MESSAGE FROM MUNICH

Many participants and observers of the 52nd Munich Security Conference spoke about the unwillingness of the main actors in international politics to have a dialogue, about the fact that attempts to find a political solution to conflicts increasingly often result in failure, about the lack of ideas and double standards. There was no need to draw up the agenda in advance: the most important topics for representatives from more than 40 countries were, as expected, Syria, the fight against the Islamic State (IS), the migration crisis, relations between Russia and the West, the situation in Ukraine, and the global economic challenges. Indeed, these topics do not give cause for optimism.

"Opening this conference, I said that the outlook was quite pessimistic, and the results of the conference unfortunately do not allow us to disprove this statement. I hope that the message that we are sending from Munich will not lead to further aggravation of the situation in the world," the chairman of the conference, Wolfgang Ischinger, said in his closing remarks. According to Ischinger, the pessimistic statements made by forum participants were "somewhat neutralized" by a phone conversation between Putin and Obama, who were personally absent from Munich but, of course, closely watched the negotiations on Syria.

Syria and Ukraine

We are talking about a meeting of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), held before the beginning of the conference in Munich, which confirmed the principles and provisions of UN Security Council Resolution 2254 and adopted decisions on the need to resolve the issue of delivering humanitarian supplies to all parts of the country within a week as well as to identify modalities of cessation of hostilities, which would not apply to the terrorist groups. The question of launching a real political process is under discussion but, for obvious reasons, is subordinate to the above conditions. Along with that, the heads of the US and Russian foreign ministries talked about the possibility of establishing working contacts between representatives of the Russian and US defence ministries.

However, reasons for pessimism are much more numerous. They are mainly associated with the fact that the parties to the conflict in Syria, while speaking about the negotiations, continue to maintain their diametrically opposed positions. Russia insists on the formation of a common front against terrorism, the West says that this is impossible as long as Moscow continues to support the regime of Bashar al-Assad. At the same time, the other participants in what is happening on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic defend their respective interests. Thus, alongside the dialogue in Munich, reports were coming in about the aggravation of the situation in northern Syria, where Turkey began cross-border shelling of the positions of Syrian Kurds. According to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, strikes are being delivered at the positions of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) that are the military wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which Turkey considers to be a Kurdistan Workers' Party subdivision and reckons as a terrorist organization. Meanwhile, several fighter aircraft of the Saudi Arabian Air Force were redeployed to the Incirlik base in Turkey and are expected to attack the Syrian city of Raqqa that is believed to be the IS capital. In the meantime, there are rumours that the Syrian army is also planning to advance towards the province of Raqqa. It is not known whether Turkey will venture deploying its ground troops, as well as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE, which did not rule out the likelihood of a ground operation. The Americans mentioned the possibility of deploying additional land contingent, too. To speak about the full truce or cessation of hostilities at least for a certain period appears to be too optimistic.

By the way, talks on Ukraine were also conducted in Munich. However, against the backdrop of the war in Syria and the migration crisis in Europe, the country clearly merged into the background for the West, but by no means lost its explosiveness. The participants in the meeting of foreign ministers, held in the so-called "Normandy format" (Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France), tried to agree on how to actually start implementing the Minsk-2 agreement, but the meeting brought about no results. The conflict is in fact frozen, with bombardments occurring regularly along the contact line. The humanitarian crisis is becoming ever more acute. Western countries continue to support Ukraine, but its economic policies are increasingly subjected to criticism.

A third world shake-up?

Amid all this, the words of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev that Russia's relations with NATO have sunk to the level of a new "cold war", as well as his question to colleagues whether they needed a "third world shake-up?" generated a lot of emotions and responses at the Munich conference. As noted by Western observers, Medvedev, who recalled Putin's well-known anti-Western "Munich speech" at the beginning of his address, was clearly trying to copy his president's tone and speaking style. But the only thing Medvedev managed to achieve was to remind that everything has become more difficult since 2007. While German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier preferred to see only a warning in the words of the Russian Prime Minister that the international community should "avoid the situation which leads us to a cold war", US Secretary of State John Kerry and Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite melancholically noted that a "cold" war was already felt quite "hot". One can understand Grybauskaite, by the way. Recently, the British television channel BBC began to show a "documentary", where the Third World War begins with Russia's attack on neighbouring Latvia.

