Armenia 2023 - in search of a new security configuration

1. Introduction

This piece was written on September 27, 2023, just as the Armenian population is leaving the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, fearing ethnic cleansing by Azerbaijan. As of September 27, more than fifty-thousand out of one hundred twenty thousand Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh left the territory of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR). All this is taking place in an environment of intense information provocations, and every next hour may bring news of even greater escalation, up to the crossing of the borders of Armenia by Azerbaijani troops.

At the same time, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev welcomes his Turkish counterpart and ally, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in Nakhchivan, an exclave of the Republic of Azerbaijan separated from Azerbaijan by the Armenian territory. Earlier, the Turkish leader openly supported Baku's aggression from the rostrum of the UN General Assembly, which resulted in Azerbaijan's full control of Nagorno-Karabakh. Aliyev stated that he was giving a start to the reintegration of Karabakh.

"People living in the Karabakh region, regardless of their ethnicity, are citizens of Azerbaijan. Their protection, security and rights will be guaranteed by the Azerbaijani state".¹

On the other side of the border, in Armenia, there is almost a 100 percent conviction that Azerbaijan, with Turkey's support, will not stop at the Armenian border and will use military force to open the Zangezur corridor, a forty-kilometer overland route that Azerbaijan and Turkey plan to pass through Armenian territory and connect Nakhichevan with the western regions of Azerbaijan.

 
 Already on April 20, 2021, Ilham Aliyev declared:

"The establishment of the Zangezur corridor fully meets our national, historical and future interests. We will bring the Zangezur corridor into life, whether Armenia wants it or not. If it wants, we will solve it in a simpler way, if it doesn't, we will solve it by force. Just as before and during the war, I said that they should leave our lands willingly or we will expel them by force. And so, it has happened. The fate of the Zangezur corridor will be the same”.²

According to Paragraph 9 of the trilateral ceasefire statement signed on November 9, 2020 by the heads of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia, "the Republic of Armenia guarantees the security of transport communication between the western regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic in order to organize the unimpeded movement of citizens, vehicles and cargo in both directions". According to the statement, control over the transport communication will be exercised by the bodies of the Border Service of the Federal Security Service of Russia.³

Nevertheless, Azerbaijan and Armenia have different interpretations of the organization of unimpeded movement of citizens. Armenia regards the Azerbaijani scenario of opening the corridor as a change of its state borders and a violation of the territorial integrity, emphasizing that the trilateral document mentions the term "corridor" exclusively in relation to Lachin, implying a special status and parameters for its safe functioning.

The above-mentioned - the use of military force to annex the territory of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic to Azerbaijan, and the threat to solve the Zangezur corridor issue by force - shows that the security configuration that Armenia has been building since 1994, relying on Russia as a guarantor of peace in the region, has finally failed.

2. Russian-Armenian brotherhood

Since the late eighties of the twentieth century and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the South Caucasus has been the most acute point of interethnic confrontation in the entire post-Soviet space. The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh has defined the agenda of the South Caucasus region for more than thirty years, turning from a confrontation between two countries into a full-fledged bloc confrontation involving Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, the United States, the EU, Iran, and, since the second Karabakh war in 2020, Pakistan and India more and more tangibly.

However, the decision of the Azerbaijani leadership in September 2023 to put an end to the Karabakh issue by force will not be the end point, but the beginning of such processes that will fundamentally change the entire geopolitical situation in the South Caucasus.

Until 2020, Armenia had no other formula than complete dependence on Russia for both allied assistance and the supply of arms and ammunition. Since 1995 to the present day, the 102nd Russian military base has been located in Gyumri and Yerevan. The agreement on the operation of the base was concluded for 25 years and was extended for another 49 years (until 2044) during the visit of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to Armenia in 2010. The base is equipped with S-300 air defense missile systems, MiG-29 fighters and helicopters. The number of personnel at the base is about 4 thousand people. The Armenian side, in accordance with the Armenian-Russian interstate agreement, also assumes half of the expenses of the Russian base. Although the official combat mission of the 102nd military base is to protect the southern borders (the interstate border with Turkey and Iran) in cooperation with the armed forces of the Republic of Armenia, the Russian military presence gave Armenia hope of ensuring its security in case of military aggression from its neighbor Azerbaijan.

