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Russia Achieves Ceasefire In Nagorno-Karabakh
The war over Nagorno-Karabakh has ended for now. The Armenian Autonomous Oblast within Azerbaijan will continue to exist with Russian peacekeepers currently deploying to control its borders. Most of the Armenian occupied territories will be handed back to Azerbaijan. A Russian controlled land corridor will connect Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia.
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This is the outcome that Russia had long proposed during previous peace negotiations.
Armenia, under the western-installed Prime Minister Pashinyan, has barely managed to defend the ethnic enclave. Azerbaijan did not achieve its hoped for control over all of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijan, with its wealth of gas and oil money, had been able to arm itself with hundreds of drones from Turkey and Israel that allowed it to achieve air superiority. The Armenian defenders were not trained to sufficiently camouflage themselves from air threats. Their old air defenses were not capable enough to detect and defend against small drones. They therefore lost hundreds of tanks and artillery pieces to suicide drone attacks.
Azerbaijan, and the contingent of 'moderate rebels' mercenaries it had rented from Turkey, failed to invade the mountainous core of Nagorno-Karabakh. They lost several thousand men, many more than the defending Armenians, while trying to do that.
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Armenia had to agree to the ceasefire after Azerbaijan gained control of Shusha, a town on the 'Lachin corridor' supply road between Stapanakert in Nagorno-Karbakh and Armenia. Azerbaijan had to agree to the ceasefire after its forces yesterday shot down a Russian helicopter flying within Armenia. Any further move after that would have brought Russian forces into the war.
After the announcement of the ceasefire Armenians stormed government buildings in Yerevan. Prime Minister Pashinyan, who had neglected the military while trying to make nice with the 'west', is likely to get removed from his office.
With this outcome Russia has strengthened its position in the Caucasus while Turkey's attempt to insert itself into the region had only limited success.
Poor Armenia! Surely they are the big losers in this. Armenia is very little, landlocked and surrounded by hostile or at best neutral powers, lacks resources, is densely populated for so arid and barren a land (although very beautiful in its way, with its mountains and lovely big lake), and most of all is saddled with a backward-looking set of national grievances that are so big that they have constantly led the Armenians into disastrous behavior, the last of which was their failure to take what they could get for NKAO before this war whittled it down and possibly rendered it unviable. Apart from the Armenian diaspora, which was completely unable to alter the outcome in this case, Armenia has for really sincere sympathizers only Greece and Cyprus, which likewise are hostile to Turkey for obvious historical reasons. Otherwise, it has to rely on the lukewarm support of Russia, its perpetual savior, and Iran, both of which have to consider their relations with the Turkic world as well, a world bigger than Armenia in population by about 50 times. Everyone else sides with Azerbaijan, which has the writ of the UN that it is sovereign over NKAO, so the Artsakh project is out of luck. Part of the reason for the US supporting the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan is so that they can needle Russia over Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea, and Eastern Ukraine. But also, the US is more interested in keeping all those Turks on its side, or at least neutral, than in the fate of isolated Armenia, which no one needs. In particular, it and Israel are interested in getting at Iran through Azerbaijan, possibly even disrupting the national unity of Iran by attracting the 25% of the Iranian population that is Azeri to separate. What can Armenia possibly offer the US? Unlike Georgia and Ukraine, it doesn’t even border Russia. From the strategic viewpoint, it is as worthless as Afghanistan to the US. Armenia is therefore lucky to have had Russia intervene to save a shred of NKAO for the time being. Whether the Armenians will really get to keep it remains to be seen. It had only 150,000 inhabitants, of whom 90,000 are said to have fled, and others may be doing so. It will take a big settlement effort of Armenians to keep that little shred, and, although they are stubborn, they may not be willing to risk living under any kind of Azeri rule, even nominal.
As to blame for the Karabakh mess, one could look to Stalin, who vetoed the idea of uniting Karabakh with Armenia under the Soviet Union, placing it rather under Azerbaijan as an autonomous region as early as 5 July 1920. Even then, it is probable that the Turkic preponderance played a role in his decision to leave Karabakh under Azerbaijan. Once this decision was made, it was never reversed. So, poor Armenia!
Another issue is the road, which has to be considered the big Turkish success. The suggestion made by a commenter above that the northwest corner of Nakhchevan be ceded to Armenia to give it a different border with Iran is not possible. As a result of the Turkish-Soviet settlements of 1920-1921, Turkey not only had retroceded to it Kars and Ardahan, an area as big as present-day Armenia, that had been part of Russia since 1877-1878, but also gained a strip of territory from Iran, eventually formally ceded by Reza Shah, to give it a very short common border with Nakhchevan. Turkey also thereby formally became the protector of Nakhchevan from Armenia, which has always coveted Nakhchevan but never tried to attack it, even during the warfare of 1991-1994. So that little border has a rather tortuous history and is definitely not up for grabs. Now, with transit rights across the narrow strip of southern Armenia, the Turkish road to Central Asia is opened up. Also, Armenia, with all its wounds and losses, would never give up an inch of its sovereign territory, and in allowing transit rights, although it hates even to do that, it is not losing any sovereignty and eventually might even make a little money through a trade corridor.
Armenians’ bitterness at the way they have been treated is understandable, and it is true that the Republic of Armenia certainly constitutes only a little bit of the wide area where Armenians historically lived, mixed among other populations. There is no doubt that in the age of nationalism, the Armenians ended of with the short end of the stick in their region. But they maybe should be thankful to their protectors that they have a republic at all, and they certainly can look ahead and build on what they have, not forgetting the past, but moving on into the future.
Posted by: James Davis | Nov 16 2020 5:11 utc | 98
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