Orkhan Sattarov, the head of the European Bureau of Vestnik Kavkaza
The 23rd session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly which is being held in Baku revealed a crisis of the international security system, which the international community has faced. The selective approach to settling similar conflicts has reached its peak after the events in Ukraine. More and more countries are concentrating their attention on eliminating double standards.
By creating the Kosovo precedent, opposing the principles of territorial integrity and the self-determination of peoples, the Western countries headed by the USA started the pernicious practice of selective and dependent interpretation of international law in favor of their own geopolitical interests. As a result, a product made in the West, which is self-determination, is now used against the interests of its producers. Tendencies of legal negativism and political engagement in interpreting international law lead to disorientation of countries in the legal field.
US senator Benjamin Cardin presented the US resolution project to the OSCE PA in Baku. It condemns Russian activity in Ukraine. It is interesting that the document, which is titled “Another rude and incorrect violation of Helsinki principles by Russia” and protects the territorial integrity of Ukraine, was opposed by two delegations: Russia and Azerbaijan. The Americans, who bombed Serbia and separated Kosovo from it, now worry about the integrity of Ukraine. Moreover, the USA allocates huge resources for support of separatist Nagorno-Karabakh, but Washington doesn’t think about support of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Even though Azerbaijan suffers from the conflict, it stood against the American resolution on territorial integrity of Ukraine (we’ll explain later why). Russia is a federal state and it traditionally stands against self-determination of peoples if it damages territorial integrity (Russia was against the independence of Kosovo), but for well-known reasons it has a special point of view on Crimea, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia.
The fact that official Baku stands against the American resolution is an unexpected step, but it is explainable.
It seems that the reason for Azerbaijan’s behavior is obvious. The head of the Azerbaijani delegation in the OSCE PA, Bakhar Muradova, stated that the situation in Ukraine concerns Azerbaijan, which recognizes its territorial integrity. However, the Azerbaijani delegation stands against the selective approach by the OSCE toward conflicts in the region. “I think it is necessary to unite efforts and develop a serious resolution which would concern all conflicts in the region,” Muradova said. She thinks that the resolution shouldn’t concentrate on Ukraine, but should touch on other conflicts in the post-Soviet space. Muradova suggested elimination of the resolution project by Cardin from the agenda.
Arguments of the Azerbaijani side correlate to the recent speech by President Ilham Aliyev in PACE, in which he pointed out that Azerbaijan would never accept the double standards of the West toward various conflicts in the world. Azerbaijan’s position is that “we will support only universal resolutions which will meet our national interests, rather than those which the West needs to satisfy its latest interests.”
As for the Azerbaijani delegation in the OSCE PA, we believe that, despite the importance of Azerbaijani arguments, it is much more important that Baku didn’t take a safe foreign political position – tread a fine line. It openly stood against the Americans and de facto took the side of Russia.
Senator Benjamin Cardin is a person who displeases both Moscow or Baku. The American senator is the author of the well-known Magnitsky Law. At the same time, ahead of the OSCE PA he organized a round table in Washington, which turned into public criticism of the Azerbaijani government by its severest critics. Of course Azerbaijan couldn’t ignore this.
However, Baku’s position on Cardin’s resolution is connected not only to Azerbaijan’s protest against double standards or its author. It means serious shifts in the region of the South Caucasus, where the line of influence of the West and Russia passes through Azerbaijan. Georgia, which signed the association agreement with the EU on June 27th, made its European choice and dispelled all illusions about the pro-Russian character of Georgian Dream. The problem of Abkhazia and South Ossetia appeared to be an irresistible obstacle in Georgian-Russian relations. The West used the former Georgian president Saakashvili to provoke the military events in South Ossetia in August 2008. The aim was reached. Two Georgian regions were separated, as well as the Kremlin’s influence on Georgian foreign policy.
Isolated Armenia is very dependent on Russian security guarantees. And Yerevan’s flirtation with Brussels was stopped by Moscow’s clear hints – a big military deal with Baku and changed rhetoric on the Karabakh settlement. President Serge Sargsyan made an unplanned visit to Russia and soon announced Armenia’s intention to join the Customs Union. Washington tried to save Armenia from Russian influence and initiated normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations outside the context of the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement. However, American peacemaking efforts faced serious resistance by Azerbaijan, which achieved association of Turkish-Armenian relations with the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement. Thus, the process of Armenian-Turkish peacemaking came to a standstill and Hilary Clinton didn’t fulfil her dream of taking Armenia away from Russia’s influence.
Unlike Georgia and Armenia, Azerbaijan maintains its non-aligned status. Integration with the EU within the framework of the Eastern Partnership appeared to be economically unattractive to Baku. At the same time, the political agenda of Europe didn’t satisfy Azerbaijan either, as it avoids touching on the problem of occupation of Azerbaijani territories. At the moment the mass media discuss the possible Eurasian prospects of Azerbaijan. There are no doubts that Russia could play a key role in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Baku paid close attention to Sergei Glazyev’s statement on the importance of a completed settlement of the conflict for the full-scale participation of Azerbaijan in the Eurasian Union. Recent visits to Baku by the Foreign Minister of Russia, Sergei Lavrov, vice-premier Dmitry Rogozin, and the State Duma speaker, Sergei Naryshkin, mean intensification of political contacts between the two countries at the top level. Will Moscow initiate new effective steps on the Karabakh settlement? The question is of high importance for Azerbaijan, and the answer could be a reason for participation in this or that integration project.
