Diplomacy with Dictators

Anna Ohanyan, worldpolicy.org

image from article

Excerpt:

On April 2, the two-decade-long—yet still fragile—cease-fire ended in Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnically Armenian breakaway region of Azerbaijan often described by analysts as a de facto state. This is a conflict with deep and haunting roots, the progeny of both a pre-Soviet Russian empire and a post-genocidal Ottoman one. It has remained a local affair in Russia’s periphery for years, frozen by the cease-fire and largely forgotten by the rest of the world.

The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh today is no longer frozen or forgotten. Along with Donbass in Ukraine and Damascus in Syria, this conflict may have just taken its place among the string of conflicts ringing Russia’s underbelly, with suggestions of a Russian-Turkish proxy war. The implications of violent escalation in this energy-rich strategic region are significant, as it could lead to a confrontation between NATO and the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization. As such, intensive and sustained diplomatic engagement to contain the violence and re-establish the peace process is urgently called for. ...

Observers have attributed this month's large-scale offensive to the deteriorating position of Azerbaijan's authoritarian president, Ilham Aliyev. The dynastic leader of a petrostate hit hard by collapsing oil and gas revenue, Aliyev has extinguished independent civil society and has shuttered Western institutions ranging from Radio Free Europe to the Peace Corps. ...

For the longer term, it is time for much deeper diplomacy that is accountable and that engages at the societal level. ...

[R]egional approaches to conflict management through diverse policy areas must be deployed: pipeline and transportation security, economic development and trade, agriculture and water policy, policing of illicit flows of fighters and contraband, and foreign investment coordination are all better accomplished at a regional level among neighbors. What the West, including the United States, can do is to re-orient foreign policy in the former Soviet territories, particularly in South Caucasus, toward financial and political support for regional integration projects. This requires regionally designed foreign aid packages in conflict areas with deliberate support for cross-border initiatives and public diplomacy. It means pressure to lift blockades, reconnect rail links, return refugees, and observe cease-fire arrangements. ...

Anna Ohanyan ... is a Fulbright Scholar and her latest book is Networked Regionalism as Conflict Management (Stanford University Press 2015).