Similar hopes were cherished by Armenia's membership in the CSTO - the Collective Security Treaty Organization, created in 1992 with the participation of both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan’s 1999 decision not to renew its membership in the CSTO just strengthened those illusion of closer cooperation between Yerevan and Moscow. Armenia’s lower expenditures in absolute terms are to a debatable extent were offset by discounted purchases of Russian weapons granted by its membership of the CSTO. At the same time Russia were the dominant supplier of weapons for both countries. It was the source of around 80 per cent

of Azerbaijanian’s arms purchased.⁴

According to the Worldwide Independent Network/Gallup International Association (WIN/GIA), Putin's support rating in Armenia was 89% in 2017, and according to the data of the "Caucasus Research Resource Center-Armenia" (CRRC-Armenia), which was summarized in the "Caucasus Barometer" survey, in 2013 83% of Armenians considered Russia as the main friendly country, then in 2015 it decreased to 75% and in 2017 to 63%. According to the results of the survey of March 15, 2020, even before the outbreak of the second Karabakh war, Russia was considered a friendly country by only 57% of the Armenian citizens, meanwhile in the capital, Yerevan, Russia was considered the main friendly country by less than half - 47% of respondents.⁵

Opinion polls commissioned by the International Republican Institute (IRI) in January-March 2023 show that while in 2019 93% of Armenians considered relations with Russia "good" and only 6% "bad," this year that ratio has changed to 50 and 49% respectively.⁶

3. Four-day war

As one of the steps towards destroying the balance that has been maintained in the region for twenty years, it is necessary to mention the military clashes on the Azerbaijan-Karabakh border in April 2016. The hostilities started on the night of April 2 and lasted for three and a half days. The official position of Armenia and NKR was that it was the Azerbaijani side that first opened artillery fire, after which it used tanks and helicopters.

According to Laurence Broers, a specialist on the Caucasus at the Chatham House British think tank, circumstantial evidence and logic suggested that the culprit behind the destabilization in Nagorno-Karabakh is indeed Azerbaijan. According to Broers, the date of the escalation (which coincided with the 23^rd anniversary of the fall of Kelbajar during the 1993 spring-summer campaign of the Karabakh war), the scale of the operation with clashes in three different directions, and Azerbaijan’s use of the full range of military equipment, missiles and aircraft, completely rejects the idea of an accidental escalation.⁷

After seven years, it is safe to say that the April 2016 war was not an accidental provocation, but a full-fledged stress test of the Armenian army’s combat readiness, which it did not pass. But in reality, it was also a stress test of the security system that has existed since 1995. Apparently, Azerbaijan drew conclusions that led four years later to an offensive with large-scale use of aircraft, armored vehicles, artillery and attack UAVs in the morning of September 27, 2020.

4. Velvet Revolution

Although Azerbaijan did not achieve significant territorial gains in 2016, the surprise attack, the high casualties, and the unpreparedness of the Armenian and NKR armies to effectively repel the offensive caused serious reactions in Armenia, with discussions about corruption in the army and the overall level of combat readiness.

In the period between the military clashes of 2016 and the beginning of the second Karabakh War in 2020, serious political upheavals occurred in Armenia itself: former President Serzh Sargsyan's attempt to use constitutional reform to stay in power led to mass protests, which brought Nikol Pashinyan to power with record ratings of popular support.

Today, Russia's official position is to blame him for Armenia's military defeat and the loss of NKR. However, the history of Pashinyan’s actual relationship with the Kremlin does not indicate this. Quite the contrary - many decisions indicate his fear of losing the support of the Kremlin in the face of the threat of a military clash with Azerbaijan and Turkey.

The new Armenian leader was eager to show that he was no less pro-Russian than the previous ones. His first foreign visit was to Sochi, and he made it a rule to come to Moscow several times a year.

It was under Pashinyan that the Armenian authorities publicly supported the Russian Armed Forces' operation in Syria (2018) and sent their sappers to demine the territories under the control of the Russian military.

