QWhat is so difficult for the international community to pronounce Azerbaijani responsibility in the war relaunched since September 13? The evidence is there, however. On the ground, Baku’s troops advanced into Armenia, north and south, without withdrawing after the ceasefire. The war in Ukraine increases the power of gas producers and makes Russian interposition troops a burden on Moscow.
Azerbaijani President Aliyev even confessed, declaring that his objectives had been achieved (including putting pressure on the Karabagkh negotiations), like his Turkish ally, who blamed the ” Provocation “ Armenians.
And yet, with three exceptions (France, India as well as the United States through the voice of Blinken and Pelosi’s visit to Armenia), the official comments, including European ones, stick to respecting a strict symmetry.
The three reasons for the situation
Three reasons can explain these lies by omission. Economic dependence, of course, gas, for which Ursula von der Leyen took beautiful photos with the dictator of Baku in July 2022, to celebrate a 30% increase in European imports.
A legal confusion then, in more or less good faith, between the status of this aggression and that of the previous one, committed in 2020 to reconquer the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, whose independence was not recognized internationally. It is however very different today since it is Armenia which is attacked, in defiance of the Charter of the United Nations of which it is a member.
Finally, the increase in responsibilities since the condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: designating the aggressor today may imply implementing sanctions, or even providing the victim with weapons, which Westerners may be afraid ‘they end up in Russia, given the cooperation between the Armenian and Russian armies. But the indifference encouraged the hatred and warmongering of an Aliyev who periodically claims part of Armenia and the indecent remarks of the Turkish president, always anxious to threaten presumptuous Armenians with punishment.
Aliyev’s military opportunism
Complete international inaction after this second attack would have brought Baku closer to its ” objective “ : the disappearance of Nagorno-Karabakh as an Armenian entity or as a territory where the rights of Armenians to sustain a cultural tradition of two millennia would be recognized internationally. It was not quite so, fortunately.
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