by TOL
14 February 2006
There had been noises about an earthquake in diplomacy about Nagorno-Karabakh. They proved to be just noises.
Going into the latest round of peace talks about Nagorno-Karabakh the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan Karabakh were closer than ever to a breakthrough, diplomats hinted and analysts wrote. But the negotiations in the French chateau of Rambouillet ended with no result. Apparently, too, Armenia’s Robert Kocharian and Azerbaijan’s Heidar Aliev emerged from talks in Key West in Florida in 2001 “80 percent to 90 percent” of the way to an agreement – only for a deal to be scotched by advisors. Again, it seems, the last few inches have proved the hardest to concede.
It might, though, be a stretch to talk of ‘last few inches.’ Some of the offers on the table were significant. There would certainly have been a tectonic shift in efforts to bring peace to this mountainous area. However, the breakthrough would have led not to a solution, but to a new phase. Karabakh would have been given “interim status” with its “final status” being decided at some indeterminate stage – 10, 15, perhaps 20 or more years – in the future. Since the dispute began in 1988 and firing ceased in 1994, this is movement in geological time. By contrast, the UN-administered region of Kosovo will start talks about its final status on 20 February, six and a half years after NATO ended the killing there.
Despite the expectations, the force of 12 years’ inertia suggests few will genuinely be surprised that the sides could not agree on terms.
So the key question raised by the Rambouillet talks is not why they failed but what constellation of circumstances made people believe there might be a chance of success this year. Why should anyone have felt that now was the time to change the familiar formulation of Karabakh’s current position – “no peace, no war” – to “a distant hope of peace, and a receding fear of war”?
THE SHIFTING PLATES…
The pessimistic interpretation is that the two sides were never closer to peace because they were never closer to renewed war. Worryingly, 2005 produced an abnormally high number of cross-border clashes. At the same time, there has been re-arming, with Azerbaijan’s new president, Ilham Aliev, first promising to increase military spending from $175 million in 2004 to $300 million in 2005. Armenia promised to match that. Aliev then vowed to spend $600 million in 2006, a figure that Armenia did not attempt to match even rhetorically. With a stronger military financed by a huge inflow of cash from oil and gas (the oil giant BP predicts Azerbaijan’s oil output will soar by 61 percent this year, at a time when oil prices remain at record levels), Azerbaijan would be more capable than ever before of winning a war. Fearful of an attack, Armenia might make a preemptive strike. Better, then, for the Armenians to agree – as the draft deal indicated – to a “land-for-security” agreement, under which Karabakh would receive security guarantees in return for returning some of the buffer zone of undisputed Azeri territory that ethnic Armenian forces seized during the war.
That might be too pessimistic. The ability of the Azeris and Armenians to maintain peace without peacekeepers and despite numerous low-grade incidents that have resulted in about 200 dead and wounded over the past 12 years suggests the situation is relatively stable – unless, that is, there were some substantial change. Azerbaijan’s military build-up could certainly be seen as just such a major and disturbing change. But Heidar Aliev had run down the army, fearful, it seems, of a coup against him or aimed at preventing him from handing power over to his son. Even if (somewhat improbably) Ilham Aliev has cast aside his father’s caution about the army, he has much to do if he wants to build the army up into a potent force.
More comfortingly, Azerbaijan may have too much to lose to launch a war. Only now is it truly beginning to enjoy the real benefits of all the investment into its energy fields and pipelines. It would be rash to lose that. And as the years roll by and as Turkey, presumably, rolls slowly towards the EU, a belligerent Azerbaijan would become more and more isolated internationally.
That is not a compelling counter-argument: it assumes rational self-interest and assumes no incident would set ablaze the two sides’ well-kindled animosity. Nor does it provide an explanation for the optimism that preceded the Rambouillet talks. So, were there some optimistic reasons for believing a breakthrough might be possible?
One was that the two sides’ teams had already notched up notable achievements even to get a proposal with some very difficult ideas onto the two presidents’ negotiating tables. For the past 12 years, the two sides and mediators have switched to and fro between proposing comprehensive (‘package’) peace deals, with all issues being resolved at once, and step-by-step processes aimed at building confidence and unpicking the smaller threads of the knot. This time, there was a hybrid ‘packaged and phased’ proposal, with a package of agreements – a “land for security” deal plus international peacekeepers plus the return of refugees plus a restoration of trading links – to be enacted before the final, probably much later step of deciding Karabakh’s final status. That final decision, rumors suggested, would be made just by Azeri and Armenian Karabakhis themselves – in a referendum – and not by the Armenian and Azeri governments or by national referenda.
This willingness of the Azeri authorities to consider such a deal may reflect the stronger position of Ilham Aliev at home. He has successfully steered his way through two elections – presidential elections in October 2003 and parliamentary elections in November 2005 – and his crackdown following an alleged coup just weeks before last November’s vote reinforces the relatively young president’s position. Kocharian, the Armenian president since 1998, long ago buttressed his position.