At the UN, Armenian diplomats have consistently voted along Moscow's lines - unlike allies such as Belarus and Kazakhstan, who are less predictable on the international stage.⁸

In January 2021, Armenia, as part of its CSTO chairmanship, quickly initiated the dispatch of a combat unit, including 100 men from Armenia, to help quell protests in Kazakhstan. This move by Pashinyan, who himself came to power in 2018 by leading the protest movement, was seen as nothing more than an attempt to please Moscow.

5. Second Karabach war and then end of the (NK) Republic

In 2020, the second Karabakh war took place. This time Azerbaijan, with strong support from Turkey, won, and Armenia lost control over most of Nagorno-Karabakh, with the rest of the territory under complete blockade since December 12, 2022.

The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh entered a fiery phase on September 27, 2020, and for almost two weeks the Kremlin's response was wait-and-see. At that moment, many analysts were trying to understand the reasons for the Kremlin's inaction and bewilderment at how easily Russia was ceding its position in the region to its longtime rival Turkey. Obviously, the answer to that question must be sought sixteen months later - on February 24, 2022, when Russia attacked Ukraine. With hindsight, it is safe to argue that Russia in the face of possible consequences of the attack on Ukraine - sanctions, transport blockade, trade embargo, could not afford to have an enemy on its southern borders in the form of Azerbaijan and Turkey, which is also a NATO member,

Partner commitments to Armenia were buried under the casuistry surrounding the status of the NKR.

Azerbaijan won the 44-day war and regained part of the territory of Karabakh and its surrounding regions, and Russian peacekeepers entered Nagorno-Karabakh as agreed by the heads of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia. They controlled the territory of Karabakh where Armenians live and were supposed to ensure their security. Armenia agreed to almost all of Baku's demands, but in return claimed security guarantees for Karabakh Armenians and full-fledged negotiations with Stepanakert.

The Second Karabakh War did not end with the signing of a peace treaty, but only with the ceasefire agreement of November 9, 2020. Thereafter, the ceasefire was regularly violated and turned into fighting on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border.

 
On the first of August 2023, President Aliyev stated in an interview with Euronews:

"Well, winning the war was the mission of my life, or at least my political life, and I successfully coped with it. We won the war. We restored justice, we restored our territorial integrity."⁸

But even at that moment the war was not over. On September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan announced the beginning of "anti-terrorist measures of local character" in Nagorno-Karabakh. In the first hours of the operation, the Azerbaijani army took control of the airspace, suppressing the air defense systems of local Armenians. Azerbaijan actually issued an ultimatum - disbandment of the authorities, complete disarmament of the Karabakh army and withdrawal of Armenian troops. Armenia consistently claimed that its military was not present in Karabakh. The new Karabakh war lasted just over a day: the unrecognized republic agreed to lay down its arms and disband its armed units.

6. New house or old foundation?

The defeat and humiliation of 2020-2023 has yet to be comprehended and digested by the Armenian society, but even now, regardless of whether Nikol Pashinyan holds on to power, in order to preserve its independence and protect its territorial integrity, Armenia must seek a new security architecture for itself.

Russia may try to keep Armenia within its zone of influence. The Kremlin traditionally denies the subjectivity of the people and lives under the belief that strong allied relations require only the promotion of a loyal leader to the highest state office.

In 2022, information was spread about the inclusion of Armenia in the Union State of Belarus and Russia. Newspaper, owned by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's wife Anna Hakobyan, quoted a "reliable source" as saying that Russia seeks to include Armenia in the Russia-Belarus Union State. "If in the case of Ukraine Russia uses its own and possibly Belarusian troops, in our case it uses Azerbaijani troops and to a certain extent its troops stationed in Armenia," publication stated. Commenting on the publication, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov called it "another nonsense" that Russia allegedly forces Armenia to join the Union State and encourages Azerbaijan to do so. Armenian Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan, commenting on the publication, said that there were no proposals from the Russian side to join the Russia-Belarus Union State. ¹⁰

After Armenia lost control of Nagorno-Karabakh with Moscow's complete lack of response, the Kremlin seems to have no valid arguments left to continue to hold Armenia. In the event of an attack on Armenia, Russia would be forced to engage Azerbaijan and its ally Turkey and fight a two-front war. And with Russia bogged down in a war with Ukraine, damaged relations with Turkey could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. 

