WASHINGTON ALERTED TO ERRORS

Azerbaijani-US relations have sharply worsened recently because of the specific statements and actions of the US authorities that demonstrate Washington's purposeful infringement of Baku's interests.

Serious blow to bilateral relations

Recent hearings at the Foreign Relations Committee of the US House of Representatives with a screaming biased theme The Future of Nagorno-Karabakh clearly demonstrated the anti-Azerbaijani sentiment in the American political establishment. In fact, there is no such administrative unit in Azerbaijan. It was replaced with the Garabagh Economic Region, which includes the territory of the historical Azerbaijani region of Garabagh. Apparently, the anti-Azerbaijani hearings have been openly supported and staged by the Armenian lobby, following the meeting between Thomas Kean, Chairman of the European Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Lilit Makunts, Armenia's Ambassador to Washington, on the eve of the event.

US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs James O'Brien was the main protagonist at the hearing. He expressed the Biden administration's dissatisfaction with the September 19, 2023 anti-terrorist operation initiated by Azerbaijan that put an end to the criminal separatist junta in the mountainous part of Azerbaijan's Garabagh region and asserted its sovereignty over the entire territory of the country. O'Brien ranted about Washington's countermeasures. Apparently, Washington has engaged some investigators - "its own" and "independent" - to investigate the mass resettlement of Armenians from Azerbaijan to Armenia. He said that "nothing will be normal after the events of September 19" in US relations with Azerbaijan until Washington sees "real progress in the peace process". To confirm his statements, the US "cancelled a number of high-level visits and condemned Azerbaijan's actions." In addition, O'Brien announced that the White House has effectively stopped the circumvention of the anti-Azerbaijani 907th Amendment adopted back in 1992.

So the US Senate has promptly passed the Armenian Defence Act, which provides for the suspension of military aid to Azerbaijan. In fact, Baku does not really need the miniscule volume of military aid provided by the US. However, the congressional hearings, the speech of the Assistant Secretary of State and the Senate act demonstrated again the double standards and fundamentally unfair attitude of Washington towards Azerbaijan. To confirm this, Samantha Power, the incumbent head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), stated that the US would allocate an additional $4.1m to support the 'forcibly displaced Armenian persons'.

For three decades, the US has silently observed and even encouraged the Armenian occupation of Azerbaijani territories, by providing financial assistance to the Armenian occupation regime in the mountainous part of Garabagh. But now American political figures and authorities, who disdainfully and even negligently refer to the acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing committed against the Azerbaijani people, leading to the expulsion of one million people from their lands, express solidarity with Armenia, feel compassion for the Garabagh Armenians, although no one expelled them from Azerbaijan...

As a reaction to the prejudiced, openly anti-Azerbaijani position of the US, Baku is determined to continue to suppress any attempts at external pressure. Especially if they are targeting Azerbaijan's sovereignty over the entire liberated Garabagh.

Thus, the statement adopted by the Milli Majlis in relation with the Armenian Defence Act contains the following warning: "In accordance with the norms and principles of international law, Azerbaijan will always react decisively and adequately to all negative steps". Azerbaijani parliamentarians recalled that "when Armenia expanded the occupation against Azerbaijan, committed the Khojaly genocide and massacres of the Azerbaijani population, the US, being a permanent member of the UN Security Council, did not try to prevent these actions, but instead adopted the 907th amendment against Azerbaijan. By doing so, Azerbaijan was deprived of financial assistance. Azerbaijan was the only country of the former USSR against which such an amendment was adopted. As a result, US financial support helped Armenia to occupy Azerbaijani lands."

According to the statement, as a result of the current unilateral actions of the US, Washington lost its credibility in Azerbaijan. The Milli Majlis regarded the US Senate's decision as a serious blow to bilateral relations, a document that seriously hinders efforts to establish peace in the region.

No peace treaty based on American scenario

Meanwhile, geopolitical configurations that the US seeks to build also show a disregard for Azerbaijan's interests and an obvious attempt to exert pressure on Baku. As if a mentor, Washington explains to Armenia, which it is placing under own control, and to Azerbaijan, which does not need any external guidance, what kind of political relations they should have in place with Russia and Iran. Particularly, Washington expresses the unacceptability of the project to establish a transport connection between Nakhchivan and the mainland Azerbaijan via Iran, by actually threatening Azerbaijan with "very strong opposition to it and the doomed failure of the initiative."

The statement of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs rightly emphasises that Baku's decision to build alternative roads was a consequence of Armenia's failure to fulfil its obligations in line with the 2020 Trilateral Statement. At the same time, "it is the sovereign right of Azerbaijan to agree on the procedure for laying communication lines with neighbouring states, including Iran, along the route to the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic". And then follows an important statement: "Azerbaijan once again confirms the priority of the 3+2 format, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia, and Türkiye, for the security of the region. In this context, any comment that jeopardises the mentioned efforts is inappropriate."

Thus, Azerbaijan has once again demonstrated that it would prevent any attempts to transform its territory to the arena of confrontation between global actors. Therefore, it does not accept any external efforts aimed at worsening its relations with its northern and southern neighbours. The attitude of Western centres, primarily the US, to this policy of Azerbaijan only confirms the validity of its foreign policy strategy. The essence of this strategy is the rejection of orientation towards any global centres, reliance on its own potential and consistent defence of its national interests.

