KARABAKH CONFLICT IN A DEAD END

In the context of settling the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagornyy Karabakh, 2012 began positively. In January, Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan held a meeting in Sochi. This was the last meeting of this kind organized by Dmitriy Medvedev, who is completing his tenure as president of the Russian Federation. As a result of the negotiations, the parties announced their intention to intensify work on the basic principles of resolving the conflict. They expressed support for the mediators' efforts to develop humanitarian contacts and willingness to further the dialogue between intellectuals, scientists and social circles. The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed that to secure progress in the negotiations, it is necessary to abandon maximalist positions.

However, in reality, the processes have been going in the opposite, i.e. negative direction. Sporadic skirmishes along the ceasefire line have become intense and are accompanied by deaths and injuries of military personnel almost daily. Reconnaissance groups check the strength of the sides from time to time. The last such action that occurred in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in early June claimed about 10 lives.

Armenian diplomacy and propaganda are trying to blame Azerbaijan for the escalation of military tensions. Yerevan accuses Baku of starting an arms race and refusing to withdraw snipers from the front line. At the same time, the Armenians ignore the actual cause of the military conflict - namely, their reluctance to withdraw their troops from the occupied districts of Azerbaijan despite the four UN Security Council resolutions, the decisions of the UN General Assembly, PACE and the European Parliament's recommendations and the demands of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

In recent years, Armenia has even stopped masking its direct military involvement in the Karabakh conflict. Thousands of conscripts and officers of the Armenian army are sent here against their will. Military equipment purchased by Armenia, including Russian medium-range Scud missiles, C-300 air defence systems, military aircraft and helicopters and Typhoon multiple rocket launchers are being transferred here. All this was blatantly demonstrated at the 9 May parade in Nagornyy Karabakh on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the capture of Susa. Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Minister of Defence Seyran Ohanyan openly lead military exercises with live fire in the occupied Azerbaijani territories. In essence, the Armenians are consistently doing everything possible to legitimize the occupation of Azerbaijani territories and to encourage the world to agree with that.

At the same time, by its actions Armenia seems to be provoking Baku to take steps that would give reason to present Azerbaijan as an aggressive side and blame it for the resumption of hostilities. They want to present their own military operations as forced and defensive in nature. 

The multiple demographic, financial, economic, and now growing military superiority of Azerbaijan over Armenia creates not just alarm but also fear in Armenian politicians and military. Newspapers in Yerevan are full of reports that they cannot waste their time, as the superiority of Azerbaijan will soon become multiple and Armenia has no chance of holding out in a military conflict. For this reason, some directly call for a pre-emptive war and seizure of new territories in order to force Baku to accept peace on Armenian conditions.

The calculation is to conduct a brief surprise and successful operation. The Armenians lack demographic, financial and economic resources for a long war. Perhaps, they plan to strike Azerbaijan and inflict maximum possible damage, and then protect themselves from retaliation by drawing the CSTO into it. If the worst comes to the worst, the Armenians rely not only on assistance from Moscow, but intervention by their traditional lobbyists and supporters in the West, who they think will not allow the war to be transferred into the territory of Armenia proper and will stop the hostilities. Indirectly, Yerevan needs military tensions to ensure that the planned CSTO exercises in Armenia and the North Caucasus proceed on the basis of the Armenian scenario and have a distinct anti-Azerbaijani slant. All this is highly adventuresome, but is quite in the spirit of the current Armenian political and military elite, which emerged from field commanders and in the midst of the Karabakh war.

The deadlock in the Karabakh peace process and the dangerous signs of the growing confrontation between Azerbaijan and Armenia did not fall out of the sight of the great and regional powers and international organizations. Although everyone's attention is now focused on the Iranian and Syrian subjects and the crisis in the global economy and finances, the presidents of Russia, the USA and France found it necessary to make a joint statement on the Nagornyy Karabakh problem at the G20 summit in Mexico. "We, the presidents of the countries cochairing the OSCE Minsk Group - France, Russia and the United States of America - are united in our strong commitment to the peaceful settlement of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict. The parties to the conflict should no longer delay the adoption of important decisions needed to achieve a lasting and peaceful settlement. We regret that the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan have failed to take decisive steps outlined in our joint statement adopted in Deauville on 26 May 2011," Vladimir Putin, Barak Obama and Francois Hollande said in the statement.

They recommended that the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan refrain from maximalist negotiating positions, respect the ceasefire agreement of 1994 and give up their hostile rhetoric, which increases tensions. "We urge the leaders to be guided by the principles of the Helsinki Final Act, particularly in relation to the non-use of force or threat of violence, territorial integrity, peoples' right to self-determination, as well as the elements of the settlement set forth in the statements of our countries in L'Aquila in 2009 and Muskoka in 2010," the statement said.

The presidents of the mediator countries directly stated: "Only a peaceful settlement can allow the region to move beyond the status quo towards a safe and prosperous future. Our countries will continue to work closely with the parties, and we encourage them to take full advantage of the assistance of the OSCE Minsk Group as mediators. However, eventually, peace will depend on the willingness of the parties to find an agreement based on mutual understanding, not one-sided advantages, and a common vision of the benefits that peace will bring to all peoples and future generations."