"Armenia's security architecture was 99.99% tied to Russia, including in the logic of acquiring weapons and ammunition. However, today, when Russia itself needs arms, weapons and ammunition, in this situation it is clear that even if it wanted to, Russia could not provide Armenia's security needs" - Nikol Pashinyan said in early September 2023 in a conversation with a correspondent of Italian La Repubblica. ¹¹

The opposite scenario to the Russian embrace for Armenia is allied relations with the United States. After the 2020 defeat, it was the contacts between Yerevan and Washington that irritated Moscow the most, and also served as a reason to accuse the West of disrupting peace processes in the region.

In July 2022, William Burns, Director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), visited Yerevan and met with Nikol Pashinyan. Earlier, in February of the same year, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland visited Yerevan.

Finally, joint military exercises between Armenia and the United States were held on September 11, 2023.

One day after the ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh began their exodus from the region following Azerbaijan's military operation, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Samantha Power, and Acting Deputy Secretary of State Yuri Kim arrived in Armenia on September 25, 2023. These unambiguous signals indicate the US readiness to increase its influence in the region. It should not be forgotten, however, that despite the complexity of relations, the United States is an ally of Turkey and is counting on a change in Turkey's position in the Russian-Ukrainian war. Relations with Iran, the US antagonist, will also be an important factor, which is also not happy with Nikol Pashinyan's attempts to get closer to Washington.

Iran, in turn, is an important ally and has a pro-Armenian position in the Azerbaijani-Armenian confrontation. The choice of Iran as the main ally will not irritate Russia to a great extent - in the war with Ukraine, the Russian Federation depends, in particular, on the supply of Iranian Shahed UAV. Iran itself seems ready to discuss with Russia issues related to the situation around Nagorno-Karabakh - Putin and Raisi had a telephone conversation on September 26, during which they emphasized the importance of resolving all issues exclusively by peaceful, political and diplomatic means. They expressed mutual interest in activating the work of the consultative regional platform "3+3" (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia plus Russia, Iran and Turkey).

But the partnership with the United States will have to be abandoned if Iran is chosen as the main ally, and in general, in the long term, the partnership with the two most "sanctioned" states of the world does not seem so attractive.

There is another security configuration that is rather perplexing, but upon closer examination is quite logical and balanced: on September 21, 2023, Armen Grigoryan, Secretary of the Security Council of Armenia stated on the air of Public TV that it is possible to strengthen the army by finding other partners, such as India, which is very ready to help Armenia. In the same speech he said that Russia had the opportunity but did not want to help Armenia in 2020-2022 and used Armenia's weakness to make it part of the Union (with Russia). Russia did not help in reforming our army. There is another way to strengthen the army - it is India, Armen Grigoryan stated. ¹²

India has no common border with Armenia, the land distance between the capitals is four and a half thousand kilometers, and Armenia's relations with India could hardly be called strategic in the past. Nevertheless, the rapprochement of Turkey and Azerbaijan with Pakistan makes Armenia a useful ally for India to weaken the influence of this alliance. In addition, choosing India as a strategic partner will allow balancing between Russia and the U.S. and preserving relations with Iran. India, with its nuclear weapons, strong military-industrial complex, high economic weight and high importance for both Russia and the United States, is able to shield its ally from Moscow's irritation and not hinder relations with the United States.

Today, such a strategic partnership looks attractive in theory, especially as India is also striving to take its rightful place in the global world order. The world's fifth economy, which landed on the moon in early September, a member of BRICS, which already represents 40% of the world's population and 25% of the world economy, and is expanding to six more countries in 2024, India has ambitions to lead the Global South.  Indian Prime Minister Modi, ahead of the G20 Summit in New Delhi, held the first Voice of the Global South summit in an online format. "We, the Global South, are very much interested in the future. Most of the global problems were not created by the Global South. But they affect us more," Modi said.

Three years ago, on September 27, 2020, there were reports of the beginning of Azerbaijani hostilities against NKR. The hands of Russia, which played the role of guarantor of peace in the South Caucasus for the last 25 years, were tied - 515 days later Russia unleashed the largest war in Europe since the Second World War, and two days before Russia launched a massive invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin signed with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev a wide-ranging agreement upgrading bilateral relations to strategic alliance and deepening diplomatic and military cooperation between the two countries.

