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National review
The new territory of Russia
In November, Russia won a slice of someone else’s country. It did not do this through unidentified troops crossing a border, nor through hybrid warfare. Instead, he negotiated his capture in plain sight and without a single question from the United States or the rest of the world. The struggles between Azerbaijan and Armenia for Nagorno-Karabakh preceded the annexation. The mountainous region is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but since a 1994 ceasefire between the two nations it has been controlled by ethnic Armenians. The conflict flared up again in September. Two months later a peace agreement was reached, with Russia as the winner: a ceasefire mediated that put the Kremlin’s seemingly peacekeeping boots on the ground. The United States watched idly as this happened. As the traditional protector of Armenia, Russia had the sole influence to convince Armenia to sign this ceasefire. By signing, Yerevan renounced claims on the territories it had occupied within Azerbaijan since 1994 and gained nothing except a ceasefire rather than a forced surrender. In exchange for assuring its ally a slightly less humiliation, Moscow gained a present and a presence. In reality, unless the United States is prepared to participate fully in the peace process, Nagorno-Karabakh is now Russia’s indefinitely. The Kremlin apparently controls the territory for five years, with an automatic renewal of five more years if none of the three parties to the ceasefire objects six months before the end of the term. Russia certainly will not. It is now the guardian of a region essential for Europe’s energy diversification (reducing the role of Russian imports). If the region is strategically important to NATO, that makes it strategically important to the Kremlin. Armenia, distrusting Azerbaijan, will want the peacekeepers to stay. The brief but brutal conflict has conclusively shown that Armenia cannot win militarily and that therefore ethnic Armenians must accept either the government of Azerbaijan or the protectorate of Russia. Weak and broken, Yerevan finds it less humiliating to accept Russian tutelage in Nagorno-Karabakh, if only to deny an archenemy a complete victory. But this is a long-term disaster for Armenians. It means that they are effectively caught in a Russian hug. They can’t turn west or east, diplomatically or reversed, because now the Russians are in charge. recent years – has been steadily deepening diplomatic and economic relations with Russia, partly out of necessity and lack of serious alternatives. However, now, with Russian military boots on Azerbaijani territory for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, Moscow’s influence has also become an economic lever: by militarily guaranteeing a transport corridor through Armenia, closed before the ceasefire, to the Nakhichevan enclave of Azerbaijan. Russia now controls Azerbaijan’s coveted direct land route from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean and Europe. The West could certainly have seen it coming. This is how it always begins: a foothold soon turns into a footprint. Crimea, Eastern Ukraine, South Ossetia, Abkhazia – the list of examples goes on. The Russian presence turns into Russian control: the sole logic of Putin’s neoczarist ambitions. In fact, now, just a few weeks after the troop deployment, the Kremlin is maneuvering: the lines on the maps have started to bend and flex. On the website of the Russian Defense Ministry, a page displays a map describing the area where Russian peacekeepers, under the terms of the agreement, will be stationed and have jurisdiction within which to operate. On December 13, miraculously, the land they control had expanded. This was changed back to the original the next day, after diplomatic pressure from Azerbaijan. But this activity shows that the Kremlin cartographers are getting creative, and very early on in this intervention. Now rumors about Russian “passportization” in Nagorno-Karabakh are increasing. Fabrication of new demographic realities on the ground by granting citizenship has been used to maintain influence in the internal affairs of other post-Soviet nations. Once the Russians occupy the area, the Russian state is obliged to intervene, it is a classic of the Kremlin’s repertoire. It preceded the invasion of Crimea. It happened in two regions of Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, again before the wars broke out, with Russia as the main beneficiary. More recently, passportation has been energetically deployed in eastern Ukraine, through an efficiently streamlined process. The Kremlin predicts that there will be more than a million Russian citizens with newly minted documents by the end of the year. In all these situations, Russia’s control is secure. The passport would mean that a negotiated agreement on the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh, which was supposed to be some form of autonomy within Azerbaijan, as in Soviet times, will never materialize. Instead, it will become a Russian passport protectorate, giving Russia the pretext, or in Moscow’s lexicon, the legal right, to jump into the region if an imaginary threat to its “citizens” arises. In Ukraine in the wake of Russian destabilization, it is surprising that no more precautionary measures are being taken in the southern Caucasus. However, there is time for the United States to intervene: the ceasefire will give way to negotiations for a final peace agreement, with much more to decide. The United States must totally and completely oppose passportation. American companies should invest in infrastructure and energy projects in the region to limit Russia’s room for maneuver. And US-led joint investment initiatives between Armenia and Azerbaijan would help cut both their dependence on Russia. It is time for the United States to step up diplomatic and economic efforts and reinsert itself in this process. Otherwise, the empire of Russia will continue to expand uncontrollably.
