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  • Russia's Next Land Grab

    RUSSIA'S NEXT LAND GRAB

    The New York Times
    Sept 10 2014

    By BRENDA SHAFFERSEPT. 9, 2014

    WASHINGTON -- UKRAINE isn't the only place where Russia is stirring up
    trouble. Since the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Moscow has routinely
    supported secessionists in bordering states, to coerce those states
    into accepting its dictates. Its latest such effort is unfolding in
    the South Caucasus.

    In recent weeks, Moscow seems to have been aggravating a longstanding
    conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan while playing peacemaking
    overlord to both. In the first week of August, as many as 40 Armenian
    and Azerbaijani soldiers were reported killed in heavy fighting
    near their border, just before a summit meeting convened by Russia's
    president, Vladimir V. Putin.

    The South Caucasus may seem remote, but the region borders Russia,
    Iran and Turkey, and commands a vital pipeline route for oil and
    natural gas to flow from Central Asia to Europe without passing through
    Russia. Western officials cannot afford to let another part of the
    region be digested by Moscow -- as they did when Russia separated
    South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia, just to the north, in a
    brief war in 2008, and when it seized Crimea from Ukraine this year.

    Conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is not new. From 1992 to
    1994, war raged over which former Soviet republic would control
    the autonomous area of Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region with a
    large Christian Armenian population of about 90,000 within the borders
    of largely Muslim Azerbaijan. The conflict has often been framed as
    "ethnic," but Moscow has fed the antagonisms. That war ended with an
    Armenian military force, highly integrated with Russia's military,
    in charge of the zone. The war had killed 30,000 people and made
    another million refugees.

    Even today, Armenia controls nearly 20 percent of Azerbaijan's
    territory, comprising most of Nagorno-Karabakh and several surrounding
    regions. Despite a cease-fire agreement since 1994, hostilities
    occasionally flare, and Russian troops run Armenia's air defenses.

    Moscow also controls key elements of Armenia's economy and
    infrastructure.

    More to the point, Russia has found ways to keep the conflict alive.

    Three times in the 1990s, Armenia and Azerbaijan signed peace
    agreements, but Russia found ways to derail Armenia's participation.

    (In 1999, for example, a disgruntled journalist suspected of having
    been aided by Moscow assassinated Armenia's prime minister, speaker
    of Parliament and other government officials.)

    An unresolved conflict -- a "frozen conflict," Russia calls it -- gives
    Russian forces an excuse to enter the region and coerce both sides.

    Once Russian forces are in place, neither side can cooperate closely
    with the West without fear of retribution from Moscow.

    The latest violence preceded a summit meeting on Aug. 10 in Sochi,
    Russia, at which Mr. Putin sought an agreement on deploying additional
    Russian "peacekeepers" between Armenia and Azerbaijan. On July 31,
    Armenians began a coordinated, surprise attack in three locations.

    Azerbaijan's president, Ilham H. Aliyev, and defense minister were
    outside their country during the attack and Mr. Aliyev had not yet
    agreed to attend the summit meeting. But the Armenian president,
    Serzh A. Sargsyan, had agreed to; it's unlikely that his military
    would have initiated such a provocation without coordinating with
    Russia. (The meeting went on, without concrete results.)

    Before the meeting, Moscow had been tightening its grip on the South
    Caucasus, with Armenia's tacit support. Last fall, Armenia's government
    gave up its ambitions to sign a partnership agreement with the European
    Union and announced that it would join Moscow's customs union instead.

    Renewed open warfare would give Russia an excuse to send in more
    troops, under the guise of peacekeeping. Destabilizing the South
    Caucasus could also derail a huge gas pipeline project, agreed to
    last December, that might lighten Europe's dependence on Russian fuel.

    But astonishingly, American officials reacted to the current fighting
    by saying they "welcome" the Russian-sponsored summit meeting. Has
    Washington learned nothing from Georgia and Ukraine? To prevent
    escalation of the Caucasus conflict, and deny Mr. Putin the pretext
    for a new land grab, President Obama should invite the leaders of
    Azerbaijan and Armenia to Washington and show that America has not
    abandoned the South Caucasus. This would encourage the leaders to
    resist Russia's pressure. The United Nations General Assembly session,
    which opens next week, seems like an excellent moment for such a
    demonstration of support.

    Washington should put the blame on Russia and resist any so-called
    conflict resolution that leads to deployment of additional Russian
    troops in the region.

    Finally, the West needs a strategy to prevent Moscow from grabbing
    another bordering region. Nagorno-Karabakh, however remote, is the
    next front in Russia's efforts to rebuild its lost empire. Letting the
    South Caucasus lose its sovereignty to Russia would strike a deadly
    blow to America's already diminished ability to seek and maintain
    alliances in the former Soviet Union and beyond.

    Brenda Shaffer is a professor of political science at the University
    of Haifa and a visiting researcher at Georgetown.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/10/opinion/russias-next-land-grab.html?_r=0


    From: Baghdasarian
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