Just hours earlier, Putin had announced Russia's official recognition of Ukraine's breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Nevertheless, Azerbaijan - which has consistently defended the principle of territorial integrity when it comes to its own breakaway territory in Nagorno-Karabakh - remained silent on Moscow's recognition of the independence of these entities.¹³

Plans to defeat Ukraine "in a month at most" have failed - Russia was stuck in a war for 20 months, with no end in sight. Industry has been put on mobilization rails. The myth of the invincibility of the Russian army has been debunked.

This is a new reality in which the configuration of alliances in the region has changed and will continue to change. On September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan and Turkey took advantage of this new reality.

The US, Turkey, China, India will not miss the opportunity to increase their influence in the region. How will Armenia be able to use this interest in its favor? One thing is clear - the national idea and the established system of guarantees have been destroyed, and a new security architecture will have to be built starting from the very foundation.

CONCLUSION

If one tries to understand the formula and the very essence of the security architecture in the post-Soviet space since the emergence of the new states in 1991, then the conclusion inevitably arises that Russia over the past 30 years has determined and controlled the geopolitical behavior of a number of countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Central Asian republics) through the existence of inter-ethnic conflicts. Along with political, economic and energy tools of influence, which in the medium term have proved ineffective in preserving and promoting Russia's national and strategic interests, Moscow's ability to freeze or unfreeze a potentially conflict-prone situation, depending on its perception of the level of threats and challenges to itself, as well as in terms of geopolitics, remains the only and perhaps the last way to ensure Russia's presence and dominance in these parts of the near abroad.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the late 1980s was one of the main triggers for the collapse of the Soviet Union. Until 2020, Russia was not interested in the final resolution of this, one of the most complex interethnic problems, as freezing the conflict and maintaining the status quo remained Moscow's main trump card in its relations with Yerevan (to a greater extent) and Baku (to a lesser extent), anticipating and neutralizing possible and increasingly tangible centrifugal aspirations of the latter.  Beginning in 2014-15, the Kremlin made a final decision on a strategic rapprochement with Turkey and building the Moscow-Ankara-Baku axis to ensure security in the southern underbelly in the inevitable conflict with Ukraine and the West. The price logically asked by the new partners was neutrality and Moscow's non-involvement in the war in Nagorno-Karabakh. It is indicative that immediately after the victorious war of 2020, then Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu remarked in a burst of sincerity that it is pleasant and necessary to cooperate with Russia because "it knows how to share". Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia became the bargaining chip that cemented the bonds of friendship between Russia and the Turkic world led by Ankara. 

However, the initial price that Russia agreed to pay turned out to be hard to digest for Moscow itself. First of all, Russia suffered irreparable reputational damage, as allies and partners in the CSTO and the Eurasian Union, as well as Russia's geopolitical rivals, could not but draw certain and inevitably logical conclusions - Russia is an unreliable ally. Secondly, by agreeing to Turkey's open deployment in Azerbaijan and the actual absorption of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces by NATO's second largest army, Moscow gave the green light to further strengthening of Ankara's position in Central Asia, where integration processes within the framework of the Organization of Turkic States are being rapidly complemented by a military-strategic component, which will accelerate centrifugal processes both in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and, under certain conditions, create hotbeds of tension in the Turkic-populated regions of Russia. Finally, the latest military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh, with the apparent indifference of the Russian political authorities and another blatant inaction of the Russian peacekeeping contingent, seems to bring us to the last chapter of the Karabakh conflict.  The end of the conflict, which in its time marked the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the current realities will most likely be the precursor to the dismantling of the entire security architecture that Moscow has been unsuccessfully creating in the near abroad for the past decades.  The end of Karabakh will signal the beginning of the end of Russia's imperial gains as unresolved conflicts begin to be taken out of the freeze, thus depriving the Kremlin of its most effective instrument of influence. In all likelihood, the day is not far off when the Russian Federation will find itself alone in a surrounding, far from unfriendly world without buffer states.