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A WAY FORWARD FOR NAGORNO-KARABAKH: TREAT IT LIKE A FREE COUNTRY
Sandy Smith
HULIQ.com
http://www.huliq.com/8738/way-forward-nagorno-karabakh-treat-it-free-country
Aug 17, 2011
A proposal from two Georgetown University professors offers a way
out of the international impasse for Nagorno-Karabakh and other
"phantom states."
Writing in The New York Times, Daniel L. Bynam of the Brookings
Institution and author Charles King, both of whom teach at Georgetown,
point out that phantom states are usually the product of conflict,
often between neighboring states. Their existence, however, also
makes them sources of future conflict, as the breakaway states argue
for their right to determine their own futures while the states they
broke away from push the primacy of territorial integrity.
Even though most of the nations of the world also officially put this
principle first, the record in the real world is far more mixed. The
former Yugoslavia offers a case in point. After allowing most of its
constituent nations to separate peacefully, Serbia opted to fight
instead over Bosnia, where one-third of the population were ethnic
Serbs, and Kosovo, an ethnically Albanian region within its borders.
Western nations intervened in both cases, first to preserve Bosnian
territorial integrity after the Serbs formed their own statelet,
then to protect the Albanians who wished to do the same in Kosovo.
A more productive approach to such breakaway countries, Bynam and
King argue, is to engage them both politically and economically as
though they were legally independent - in other words, recognize their
independence in fact while not necessarily doing so officially. This
is what both China and the United States have been doing with Taiwan
ever since the United States recognized the People's Republic as the
sole legal government of China in 1973. One reason why is because
the United States stated that it would continue to protect Taiwan's
internal sovereignty even after withdrawing its recognition, leading
China to conclude that the price of pressing its claim to sovereignty
over the island would be too high, jeopardizing its more valuable
relations with the US and its standing in the international community.
Conditions are ripe for a similar solution to the standoff over
Nagorno-Karabakh, "lauded by Armenia and loathed by Azerbaijan,
leading all sides to stockpile arms in case of renewed violence,"
in the words of the authors. Were the situation to come to blows,
Armenia would enjoy the likely support of Russia, which has supported
a similar breakaway state in the republic of Georgia, while Turkey
would likely intervene on the side of the Azeris, triggering a
wider regional conflict that would set back economic and political
development throughout the southern Caucasus region.
By offering to protect Nagorno-Karabakh's territory and establishing
trade and political ties while stopping short of formal recognition,
and by engaging both the Armenian and Azeri governments at the same
time, Western nations, along with Russia in this case, could provide
Nagorno-Karabakh the space it needs to develop stable democratic
institutions and strengthen its economy. The ball would then be in
Azerbaijan's court, where it would have to ask the question the Chinese
Communists asked themselves: Is pushing for absolute sovereignty over
our entire former territory worth risking all that could be gained
from engagement?
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Sandy Smith
HULIQ.com
http://www.huliq.com/8738/way-forward-nagorno-karabakh-treat-it-free-country
Aug 17, 2011
A proposal from two Georgetown University professors offers a way
out of the international impasse for Nagorno-Karabakh and other
"phantom states."
Writing in The New York Times, Daniel L. Bynam of the Brookings
Institution and author Charles King, both of whom teach at Georgetown,
point out that phantom states are usually the product of conflict,
often between neighboring states. Their existence, however, also
makes them sources of future conflict, as the breakaway states argue
for their right to determine their own futures while the states they
broke away from push the primacy of territorial integrity.
Even though most of the nations of the world also officially put this
principle first, the record in the real world is far more mixed. The
former Yugoslavia offers a case in point. After allowing most of its
constituent nations to separate peacefully, Serbia opted to fight
instead over Bosnia, where one-third of the population were ethnic
Serbs, and Kosovo, an ethnically Albanian region within its borders.
Western nations intervened in both cases, first to preserve Bosnian
territorial integrity after the Serbs formed their own statelet,
then to protect the Albanians who wished to do the same in Kosovo.
A more productive approach to such breakaway countries, Bynam and
King argue, is to engage them both politically and economically as
though they were legally independent - in other words, recognize their
independence in fact while not necessarily doing so officially. This
is what both China and the United States have been doing with Taiwan
ever since the United States recognized the People's Republic as the
sole legal government of China in 1973. One reason why is because
the United States stated that it would continue to protect Taiwan's
internal sovereignty even after withdrawing its recognition, leading
China to conclude that the price of pressing its claim to sovereignty
over the island would be too high, jeopardizing its more valuable
relations with the US and its standing in the international community.
Conditions are ripe for a similar solution to the standoff over
Nagorno-Karabakh, "lauded by Armenia and loathed by Azerbaijan,
leading all sides to stockpile arms in case of renewed violence,"
in the words of the authors. Were the situation to come to blows,
Armenia would enjoy the likely support of Russia, which has supported
a similar breakaway state in the republic of Georgia, while Turkey
would likely intervene on the side of the Azeris, triggering a
wider regional conflict that would set back economic and political
development throughout the southern Caucasus region.
By offering to protect Nagorno-Karabakh's territory and establishing
trade and political ties while stopping short of formal recognition,
and by engaging both the Armenian and Azeri governments at the same
time, Western nations, along with Russia in this case, could provide
Nagorno-Karabakh the space it needs to develop stable democratic
institutions and strengthen its economy. The ball would then be in
Azerbaijan's court, where it would have to ask the question the Chinese
Communists asked themselves: Is pushing for absolute sovereignty over
our entire former territory worth risking all that could be gained
from engagement?
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress