WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Earlier on Tuesday, a ceasefire came into effect between the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and Azerbaijan, following five days of clashes that led to fatal casualties on both sides. Several US lawmakers on Monday called for terminating all aid to Baku for its aggression in the conflict.
"It needs to be understood why you see a push in Washington at all to cut off aid to Azerbaijan," geopolitical analyst and StopImperialism.org editor Eric Draitser told Sputnik on Tuesday. "Its ability to actually deliver massive amounts of energy is really now very much in doubt [and] Azerbaijan’s relative significance in the Western agenda has been reduced."
Western countries, Draitser continued, began to buy into the idea that, via trans-Caspian pipeline projects and similar initiatives, Azerbaijan was going to transform the region and reduce energy dependence on Russia.
"In recent years, it has come out in the open that Azerbaijan has oversold its capacities and the proven reserves are far less," he noted.
As a result, Washington has distanced itself from Baku while driving Azerbaijan closer to Russia, thereby providing Moscow with leverage in settling the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis, Draitser pointed out.
"Russia’s leverage with Azerbaijan is not so much about the economics, it is about the potential that Russia could be a balancing force against the West for Azerbaijan," Draitser observed.
Russia also has influence with Armenia, he maintained, which is very close to Russia historically through the Orthodox Church and various other longstanding ties.
"Russia is best positioned to mediate and contain this conflict, because it is the only great power with real leverage with both Armenia and Azerbaijan," Vlahos stated.
He suggested that the US assistance to Azerbaijan is a relic of the global war on terrorism, when the United States needed "partners" to puff up its "coalition of the willing."
It would be a crime against popular sovereignty and ethnic self-determination, Vlahos claimed, for the United States to continue to oppose a reunification of Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia.
Vlahos noted, however, that the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh is an artifact of early Soviet political gamesmanship in the Caucasus, from cartographic irresponsibility resembling Sykes-Picot.
The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh began in 1988, when the Armenian-dominated autonomous region sought to secede from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, before the latter itself proclaimed independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
