michael A. Weinstein
The Power and Interest News Report (PINR) is an analysis-based
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