A matter of survival: Neither the Armenian government nor Western diplomats can prevent further Azerbaijani aggression, says Michael Rubin
Azerbaijan’s hostility toward Armenia was never the result of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute; that was just the excuse Baku offered to generations of Western diplomats. Rather, the root of Azerbaijan’s rejection was rooted both in ideology and the need for successive Azerbaijani presidents to distract their populace from their failings and corruption, Michael Rubin, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Examiner.
Rubin noted that in 2020, Azerbaijan launched a surprise attack on the Armenian-governed region of Nagorno-Karabakh and, in 2023, after a devastating blockade and completed its conquest, ethnically cleansing 120,000 Armenian residents and then dynamiting the regional parliament lest the real democracy it represented spread into Azerbaijan. When Yuri Kim, the acting assistant secretary of State, told the U.S. Senate, “We will not tolerate any attack on the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.” she lied.
The author says behind-the-scenes, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan saw opportunity. With Azerbaijani unilateralism returning Nagorno-Karabakh to Baku’s control, Blinken and Sullivan believed there was no longer any real impediment to peace in the South Caucasus. President Joe Biden considered himself a foreign policy expert and his team entered office promising both “diplomacy is back” and the “adults are back in charge,” his initial foreign policy legacy was a disaster.
For the Biden team, winning peace in the South Caucasus could be a triumph to rescue legacy and reverse their record. Behind-the-scenes, Biden’s team put the hard press on Armenia, the weaker state, to make further concessions. “Perhaps they believed the price would be worth it if peace ended the conflict or perhaps they did not care so long as they could claim victory. They were either naive or cynical. Either way, they misunderstood the root of the conflict,” the expert wrote.
He added that Aliyev has a choice: peace or war footing. His backtracking on the deals Blinken and Sullivan made, his endless demands for new concessions, his continued military aggression against Armenia proper, and now his claims to all Armenia as “Western Azerbaijan” reflect a man who both sees Armenians as illegitimate and a leader that lives in terror of his own people.
Simply put, Aliyev may make additional demands and the Armenian government may even accede to some, but neither the Armenian government nor Western diplomats can avert further Azerbaijani aggression. For Aliyev, it is a matter of his own survival. If he can win short-term concessions through diplomacy, these are not Armenian sacrifices on the road to peace but rather triumphs he can pocket to make his end goal simpler.
“War is likely. None of this means that peace is impossible, but there are no shortcuts. For peace to triumph, it must be peace made between two democracies, not one democracy and one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships. There must first be a government in Azerbaijan that represents its people rather than exploits them. To ignore this reality is not to advance peace but to at best cost tens of thousands of lives and lose forever centuries-old cultural heritage, and at worst make peace unattainable. Rather than encourage endless talks, the best way for the United States and Europe to advance peace in the Caucasus will be to shed moral equivalence, sanction Aliyev, and prioritize democracy on the Caspian rather than coddle dictatorship,” the website concludes.