Baku clearly realises that the West and the US are trying to use Azerbaijan and Armenia as a tool in their anti-Russian and anti-Iranian policy. But while Armenia, which has no longer any subjectivity, enjoys such a prospect, it contradicts the strategy and national interests of Azerbaijan, which has established itself as the leader of the South Caucasus as a result of the victory in the Garabagh war.

Obviously, the US is dissatisfied with Baku's opposition to Western centres that seek to realise their intentions by infringing on its interests. Therefore, Washington seeks some kind of preferences for Yerevan in the future Azerbaijani-Armenian peace treaty. Hence Washington's signals that the US will not develop relations with Baku without the conclusion of "American version" of the Azerbaijani-Armenian treaty.

Well, in this case they will have to wait forever. Azerbaijan will not sign a treaty that contradicts its interests, sovereignty, territorial integrity, security and efforts aimed at turning the region into a space of peace and cooperation rather than confrontation and conflict. This is the context one should perceive the mirror steps taken by Baku, which declared the inexpediency of visits of American representatives to Azerbaijan and refused to participate in the meeting of foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia in Washington, DC.

The end of the agent network

In response to the anti-Azerbaijani actions of the US, Baku is also taking a number of other political steps. For example, USAID activities in Azerbaijan are curtailed, including the centres and NGOs funded by this American agency to provide the relevant US bodies with information on the current state of affairs in Azerbaijan and its various regions. In essence, it means putting an end to the US agent network operating in Azerbaijan to destabilise the situation and establish US influence.

There is nothing the US would not have tried in an attempt to impose its dictate on Azerbaijan. These are the same methods Washington uses to unleash wars, sow confusion, provoke civil confrontation in a number of countries. Suffice it to note the US efforts to make the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria "happy". Peoples who, as a result of varying degrees of American interference and often blatant military aggression, can in no way establish a peaceful, constructive life.

The leading Western powers continue to remain committed to the policy of racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia. This is confirmed by the attitude of the US and France to the Armenian-Azerbaijani problem. Azerbaijan stoically defends itself from the pressure of these countries, which have not digested its crushing victory over the "long-suffering Christian Armenia". Baku demonstrates again that talking to it in the language of pressure and diktat is a futile attempt. This fully applies to the US, which should have developed an adequate approach to Azerbaijan long ago. An approach that takes into account that Azerbaijan will not allow anyone to interfere in its internal affairs, ignore its interests with impunity and infringe on its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Blinken's call and Aliyev's condition

On November 27, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called the President of Azerbaijan. He accepted Ilham Aliyev's demand to lift the unjustified ban on visits of high-ranking Azerbaijani officials to the US. This was a condition for the visit of US Assistant Secretary of State James O'Brien to Baku. The same person, whose statements against Azerbaijan and its sovereign rights at the hearings of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the US House of Representatives, which did not reflect the reality, largely provoked the current crisis in the dialogue between Baku and Washington.

It looks like Blinken's phone call to Ilham Aliyev had two goals. First, to contribute to overcoming the crisis in relations between Baku and Washington, which had sharply deteriorated as a result of recent anti-Azerbaijani statements and steps by the US. Second, to save the American and more broadly the Western mediation in the Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement, which had been derailed by the refusal of the US and the EU to abandon the neutral, unbiased position obligatory for mediators.

But judging by Blinken's acceptance of President Aliyev's condition, it is possible to relieve the tension in Azerbaijani-American relations at certain level soon, the second point raises questions. Matthew Miller, head of the US Department of State's press office, made statements on Blinken's telephone talks with both the President of Azerbaijan and Armenian Prime Minister, which confirm that the US State Department is trying to resume the Azerbaijani-Armenian peace process through US mediation. During the talks, the American side emphasised the Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement. Thus, the US Secretary of State "thanked President Aliyev for his readiness to conclude a lasting and representative peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia" - an agreement that "will be beneficial to everyone in the region".  And in his conversation with Pashinyan, Blinken "discussed US support for peace efforts."

However, it is clear that the expression of "benefits" and "efforts" is not enough for the resumption of Western, particularly American mediation. If the US wants to prove that it deserves the mandate of a mediator between Azerbaijan and Armenia, it must put an end to its disdain for Baku's legitimate interests, the practice of promoting Armenian narratives, and any anti-Azerbaijani steps. After all, it is Armenia's policy that is the main obstacle to achieving lasting regional peace.

It is not by chance that President Ilham Aliyev in his conversation with the US Secretary of State drew attention to the fact that Yerevan responded to the proposals on the text of the peace treaty submitted by Azerbaijan on September 11, 2023 only on November 21. Thus, it took Armenia 70 days to respond. This suggests that Yerevan is using the development of the text of the peace treaty as a pretext for delaying the negotiation process.

Also, whether the US wants it or not, it will have to accept Azerbaijan's position on another fundamentally important issue. The peace treaty between Azerbaijan and Armenia must not become a subject of geopolitical disputes between the major power centres of global and regional politics. Therefore, Azerbaijan will not allow the future peace treaty to become a hostage to the ambitions of both Armenia and any external interests.