The statement by the presidents of the countries cochairing the OSCE Minsk Group in Los Cabos seems to repeat the thesis which has been repeatedly voiced earlier. What draws attention is the hortatory tone and the fact that the appeal to harmonize the basic principles of resolving the conflict is no longer referred to as the "Madrid principles". This suggests that the negotiations on the basis of the so-called "Madrid principles" are regarded as unproductive and the parties are offered some new ideas that can form the basis of the new document if there is an interest in them. By the way, this was mentioned by the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her recent visit to the South Caucasus.

The initial discussion of these proposals seems to have taken place at a meeting of the ministers, Elmar Mammadyarov and Eduard Nalbandyan, in Paris on 18 June. It was attended by the OSCE Minsk Group cochairmen, Robert Bradtke (USA), Jacques Faure (France) and Igor Popov (Russia), as well as the personal representative of the OSCE chairman-in-office, Andrzej Kasprzyk. According to the press service of the OSCE, they also discussed ways of resolving the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict, further work on the development of contacts in the humanitarian sphere, the implementation of a mechanism for investigating incidents, as well as ways to protect historical and cultural monuments. It was announced that the Minsk Group co-chairs would visit the region in July.

All these moments are important, but Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry spokesman Elman Abdullayev stated while commenting on the results of the Paris meeting of the foreign ministers and the appeal from the US, Russian and French presidents that "the basic condition for the promotion of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict is the withdrawal of the Armenian troops from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. Only this will open up new possibilities for this process. Baku's position remains unchanged - the Armenian armed forces should leave the occupied Azerbaijani lands. After that, the incidents on the frontline will stop."

The same argument was confirmed by Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, who said while receiving the newly-appointed French ambassador to Baku, Pascal Meunier, on 21 June that the settlement of the conflict is dragging on, which is unacceptable. Stressing the high priority of the withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from Nagornyy Karabakh to resolve the conflict, he noted that "the occupation of Azerbaijani lands by Armenia should be presented as it is".

Meanwhile, the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations approved the nomination of Richard Morningstar as ambassador to Azerbaijan. Responding to questions from Senator Boxer, he said that if he is appointed, he will work with the Minsk Group co-chairman from the USA, Robert Bradtke, and the Azerbaijani government at the highest level in order to "call for respect for the ceasefire and to strengthen its enforcement".

The appointment of such an experienced and respected diplomat as Richard Morningstar to the post of ambassador in Baku suggests Washington's increased attention to Azerbaijan and indirectly shows the intention to strengthen the US role in the Karabakh settlement. It is especially important that since the election of President Vladimir Putin, Russia has demonstrated a lack of interest in the role of the main moderator in the Armenian-Azerbaijani high-level talks.

The world's leading "think tanks" have expressed doubts about the sincerity of Russia's intention to resolve the Karabakh conflict as soon as possible. Thus, the British Royal Institute of International Affairs Chatham House recently published a report entitled "The Long Goodbye: Waning Russian Influence in the South Caucasus and Central Asia", authored by James Nixey. According to the report, Russia's influence in the South Caucasus and Central Asia is waning, but Russia is using a number of tools to deal with it. A separate part of the report deals with the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict, which, inter alia, states that "the Russian support of Armenia in the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict was based on a number of interests: the restriction of Turkish influence, fighting Russophobic Azerbaijan in the early years of independence and long-standing cultural ties reflected in the large Armenian diaspora in Russia." According to the author, although notable efforts were made during the presidency of Dmitriy Medvedev to move the negotiations forward, "... Russia sees its mediation in the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict in terms of its influence and cannot be truly interested in solving the conflict."

Some analysts in the United States, Europe, Georgia and Azerbaijan go even further in their estimates. They argue that Moscow is interested in the preservation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, so as to provoke a resumption of hostilities at the convenient moment and to use this fact to restore its military control over Azerbaijan just as Russia did in Georgia in August 2008.

However, the opposite thesis conceptually has the right to life as well. In light of Putin's plans for the reintegration of the CIS through the mechanism of the "single economic area" and the Eurasian Union, it is possible to do so in the South Caucasus only by interesting Azerbaijan, to which Moscow has nothing to offer apart from services to advance the Nagornyy Karabakh settlement. The Armenian media cautiously write about this prospect, and analysts are recommending that the government of President Serzh Sargsyan should orient its foreign policy towards the West beforehand.

For the time being, it is difficult to say anything definite about the future initiatives of the United States, Russia and the EU in the context of the Karabakh settlement and how these geopolitical centres are willing to back them up with their power and authority. The previous experience of negotiations on this issue showed that there is no point in relying on the "common sense" of the Armenians and the "tractability" of Baku, especially as 2013 will see presidential elections both in Armenia and Azerbaijan, and it is extremely difficult and even risky to run in them with a load of compromises criticized by opponents. Therefore, the negotiations on the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict settlement at the level of the OSCE Minsk Group and foreign ministers will continue with greater or lesser intensity, and some new ideas and proposals will be evaluated, but a breakthrough so far seems unlikely.