Interview with Thomas Ambrosio, an associate professor of political science at North Dakota State University.
Q: Baku says that fatal incident that took place during the night of 18 to 19 June at the Line of Contact in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone shows that the conflict is not frozen. Do you expect a new war in the region?
A: No, I do not. While it could be argued that the parties to the conflict have fundamentally (and, in my opinion, irreconcilable) differences over the causes of the conflict, the legitimacy of the current situation, and visions for the future, they do not appear to have an interest in a renewed conflict. Armenia already has what it wants with a de facto Greater Armenia -- it therefore has no reason to ignite an open conflict which could negatively affect the status quo. For its part, initiating a conflict with Armenia would likely provoke American condemnation, leaving Baku isolated, and, quite possibly, Russian intervention given that Moscow is allied with Armenia and has made it rather clear that it does not wish to see the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolved through force. Granted, Russia's role in Nagorno-Karabakh is far less than in Abkhazia and South Ossetia (the latter two have Moscow directly inserted into the secessionist movements), but the lessons of the 2008 Russia-Georgia War should not be lost on Baku.
Q: International community still doesn’t pay much attention to the Karabakh conflict. What else should happen to make the world be more interested in stability in our region?
A: Quite frankly, unless open war breaks out between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh will continue to be low on the international community's priority list. There are other actual or potential conflicts in close proximity (e.g., nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan and the nuclear dispute with Iran) that have a much higher priority since they involve critical decisions that need to be made in the near-to-medium term. While the June flare-up brought some attention, the conflict remains largely frozen, which a relatively stable (if sometimes rough) status quo established and holding from the mid-1990s. No real decisions need to be made regarding Nagorno-Karabakh - things can remain 'as is' as far as many international observers are concerned.
Q: An American intelligence officer said in his recent interview in Foreign Policy magazine that “We frankly don't care about human rights or democracy-building, or Israel and Turkey, or peace in Karabakh or Georgia, or even Azerbaijani energy". Do you think that this position really reflects American policy in our region?
A: The statement you quote is too harsh and greatly exaggerated, but there is a kernel of truth to it. They would never say anything remotely like this publicly; instead, they would list this same series of issues and countries and proclaim that they are all 'priorities'. But, as we know, if everything is a priority, the word loses its meaning. There are priorities with a lower-case 'p' and those with an upper-case 'P' -- every administration, every country, and every observer will have a different ranking. Sometimes, realities on the ground or the events of the moment determine which priorities are more significant.
This statement which you quote goes on to imply that Afghanistan is the all-encompassing priority for America. This is not entirely true either, but, again, there is a kernel of truth to it. The reality is that the conflict in Afghanistan is becoming a sink-hole for the Obama administration which, in my opinion, was never all that interested in the conflict to begin with. They used it cynically during the 2008 presidential campaign to somehow draw a distinction between a 'good war' (Afghanistan) and a 'bad war' (Iraq) in order to show that Obama was tough on terror and to criticize President Bush. However, after becoming president, Obama has found himself boxed in by his own rhetoric and has been increasingly drawn into what many are calling an unwinnable conflict. While people said that about Iraq (and that was turned around), there are important and critical differences between the two conflicts, the most important of which is the role of Pakistan as an incubator and safe-haven for the Taliban, which makes the situation far more complex and difficult to resolve.
As a result, the conflict in Afghanistan is beginning to overwhelm other foreign policy issues. This is for two reasons. First, it is an open conflict in which life-and-death decisions need to be made on a daily basis which affect the long-term interests of the United States. It should therefore not be surprising that other issues decline to secondary or tertiary importance. Second, and possibly more importantly, the members of the administration are only human. Even if they would like to deal with all of these issues, they simply can not. There is not enough time, energy, and diplomatic capital to go around. Therefore, an increasingly myopic focus on one issue to the detriment of others is not surprising.
Q: Head of Pentagon Mr. Gates and Secretary of State Ms. Clinton have recently paid visits to Baku. Is it a message of increasing US interest to Azerbaijan and the region?
A: This appears to be more of a correction for the downgrading of Obama's foreign policy toward Azerbaijan in the first year or so after taking office, rather than a sign of a true increase in Azerbaijan's importance to the U.S. American support for Azerbaijan was seen by key people in the Obama White House as being tied to and a legacy of the Bush administration. In the first part of his presidency, Obama wanted to be seen as the un-Bush - almost blindly reversing Bush-era policies in order to show how different he was from this predecessor. However, they are now realizing that such a policy is counterproductive and that some Bush-era policies reflected actual US interests, not just the idiosyncrasies of the prior administration.
Q: Might the US try to help reach some progress in the Karabakh settlement to assure Baku that Azerbaijani-American relations are good?
A: I do not see this as a real possibility. The differences between the two sides are too great and based upon diametrically opposed positions to see any real, substantive, long-term progress. One needs only to look at the failure of the Turkey-Armenia agreement to see this. Although it was one of the tauted 'successes' of the Obama administration's foreign policy, they misjudged the willingness of Ankara to normalize relations with Yerevan absent progress on the Yerevan-Baku front. They believed that the agreement would help produce a settlement on Nagorno-Karabakh. However, top Turkish officials said repeatedly, in no uncertain terms, that normalization was dependent on Yerevan making concessions to Baku. As we have seen, they were not bluffing and ratification of the agreement is now off the table -- all we have are two signatures on a piece of paper. The U.S. administration got the causal order wrong. Coming back to Nagorno-Karabakh, the causation may be wrong as well: U.S. relations with Azerbaijan need to be good first in order to be seen as an honest broker in order to achieve progress on Karabakh, not the other way around.
Leyla Tagiyeva
News.Az
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
