Sunday’s Zaman, Turkey
May 16 2010

The unraveling of relations between Azerbaijan and the US

AMANDA PAUL a.paul@todayszaman.com Columnists

It is increasingly evident that the South Caucasus region is far from
being a key issue of US focus these days. Since the arrival of
President Barack Obama at the beginning of 2009, the region seems to
have been increasingly defined principally through the prism of
Russia. The previously relatively strong ties between Baku and the US
have taken a battering over the last year, and this strategic drift
could potentially lead to serious damage in relations if the US does
not wake up and move away from its short-term policy for short-term
gains attitude. This new approach from the US has come as a slap in
the face to Baku because Azerbaijan has, over the years, invested a
lot in its relationship with the US, proving to be a reliable partner
for US strategic interests and policies in the South Caucasus-Caspian
region. Azerbaijan has been at the forefront of the opening of Caspian
energy resources to the West as well as playing a crucial role in the
American-led `Global War on Terror’ when the South Caucasus became a
potential launch pad for US military forces en route to the Middle
East and Afghanistan with Azerbaijani airspace opened for Operation
Enduring Freedom. It is a natural transport and energy corridor along
the axis of the west and east, north and south, and Baku is emerging
as the capital of Eurasia, consolidating Azerbaijan’s position as a
strategic hub in Eurasia.
While on the one hand the US has rolled back its involvement in the
South Caucasus/Caspian region in exchange for cooperation with Russia
on issues such as Iran, on the other it is progressively portraying
itself as having an increasingly pro-Armenian policy which has
impacted issues of key strategic importance to Azerbaijan and in
particular the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, where Baku
feels the US is no longer an impartial player.

Although the US started to `pull out’ of the South Caucasus following
the 2008 Russian-Georgian war when Russia was allowed to `move around
the furniture’ in the South Caucasus with relative ease, it is more
recent US initiatives that have really begun to worry Baku. This is
principally the US-facilitated Turkey-Armenia rapprochement, which
Washington seemed to want `at any price,’ including the signing of the
two protocols aimed at the normalizing of relations on Oct. 10, 2009.
The US’s strong pressure on Turkey to open the border before a
resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has not only failed but
has also left a very bad taste in Baku’s mouth. These developments
totally undermined the position of Azerbaijan, which wants any
normalization of Turkey’s relations with Armenia to be conditional on
a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, believing that opening
the border in any other circumstances will simply make the Armenians
more intransigent. The US used to be the only power in the region that
both sides trusted; this is no longer the case as the US can no longer
be viewed as an impartial actor. While international law is clearly on
the side of Azerbaijan, the West remains inconsistent on its approach.
While Armenia continues to occupy seven Azerbaijani regions from which
almost 1 million Azerbaijanis were driven almost 20 years ago, the
West is more concerned about Armenian events that took place almost a
century ago. Furthermore, the US Congress has allocated direct aid to
Nagorno-Karabakh, which contradicts the State Department’s policy in
the region. The longer these conflicts drag on the more difficult it
becomes to reinstate territorial integrity, and the separatists become
more confident and difficult to deal with.

The upshot is that for Azerbaijan, the US has lost its neutrality.
This development now seriously jeopardizes progress on the conflict
but also the strategic alliance between the two countries, which has
sought to enhance European energy security, strengthen the
independence of the post-Soviet states and promote integration of
Azerbaijan into the Euro-Atlantic community. This was further
underlined when on April 19 Baku announced the suspension of military
exercises planned with the US for May. Coming only a few days after
the launch of Obama’s nuclear summit in Washington to which Azerbaijan
was not invited, it was taken as yet another confirmation of
Washington’s pro-Armenian bias. Azerbaijan has been very disappointed
by the US’s failure to appoint a new ambassador to the country. The
post has now been open for some eight months.

The US lacks a coherent and principled approach and needs to consider
very seriously what the possible end consequences of this
short-sighted policy could be — not least because Washington’s
short-sighted policy is pushing Azerbaijan further into the arms of
Moscow, with whom Baku has increasingly intensified relations over the
last few years, something the men in the Kremlin are more than happy
with.