What’s the Possibility of New War and What’s the Format?

The political leadership in Azerbaijan is trying to differentiate the impression of possibility of a new war with Armenia. The Americans continue to claim that Ilham Aliyev is not inclined for a war while his entourage prefers using large-scale military actions. Washington does not believe in this much and judging by the information about Azerbaijan, they have concluded that the present-day Azerbaijan is not determined enough. Who in Azerbaijan’s political elite might initiate a new war? Such initiatives in Azerbaijan are ruled out to a significant extent, if not fully. Azerbaijan is governed from the outside, and this is taken into account in the political circles of the West and Iran. Iran’s warning was made with consideration of intrigues in Turkey and partly in Russia. Currently Turkey, as before, is not interested in a big war in the Caucasus. It concerns Russia too. The two countries are interested in maintaining the military situation in the region but not in a big war. Many Armenian military officers do not have a substantial understanding of the war threat and continue to hope for Russia’s assistance including in terms of weapons supplies. Nonetheless, Russia’s actions are discussed by officers. Russia’s cynical behavior is becoming hostile and is not limited to large-scale supplies of weapons to Azerbaijan. Armenia has not been able to raise this issue before the Russians, nor internationally. What are the causes of such outrageous attitude to Armenia? First, the Armenian leadership was unable to restore the opinion of the Armenian public towards such cynical attitude by Russia. However, this is not the cause of the situation Armenia is in. Since independence Armenia has had a superficial attitude towards its own sovereignty, technically failing to conduct an equal policy on different big states and political and security blocs. As a result, the country depends heavily on Russia and has not been serious about NATO, the global security system. Currently the West is not interested in a war but there comes a time when the West may put forth the issue of failure of Russia’s regional policy, especially in terms of military conflicts. Azerbaijan understands this very well and is ready for the military adventure, a demonstrative action for a military strike on Armenia. Azerbaijan is aware that the Western community, NATO will not take serious action to intervene in the war in the South Caucasus unless Turkey takes part in it. Formerly NATO was intended to prevent the defeat of one of the Caucasian countries. Currently the setting is different, and Armenia must lose. This is not NATO’s strategic goal but such results would be the most favorable one for the alliance. For the time being NATO is trying to involve Armenia and Azerbaijan in its political and security programs, enabling them to increase the defense capability of their armed forces. The political component is important to the Caucasian countries, which supposes integration with NATO organizations. The participation of Armenia and Azerbaijan is titular for the time being, and the two countries do not express interest in close cooperation with NATO. It should be noted that Azerbaijan is currently better off than Armenia. Azerbaijan is Turkey’s vassal, in fact, which does not worry the West. On the contrary, it leads to the understanding that Azerbaijan is in close partnership with it. Besides, Azerbaijan has close relations with Georgia without being dependent on Russia. Armenia does not have freedom of relations with Georgia and cannot normalize its relations with Turkey. This leads to the perception that Armenia is not a sovereign state. Hence, Azerbaijan remains under Turkey’s strong influence and its interests are in contradiction to the Euro-Atlantic community, as well as have not been agreed with the interests of Russia. Turkey has to take into account the positions of Russia and Iran and is in heavy dependence on the United States and NATO. However, Turkey does not initiate the start of military actions and prefers strengthening its influence in the South Caucasus. Turkey needs to deal with a series of political and security issues in the Near East but has no idea of how to resolve those issues. It would be highly dangerous to add these to the problems relating to the South Caucasus. Turkey’s involvement in regional issues would lead to NATO’s involvement in the Black Sea-Caucasus but with a different format. Neither Russia, nor Turkey agree to this. Russia and Turkey are not interested in a big war but they would like to impose not big wars on the countries of the region. A local war is the destiny of the South Caucasus.