In the background, there may also have been an awareness that a changing geopolitical landscape in the region could leave Armenia and Azerbaijan more exposed but also with less to fear. Armenians’ anxiety about Turkey and Azeris’ wariness about the Russians is deeply rooted. As Turkey nears the EU, it will come under increasing pressure to normalize relations with Armenia and distinguish its relationship with Armenia from Azerbaijan’s.
Russia too may become a lesser concern. The region’s security systems are already becoming internationalized, rather than determined largely by relations with Russia. And Russia position in a range of contested areas seems to be weakening. Contrary to Russia’s wishes, Kosovo looks likely to gain some form of independence from Serbia. In Transdniester, Russia’s moral position is becoming less and less tenable the longer its troops outstay agreements and the more Ukraine and Moldova look towards the EU. Even in a region previously thought of as little more than an obedient Russian protectorate, Abkhazia, Russia’s position has been weakened by its decision to support the wrong candidate in elections in late 2004. And, in South Ossetia, the second breakaway Georgian republic, the frequency of spats with Georgia ensures Russia’s supposedly neutral position is regularly put into the spotlight. All of which helps explain why Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on 31 January showed an intellectually empty but rhetorically powerful card that Russia has not truly played before. “We need common principles to find a fair solution to these problems for the benefit of all people living in conflict-stricken territories,” Putin said, quickly spelling out exactly what that meant: “If people believe that Kosovo can be granted full independence, why then should we deny it to Abkhazia and South Ossetia?”
… AND THE UNCHANGED RESULT
Why the Rambouillet collapsed is unclear and, given the number of elements in the possible agreement, there are many options. Nor, based on past evidence, might the leaders want the public to know exactly why the talks failed. (Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadarov said on 12 February that there was agreement on seven out of nine points. Whether that is entirely accurate is another matter. One of the two issues that he said were sticking points – the return of refugees – usefully paints the Armenians in a particularly black color. The second issue – Azerbaijan’s unwillingness to compromise on “the issue of territorial sovereignty” – is carry-all phrase that, usefully, underlines Baku’s defense of supposedly inviolable principles. Tellingly, there was no reference to the potentially highly controversial referendum, though the pre-talk indications were that Azerbaijan would only accept the notion of a national referendum.)
Still, reviewing the rationales for believing beforehand that an agreement might have been reached suggests two possible reasons for the negotiations’ failure. One, the picture is not yet pessimistic enough for the Armenians to accept a “land for security” deal. Two, Baku believes that the economic and military balance is changing enough for Azerbaijan to get a better deal later.
But there is a third clear option: either one or both of the sides believed they would not be able to sell a deal to their nations and therefore feared weakening their grip on power.
Certainly, the media have done little to prepare ordinary Armenians and Azeris for a deal. The state-owned media continue to provide a diet of uncompromising commentary that would give little indication that their leaders have been willing to debate some very significant compromises (a land swap, a ‘common state,’ the return of land, protected corridors, to name just some). At the same time, the independent media largely reflect the unrelenting public consensus forged by the war and by the authorities’ public rhetoric, and show little interest in questioning it.
As a result, a nationalist perception of the issue – that there are inviolable principles and historical imperatives that allow no concession – outweighs the national perspective, which would accept compromise in the current interests of the nation. Overlying that problem is the reluctance of ‘victors’ – the Armenians – to give up what was won on the battlefield at the negotiating table, and unwillingness of the ‘losers’ – the Azeris – to view compromise as a means to a solution rather than as a further defeat.
Nor does self-interest look likely to sway the equation. Over the past 12 years, the stalemate has surely created enough economic and social misery for ordinary Azeris and Armenians (as well as the hundreds of thousands of refugees) for self-interest to increase support for concessions. Economics was one fundamental reason a former Armenian president, Levon Ter-Petrosian, was willing to agree to a peace deal in 1998. He was forced to resign.
So, on the issue of Karabakh, there seems to be a democratic impasse.
The referendum that may have been debated at Rambouillet would have bypassed that impasse: the referendum, it seems, would have left out the two nations and allowed only locals – the Azeri and Armenian Karabakhis – to vote. That bypass too now seems closed, at least for the time being.
MOVING MOUNTAINS
So, what now? Assuming Kocharian and Aliev want peace and want it sooner rather than later, the challenges that the Azeri and Armenian leaders face now are the same as they should have been before Rambouillet. The presidents’ ultimate test is to convince their publics to accept compromises. But, since the two presidents control much of the media and pressurize the remaining independent media, the first challenge is for them to let the media discuss more openly the compromises floated on the diplomatic circuit and to reduce some of the unhelpful, high-octane rhetoric that the state media emit.
But the two governments have not done so in all these years, so the chances of them doing so now are very limited. That is perhaps unsurprising. Kocharian and Aliev both behave as if they believe they must talk tough if they are to command the public’s trust. Both have democratic credentials that are thin. And both presumably fear that opening up an issue like Karabakh to proper debate would open up debate generally.
Mediators will now, no doubt, produce new variations on old options for the two leaders, once again, to reject. But diplomats should also aim to force new air into these countries’ airless political environments. Unfortunately, there is little chance of much fresh air anytime soon. Mountains don’t move fast. But something needs to change. Diplomats have shown they can come up with new ideas; what is needed are new opinions.
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