The Azerbaijan Dilemma, or loose interpretation

An article by Thomas de Waal headlined “The Azerbaijan Dilemma” caused interest among Russian experts because it is a full archive of stereotypes on the current state in the South Caucasus and its neighbors, which still dominate in the Western media environment. It is difficult to contradict the facts presented in the article, but their interpretation is very ambiguous and puts in doubt the objectiveness of Waal.

For example, his notions on the membership of Azerbaijan in the Security Council of the UN. The author cites “a Western diplomat”: “You can get lost in the General Assembly of the UN, but there is no place to hide in the Security Council.” What can be argued here? Concerning the situation in Syria, Baku is much influenced by certain duties to its partners in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

In the same way the author loosely interprets relations between Baku and Ankara. The Israeli factor influences these relations of course, but many experts believe that it is only a top of the iceberg. The deepest factors, defining relations between Ankara, Baku and Tel-Aviv, are not for the public, the Israeli mass media doesn’t report about them.

It is notable that Thomas de Waal mentions once relations with Washington in the context of the story with the might-have-been ambassador in Baku Matthew Bryza. But he doesn’t write that in relations with Georgia, within the Iranian problem, and even in a dialogue between Azerbaijan and Russia influence of Washington, as a non-regional factor, is huge. When de Waal says that Azerbaijan and Iran can do much harm to each other and they shouldn’t take any confrontational steps, I want to ask him: “Who is forming the situation? Who pushes the regional players to confrontation?”

According to logics of many European and American experts, there are no countries in the region that are able to provide reasonable policy. It seems it means that the countries should listen to their foreign friends attentively and happiness would immediately come to Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Despite the fact the Western analysts always remind Russian colleagues that the South Caucasus countries are subjects rather than objects of the international politics, but they ignore the fact themselves, if they need to solve certain problems.

Alexei Vlasov. Exclusively to VK