Does U.S. believe Kerry can resolve Karabakh conflict?

July 26, 2013 - 15:56 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Two great powers – Russia and the United States – like to impose their destructive proposals for resolution of different conflicts. However, if Russia prefers use of force, so the U.S. resorts to military intrusion or engagement in talks. All of the options don’t work.

Analyst Alexandros Petersen believes that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who has driven the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations into a deadlock, can help resolve the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

“The natural gas pipelines connecting Azerbaijan to Europe inevitably have to snake around neighboring Armenia because of the intractable conflict in Nagorno Karabakh. This so-called frozen conflict has since the end of the Cold War become synonymous with the sort of faraway, messy and unrewarding conflagrations that Washington does not want to get mixed up in. But in this case, the far from frozen, but rather simmering conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia is one that will come back to haunt the United States if it does not do its best to encourage a process towards conflict settlement,” Petersen says in The National Interest commentary he titled “Kerry, Go Fix Karabakh”.

“Russia has long acted as Armenia’s patron, taking its side in the active war with Azerbaijan in the 1990s and maintaining a major military base in the country with treaty promises to defend Armenia in case of attack. As Azerbaijan becomes an increasingly faithful ally of the United States—assisting in both the Afghanistan and Iraq theaters—Moscow has turned a cold shoulder to Baku, even as Azerbaijani policymakers try to maintain cordial relations with their rival's closest ally. If it wanted to disrupt the flow of strategically important natural gas to America's European allies—or simply assert its pugnacity in a geopolitically contested region—Moscow could at any moment reignite the Karabakh conflict, plunging Iran’s northern border and Turkey’s east into tumult. Such a move is not without precedent: on the pretext of intervening in a similar such conflict, Russian forces invaded neighboring Georgia in 2008,” he says.

It’s noteworthy that Mr. Petersen is advocating the interests of Azerbaijan and from this viewpoint his position is quite explainable.

Given the latest scandal with NSA leaker Edward Snowden, it turns out that the Karabakh card can be played against the background of U.S. policy failures in Middle East.

Meanwhile, the negotiators and politicians had better ask the opinion of the people of Nagorno Karabakh and finally understand that the conflict is not between Armenia and Azerbaijan, whose desire to get back the control over Karabakh goes beyond all possible bounds.