Visit of the US Secretary of State to the South Caucasus

– The United States are interested in each of the countries in the region both as a separate entity, and as a unit within the regional context. I will provide a brief overview of these interests. In terms of the regional context the USA is primarily interested in the three South Caucasus for the sake of regional stability. With Armenia and Azerbaijan one of the interest points is the Karabakh conflict. The USA is taking part in the activities of the Minsk Group, aiming at the resolution of the conflict. The USA has also been the guarantor of the normalization process of the relations between Armenia and Turkey, which, however, was not a success. However, the efforts made by the United States indicate that this process is another matter of interest. Another aspect for interest is the Armenian lobby in the USA.

Besides the already mentioned Karabakh conflict, Azerbaijan is of interest to the United States also as a transit zone to Afghanistan. The fact that both Armenia and Azerbaijan have common borders with Iran is also being taken into consideration. Meanwhile, the USA is leading quite a cautious policy towards Iran that is related to the non-proliferation of nuclear arms. In the case with Azerbaijan the interest range also includes the availability of energy resources in this country.

Georgia and Azerbaijan have a common border with North Caucasus where the American agenda sees problems of international terrorism. The United States are interested in Georgia for they pay quite a lot of attention to this entity to eliminate corruption, ensure the democratization of the system and the preparation of leaders in the country, with an objective to be able to have influence on them in the future.

– Usually it was the assistant to Deputy Secretary of State that would visit our country, and the fact that this time it was Hillary Clinton herself speaks for and about the tendency towards the development of the relations between Armenia and America. Certainly, the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the US Embassy in Armenia was of quite symbolic significance and was not immediately related to the visit. However, it is possible that this very occasion also played a role since during the last 20 years the frames of the Armenian and American cooperation extended to encompass political consultancy, projects targeted at the reinforcement of democracy and so on.

The Ambassador of the USA also touched upon economic cooperation between Armenia and the USA. The activities targeted at the perfection of the tax and customs codes will in the future create good conditions for American investors. In our countries we have joint Armenian and Russian, Russian and European assets, however, American assets constitute a very small share in the Armenian economy. At the same time the American entrepreneurial core and the Armenian Diaspora in the USA may play quite a significant and promising role by making investments in the economy of Armenia.

As for the resolution of the Karabakh issue and the relations between Armenia and Turkey, the visions of Armenia and the USA are roughly convergent. Hillary Clinton made it clear that the US will support a resolution that has been made exclusively in the course of the negotiation process on the Karabakh issue. As for the Armenian and Turkish relations, the ball, in Mrs. Clinton’s terms, is now in the Turkish half of the pitch.

I cannot give a concrete answer to the question on why the visit took place at this particular moment in time and why with such a mission. It might have been envisaged a year ago, it might have been conditioned by the discussion of the terroristic act that took place in Turkey and from the geographic perspective it was simply reasonable to visit our region after the visit to Turkey.

– I hope that when Armenia is establishing relations with any country, it is always aware of the map. The hostilities against Iran will become a catastrophe for Armenia. About one third of our freighting is organized via Iran. And this means that we have to face a closed road: we experienced similar consequences during the war in August in 2008. The economic and financial losses Armenia incurred in five days amounted to tens of millions USD.

I hope that when the USA and any other country speak of sanctions are clearly aware of the consequences Armenia may have to face.

The relations between Iran and Azerbaijan have not always been smooth; however, I find it hard to imagine that Azerbaijan will agree to become a military springboard for US’s attacks on Iran.

Georgia does not have any common borders with Iran; however, the relations between the two countries are developing. For example, these countries have an agreement on the facilitation of the visa regime.

– If we look through all the publications in mass media outlets on the violations of the ceasefire regime by Azerbaijan throughout a year, we will see that this number of violations is not any different from what we had in the course of the past weeks. We see that Azerbaijan is still following its line of provocations.

I do not think that Clinton’s visit would be of any significance and that positive shifts are possible in the resolution of the Karabakh conflict, even though recently there were teases of possibly new proposals to be put forth at the upcoming meeting between the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Armenia and Azerbaijan on June 18. It is hard to say what content these proposals have, even though the information flow on the matter is quite intense.

– The interest of the US in the countries in South Caucasus consisted in the establishment of democracy which presumes a behavior and development in compliance with the principles and values of the Western world. Democracy is a universal means which ensures the harmony of the converging interests of the superpower, regional actors and individual countries. Living by civilized rules ensures stability, predictability, and the satisfaction of the interests of all the layers of the society. Such a system safeguards the interests of both transnational companies, and economic actors at regional and local levels. Such a system will not overburden the USA, as a superpower, with expenses to ensure the security of the military in the long term. Otherwise, the USA will not be able to tolerate the burden of the responsibility in terms of the preservation of the balance and stability in the region, which they have assumed and have been bearing ever since the collapse of the USSR. On the whole this has to do not only with South Caucasus, for the region is only part of the global project.

–  The main objective of Clinton’s visit to the region was the continuation of the dialogue on democracy that commenced at her first visit two years ago. The parties have synchronized their watches and discussed their further steps towards the development of democracy in the region. In fact, Clinton offered these developing countries to join the American and Brazilian initiative on the creation of open governments in the countries of the developing world. This initiative presumes the assumption of concrete obligations for building democratic and open societies, a sharp decline in the level of corruption and growth of transparency. Taking into consideration the fact that Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia will be offered the same projects, visions and prospects, this will mean that these countries will not be led by their own offences and ambitions, but rather by rules and laws which are prescribed by the American initiatives.  The region and particularly the two hostile countries will be moving from confrontation towards cooperation which will earn long term dividends for the peoples who have got tired of a long lasting conflict.

–  The Iranian issue was there, but it was not the key one. The USA does not want any South Caucasian country to run ahead or lag behind the consolidated Western strategy with regard to changing the clerical regime in Iran with a democratic one. On the one hand, the countries could be asked to support the policy the USA is currently leading towards Iran and will be leading in the future. On the other hand, surely, Washington could outline the ways of ensuring the security of the South Caucasus countries in case there are any military or other actions on the part of Iran.

– No matter how strange that is, on the eve of or even during any important visit or high profile negotiations, considerable military skirmishes take place between the military forces of Armenia and Azerbaijan, just as it happened a few months ago during the meeting of the Presidents of Russia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. This is how parties want to make clear that they are not prepared for peace negotiations today. The USA and other stakeholders understand that signal and only undertake steps to restrain the parties not to allow for the violation of the balance set. The USA is not currently prepared to move on to the stage of the resolution of Karabakh conflict, because other priority issues are there on agenda, for example the Syrian and Iranian issues. Washington perceives local military losses of the parties only as a sign of their unpreparedness and no more than that.