On Sept. 27, 2020, on the 100th anniversary of the Ottoman Turkish attack on the newly independent Republic of Armenia, Azerbaijan attacked the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. While initially unsuccessful, the local Armenian defense forces collapsed after Turkish Special Forces and F-16s joined in. Before both sides accepted a ceasefire, Armenians lost control of half the enclave they ruled.
At the time, the U.S. presidential campaign was in full swing. Joe Biden issued a statement castigating President Donald Trump for mismanaging the crisis. "While he brags about his deal-making skills at campaign rallies, Trump has yet to get involved personally to stop this war. The administration must fully implement and not waive requirements under section 907 of the Freedom Support Act to stop the flow of military equipment to Azerbaijan, and call on Turkey and Russia to stop fueling the conflict with the supply of weapons and, in the case of Turkey, mercenaries," Biden said.
If only Biden 2023 had the moral clarity of Biden 2020. Azerbaijan talks today not only about completing the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh but also about conquering Armenia proper. Rather than stop the flow of military equipment to Azerbaijan, Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken not only defy the Freedom Support Act to send more weaponry to Azerbaijan but also seek congressional approval to send upgraded F-16s to Turkey.
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Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev plays Biden like a fiddle. So long as he tells diplomats behind the scenes that he is interested in peace, Biden refuses to cut off his flow of military equipment. This is backward. Biden should calibrate incentives to peace, not to negotiations. To do otherwise incentivizes insincere adversaries to engage in the process but never reach peace. If Aliyev is sincere about peace, he will renounce territorial ambitions, cease eradicating Armenian cultural heritage, and stop the deliberate starvation of more than 100,000 people for the crime of being Christian.
The provision of weaponry also belies a fundamental question: What for?
This goes to the second false assumption underlying Biden’s policy. Azerbaijan’s lobbyists insist that Azerbaijan stands against Iran. They describe Azerbaijan as a pro-Western oasis in a neighborhood threatened by Iran and Russia. In reality, Azerbaijan collaborates with both. It seeks an Iran-Azerbaijan-Russia trade corridor, partners with Russian oil firms in the Caspian Sea, and swaps gas to give Iran an outlet to Europe.
True, Azerbaijan also works with Israel. Israel and Azerbaijan have a long arms-for-energy partnership, and Azerbaijan enables Israel to listen into Iran and perhaps even infiltrate the country. Here, though, it simply repeats the strategy of Turkey, playing both sides to maximum advantage.
Armenia today is a democracy, tilting ever more toward the West. Azerbaijan is one of the world’s most autocratic and corrupt regimes. That Biden in action if not in rhetoric sides with the latter against the former suggests that Biden based his 2020 criticism of Trump not on principle but on political opportunism.
The truth is both Trump and Biden are equally wrong. If Biden wants to be remembered as better than Trump, perhaps he should not replicate the worst of his policies. It is time for a principled policy in the South Caucasus, one based on reality and human rights concerns rather than wishful thinking and arms contracts.
Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/biden-is-being-played-by-azerbaijan