Water as a tool for aggression

The Munich conference discussed not only matters of political and economic security but also other no less important global-scale threats. They may look not so acute at first glance but, in the long term, they may pose even greater risks than the current situation in the Middle East. Looming large among such global-scale challenges are problems related to climatic and energy security and the shortage of resources. It is not mere coincidence that, just during the conference days, The New York Times published the findings of a study by researchers at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, showing that approximately two-thirds of the planet's population (about 4bn people) meet with problems caused by water shortage regularly (at least one month in a year).

And this problem is not alien to Azerbaijan, either, given that the country's main sources of fresh water are the transborder rivers Kura and Araz.

Speaking at the panel session on "Climate and Energy Security: Is the Heat Still on?", Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev emphasized that a major threat to Azerbaijan, in this sense, consists in the fact that the rivers providing this country with water have their sources in its neighbouring states and the river Araz, in particular, is very seriously contaminated in Armenia. "Despite all our requests to stop polluting the river, Armenia regrettably sticks to this policy. We have suffered from aggression and occupation for more than 20 years. Twenty per cent of our territories are under occupation. Not only people suffer but also our nature does, because, having no international control in those areas, all kinds of illegitimate activities are going on there, in particular, wood cutting. Those areas are famous for their relict trees and forests. Now those forests are being cut for commercial purposes," Ilham Aliyev said. PACE recently approved a resolution that censures Armenia for problems it causes in water supply to neighbouring regions.

A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of Armenia was taking part in the discussion. For some reason, he switched to the human rights situation in Azerbaijan instead of replying to the well-founded accusations. But Ilham Aliyev emphasized that, if someone does violate human rights in the region, it is official Yerevan itself and there are several resolutions to this effect approved by international organizations, including the UN.

"Armenia is being criticized by the Council of Europe and the European Parliament for gross violations of human rights, falsifying presidential and parliamentary polls and many other things done by your government. We, but not only, accuse Armenia of the occupation. The highest international body - the UN Security Council - also does. It has approved four resolutions demanding the immediate and unconditional pullout of Armenian forces from the occupied territories. We accuse not the Armenian people but the government of Armenia for the Xocali [Khojali] genocide when Armenian vandals slaughtered innocent people just for being Azerbaijanis, and that genocide has been recognized by more than 10 countries. We blame Armenia for the sufferings of one million refugees and displaced persons who became refugees on their native soil. Of this number, 40,000 are from Nagornyy Karabakh, 750,000 from other occupied areas of Azerbaijan and 200,000 were exiled from Armenia and subjected to an ethnic purge. All this is the result of your occupation. All this results from the policy pursued by you against your neighbouring country and the occupation should be put an end to. The main condition for reaching peace in the region is to free the Azerbaijani lands from occupation," the Azerbaijani president replied.

Real challenge

At the Munich conference, the Azerbaijani president also addressed the Energy Security Roundtable dedicated to geopolitical issues behind oil price reduction. The main part of Ilham Aliyev's speech focused on the current economic status of Azerbaijan facing a number of challenges after the sharp fall in prices for energy resources. The challenges include in the first place the need to diversify the export potential for which it is necessary to continue economic reform, create better conditions for the private sector, attract large investments and start a programme for large-scale privatization.

"All these elements have already been proclaimed as our state policy and I am sure that we shall score a success. We were planning to prepare for the post-oil period to start after the 2030s. But, as I said at a recent meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers, the post-oil period has already begun for us and quite unexpectedly. To speak honestly, I believe that no-one could have imagined that oil prices would fall four times. We were not prepared and nobody was. This is why we had, within a very short time, to find ways to balance the budget, to carry on social programmes and identify projects to stop funding," the president of Azerbaijan said.

Summing up

The conference founded in 1963 as an assembly of the defence departments of the NATO member states is now an important international discussion forum, a major barometer for sentiments prevailing on the world arena. And the current sentiments cause quite justified concerns. As Ischinger said, political and economic crises are becoming increasingly unpredictable. Moreover, confidence in diplomacy has been significantly undermined in the world of late. And when diplomats are powerless, the military come into play, so to speak. This should be opposed with all our might, jointly and, above all, relying on norms of international law which, apropos, Ilham Aliyev repeatedly pointed out in Munich. This is the only way to overcome global pessimism. It remains to be hoped that tensions in the international situation will ease at least slightly by the opening of the 53rd Munich conference on security issues on 10 February 2017.