Korybko To Azeri Media: Here’s Why The West Might Give “Security Guarantees” To Armenia

Here’s the English version of the interview that I gave to Bizim.Media’s Tehran Orucoglu in response to his questions about reports that the West plans to give Armenia “security guarantees” during a trilateral summit in Brussels with the EU and the US on 5 April.

1. How would this pact affect Armenia?

The details of Armenia’s allegedly impending security pacts with Western countries haven’t been confirmed, but generally speaking, this development would be troubling for the region. Armenian society remains under the influence of ultra-nationalists who can’t accept the failure of their so-called “Greater Armenia” geopolitical project. It’s therefore possible that Western countries could bolster Armenia’s offensive capabilities in furtherance of that goal under the false cover of “defending” it.

The dual pretext upon which these pacts might soon be agreed is that Azerbaijan and/or Turkiye supposedly represent a threat to Armenia’s territorial integrity, but one which Russia has allegedly proven itself unwilling to thwart in violation of its CSTO mutual defense obligations. The truth is that neither of those two are threatening Armenia and Russia’s security responsibilities never extended into Azerbaijan’s universally recognized western regions that Yerevan illegally occupied for three decades.

There’s no realistic chance that Armenia will ever be able to revive its failed “Greater Armenia” geopolitical project, but any Western support in advance of it could destabilize the region by provoking a larger war that risks disastrous consequences for the Armenian state and its people. From a cynical perspective, however, the West might want this to happen if it calculates that this could simultaneously destabilize Russia and Iran while punishing Azerbaijan and Turkiye for their close ties with them.

2. Will the mentioned processes affect the peace talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia?

Azerbaijan and Armenia are presently engaged in very sensitive border delineation talks, the completion of which is expected to precede the signing of a formal peace treaty. If Armenia feels emboldened by Western military support, then it might retain its claims and control over disputed areas, thus ruining the peace process and exacerbating mutual suspicions. In the worst-case scenario, Armenia might then wage Hybrid War on Azerbaijan via terrorist proxies that use Western arms and intelligence in their attacks.

3. What steps will Russia take regarding these processes? Or what steps should it take?

Russia has proven itself powerless to positively reshape the military-strategic dynamics within Armenia, which are the result of domestic political processes and Western-based diaspora meddling, with both owing their origins to the so-called “Velvet Revolution” that catapulted Pashinyan to power. Moscow sought to work with him after expecting that mutual interests would pragmatically supercede partisan ones due to their countries’ close ties, but this turned out to be a miscalculation with all due respect.

The end result is that Russia is losing its influence in Armenia, and this in turn leading to it losing control over the military-strategic ones that are now adversely affecting their ties and threatening to reverberate throughout the region if Armenia becomes the West’s new bastion of regional influence. To be fair, there wasn’t much that the Kremlin could have done since Pashinyan was democratically elected, so all that remained was to gently remind him of mutual interests since a regime change was never in the cards.  

That said, it can’t be ruled out that elements within the armed forces and/or civil society might consider removing him through a military coup or Color Revolution in order to save their country from the dark future that he’s preparing for it. To be clear, there aren’t any indications of this and it’s only speculation at this point, but that scenario would be the best one for the entire region since it would avert the possibility of the West provoking another war through its militant support for Armenian irredentism.

The interview was originally published at Bizim.Media under the title “Qərbin növbəti QURBANI – ‘Təhlükəsizlik’ paktı Ermənistanı UÇURUMA SÜRÜKLƏYİR”.