Armenia’s New Role Russia shares positions on the Artsakh issue with Paris and Washington, the Russian minister of foreign affairs Lavrov stated on November 20 in Baku. The Russian foreign minister announced that serious controversies have not harmed the U.S.-Russian cooperation on the Artsakh issue. Lavrov’s statement is bad news for Aliyev. The ex-American co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Matthew Bryza who was also the U.S. Ambassador in Baku broke the news in an interview with RIA Novosti. Bryza said the Karabakh process has always been an example of absolute cooperation between the United States and Russia. This is just a statement that the United States and Russia “absolutely” cooperated over maintaining the status quo for twenty years. Bryza’s statement was officially confirmed by the Russian foreign minister Lavrov in Baku. On the other hand, calling this news is also relative because the “absolute cooperation” was obvious through two decades of the process of settlement which was at least “fashionable” to talk about in Armenia. In the framework of the political thinking and traditions in Armenia conversations about this were seen as provincial expansionism with the irrational “no patch of land” slogan or neo-colonial unawareness of the global processes. Opinions on the need to maintain the status quo and the international awareness of this circumstance was considered evidence to militarism and adventurism. Instead, the readiness to give up on a political-military and compromise was seen as a measure of rationality, creating a political formula of an obstacle to the development of Armenia: Armenia will not develop unless the Artsakh issue has been resolved. In reality, Azerbaijan’s aggression in April demonstrated that an entire country, public, state lives with the understanding that the formula of development to give away at least part of one’s importance leads to war, not development, not being well-prepared for a war. In other words, giving away victory is a sign of inadequacy to geopolitical and state settings, not pacifism, and leads to war, not peace. The Armenian army corrected the mistake of the state based on this irrational mindset for two decades. By placing this upside down understanding at the heart of the formula of development Armenia practically caused a problem for the external centers of power which have different strategic interests in the region despite their “absolute cooperation”. Here is incompatibility but only at first sight. Just having different regional strategies leads to “absolute cooperation” on the issue of status quo because a real process of change of status quo will place them in front of inevitability of confrontation. The status quo is the international consensus of the centers of power, and this is also the in...
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