"Azerbaijan's Precarious Balancing Act" Drafted by Dr. Michael A. Weinstein on September 22, 2004 http://www.pinr.com
The geostrategic nerve center of the Caucasus is Azerbaijan with oil reserves possibly totaling one-hundred billion barrels. The country is coveted as an ally or at least a benevolent neutral by regional and world powers: Iran, Russia, the Franco-German combination and the United States. Each of those powers has its own interests, which creates a complex pattern of convergence and divergence among them.
As the object of active interest by powers that are politically and economically stronger than itself, Azerbaijan is threatened with dependency if it falls into the hands of any one of them, but it also has an opportunity for autonomy if it can successfully play them off against one another and maintain a balance of power. With autonomy as its goal, the government of President Ilham Aliyev has pursued a "balanced" foreign policy, opening up diplomatic channels with all of the interested states and giving each of them the hope of satisfying some of its own aims, while Baku maneuvers to achieve its vital interests.
As the Aliyev regime perceives them, the vital interests of Azerbaijan are to settle jurisdictional issues over rights to Caspian Sea oil, ensure security of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline that will move the oil west, secure investment from varied sources on the best terms to develop its oil industry and the rest of its economy, avoid economic or military dependence on any foreign power as it pursues development, and resolve the issue of the breakaway region of Nagorno Karabakh by regaining sovereignty over it. From Baku's viewpoint, Azerbaijan's future is that of a rising power that will be able to maintain genuine independence in the long term if it can manage the transition to prosperity by skillfully performing its balancing act.
- The Balanced Strategy
Baku has been able to pursue its balanced strategy because none of the powers impinging on it poses a direct military threat to the regime. The Franco-German combine by necessity is restricted to economic and diplomatic influence, and neither Iran, Russia nor the United States is currently interested in making any provocations that would lead the others into a confrontation with it and risk instability in the oil patch. Each of the impinging powers would like to draw Azerbaijan into its orbit, but their room for action is limited by the others, leaving Baku with a measure of freedom to make deals with all of them and also to refuse their proposals.
>From the viewpoint of its vital interests, Baku counts on Washington for help in
settling Caspian Sea jurisdiction, since Iran and Russia border Azerbaijan on
the Sea and are competing interested parties. Baku also expects Washington to
make sure that the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline is secure. In the sphere of economic
development, Baku wants investment from all of the interested parties,
particularly the Franco-German combination. It also wants help from any of them
on the Karabakh problem.
In return for its protection and in pursuit of its perceived vital interests, Washington would like to establish a military presence in Azerbaijan as part of its policy of securing oil supplies by encircling and containing Russia and Iran. In response, Russia and Iran want Azerbaijan to remain free of American bases. This configuration of economic and strategic interests allows for a balance of power in which Baku undertakes limited military cooperation with Washington and Moscow, and maintains friendly relations with Iran, satisfying each of them a little and antagonizing none of them. The wild card is Karabakh, which destabilizes the balancing act.
- Nagorno-Karabakh
After achieving independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Azerbaijan was faced with a rebellion in the Armenian-dominated region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which occupies a significant portion of the country's southwest. Several years of war, ethnic cleansing, pogroms and massacres led to the de facto independence of the breakaway region under the protection of Armenia. In implementing its protective role, Armenia also occupied areas of Azerbaijan bordering Karabakh, carving out a corridor from the region to Armenia. The troubles created bitter hostility between the dominant ethnic group in Azerbaijan -- the Azeris -- and the Armenians, resulting in the unwillingness of either group to compromise.
Ever since the secession of Karabakh, Baku has been preoccupied with regaining sovereignty over the region. Karabakh is an open wound for the Azeri public and any regime in Baku has to reckon with deeply irredentist and often revanchist public opinion that severely restricts the ability to negotiate a solution. To surrender Azerbaijanian sovereignty over Karabakh definitively would amount to a political death sentence. As a result of intensely nationalistic public opinion and the regime's geostrategic interest in Azerbaijan's territorial integrity, the Karabakh problem shadows and warps every move that Baku makes in its relations with impinging powers. Trade deals, military cooperation and attempts to attract investment always have the added motive of securing aid in wresting Karabakh from Armenian protection. Were it not for Karabakh, Baku would be in a much stronger position to pursue its balancing strategy successfully, because it would not be constrained to seek help fro! m the impinging powers. snip~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.pinr.com
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