THE KEY TO THE CAUCASUS
By Stanley A. Weiss

International Herald Tribune
nion/edweiss.php
Dec 8 2008
France

BAKU, Azerbaijan: ‘Welcome to Houston on the Caspian," said Anne
Derse, the U.S. ambassador to this booming, oil-rich nation, as our
delegation of American business executives arrived on the final leg
of a visit to Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

After days of discussion with political, military and business leaders
across the region – including a talk with President Ilham Aliyev of
Azerbaijan, whose office overlooks the Caspian Sea, home to perhaps a
quarter of the world’s new oil production – it all seemed obvious. As
one U.S. diplomat put it, Azerbaijan "is central to all we’re trying
to do in this part of the world."

Azerbaijan is the indispensable link to reducing European energy
dependence on Moscow, with the only pipelines exporting Caspian oil
and gas that bypass Russia altogether, with routes through Georgia
and Turkey.

Without Azerbaijan, there will never be what the U.S. energy
secretary Samuel Bodman calls "a new generation of export routes"
bypassing Russia. Known as the "southern corridor," it includes plans
by Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to ship oil and gas by barge across
the Caspian to Baku, as well as the EU’s long-planned Nabucco gas
pipeline from Turkey to Europe.

Aliyev stresses that, unlike President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia,
he will not taunt the Russian bear, continuing instead to walk a
fine line between East and West. This policy includes allowing his
military to train with NATO, but not rushing to become a NATO member.

Aliyev insists that "time is up" for the return of the Azerbaijani
territory of Nagorno-Karabakh – the Armenian-majority region occupied
by Armenia, with Russian support, since the war over the area in the
early 1990s. Still, he seems determined not to give Moscow a pretext
to intervene, as it did with its invasion of Georgia this summer.

Azerbaijan – like Turkey, with which it shares deep ethnic and
linguistic ties – is one the world’s most secularized Muslim countries,
with a strict separation between mosque and state. Moreover, the
nearly 20 million ethnic Azeris living in neighboring Iran – about a
quarter of Iran’s population – are culturally closer to their brethren
in Baku than their Persian rulers in Tehran. Azerbaijan also draws
the ayatollahs’ ire as one of the few Muslim nations with diplomatic
ties with Israel.

Yet for all its strategic significance – and its support for the
U.S. war on terrorism, including sending troops to Afghanistan and
Iraq – Azerbaijan remains the neglected stepchild of U.S. Caucasus
policy. Despite Saakashvili’s miscalculations with Russia, Georgia
remains the darling of the West, garnering another $1 billion in
post-war aid from the U.S. atop the nearly $2 billion Washington
has bestowed over the years. The powerful Armenian-American lobby
has not only secured some $2 billion for Armenia to date, it has
succeeded in limiting U.S. aid to Azerbaijan because of the dispute
over Nagorno-Karabakh.

To be sure, this country is no democracy; the 46-year-old Aliyev
learned well from his authoritarian father, who ruled Azerbaijan both
as a Soviet Republic and after independence. Indeed, not long before
our delegation arrived, Aliyev claimed re-election with 89 percent
of the vote.

But if Azerbaijan is "central" to everything Washington is trying
to accomplish in the Caucasus, then Azerbaijan should be at the
forefront of U.S. Caucasus policy. To help Azerbaijan – and the
region – realize its full economic potential, the incoming Obama
administration should make a major push to resolve Nagorno-Karabakh,
which – as one development official here tells me – "is the main
issue that prevents regional integration."

A breakthrough is possible. Every member of the so-called Minsk Group
charged with resolving the conflict – Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia,
several European countries and the U.S. – have powerful incentives
for compromise.

Aliyev wants Nagorno-Karabakh back, but understands that Moscow won’t
allow him to take it by force. Landlocked, impoverished Armenia
desperately wants Azerbaijan and Turkey to end a 16-year economic
blockade of its borders. Turkey wants to improve relations with
Armenia. Europe wants to avert another crisis that would complicate
plans for its Nabucco pipeline. And with new competing diplomatic
initiatives, Turkey and Russia clearly want to play a leadership role
in the region.

This "frozen conflict" will not thaw easily. But through a
gradual process backed by the major powers, the Caucasus countries
could finally focus on economic cooperation rather than military
confrontation. And the trade routes of the old Silk Road could become
a new energy corridor of the 21st century.

Stanley A. Weiss is founding chairman of Business Executives for
National Security, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress