The Duran Podcast - Azerbaijan to BRICS, Armenia to Collective West

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

Azerbaijan to BRICS, Armenia to Collective West

All right, Alexander, Putin is in Azerbaijan. Let's talk about the reasons for Putin to be in Azerbaijan. Is this connected to the tensions in the caucuses? Is this about something else? What's going on here? Well, I think it is, and it's again once more, the product of American Western diplomacy and of the policies of the Pashtunian government in Armenia.

because what is happening in the Caucasus, in the Southern Caucasus is a diplomatic revolution. Because at the time when the Soviet Union broke up, there was this conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. And the Russians, quite straightforwardly, backed Armenia. They're very, very close historic ties with Armenia.

There are millions of Armenians in Russia. The Armenians have historically played a very big role in Russian history and in Russian culture. There's a strong affinity and liking between the two nations. And Nagorno-Karabakh was populated by Armenians, and for that reason, the instinct of the Russian government and perhaps even more so of the Russian people was to sympathize with Armenia. And that meant that Azerbaijan, which potentially is the much more powerful country, it has much more far greater resources. It's more industrialized.

Baku was always a major industrial center. That's the capital of Azerbaijan. It also has an important, very significant oil and gas industry. And it's bigger in population. Anyway, Azerbaijan, the most powerful of the three countries in the Southern Caucasus, that were ex-Soviet countries, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan, as a result, tended to drift towards the Western camp. And in the mid-2000s, in George W. Bush's time, a grouping was cobbled together.

by the US, which was the US, which was called Guam. And it brought together the Saakashvili government in Georgia, which was G. Ukraine, which was at that time led by the

government, the Ushchenko government after the Orange Revolution, a precursor of the current Maidan government that we have in Ukraine now. Azerbaijan and Moldova, which was also at that time, unfriendly to Russia.

So this was a, you know, it was a grouping within amongst a former Soviet countries. Now, what then happened is that some years ago, there was a colour revolution in Yerevan. And as a result of that, a pro-Western leader, Aachenian, came to power in Armenia. And in ways that we've discussed at great length in many programs. he is trying to integrate Armenia with the West. He's talked about Armenia joining the EU. He's talked about Armenia joining NATO at some point. He's distanced Armenia.

In fact, he's almost destroyed Armenia's historic relationship with Russia. And in order to basically facilitate Armenia's integration into the West, he basically allowed in a brief war Azerbaijan to take over control of Nagorno-Karabakh and diplomatically thereafter he agreed to accept Azerbaijan's sovereignty

over Nagorno-Karabakh at the same time he's seeking closer relations with the West so with Armenia moving westwards Azerbaijan, which still has mistrust of Armenia, and which is unhappy about reports that the United States and France in particular will start to provide military supplies to Armenia.

Azerbaijan, which also has had good historic relations with Russia and the Azerbaijaniian president Aliyev gets on personally very well with Putin. Anyway, Azerbaijan has switched sides and they're now heading towards integrating with the Russians. That's why Putin is in Baku. We're getting all these very friendly meetings between Aliyev and Putin

and it looks as if the relationship between Azerbaijan and Russia has become very, very much closer. I should say, by the way, that even during the time when the Russians were backing, Armenia, the Aleyev government in Baku, both the current president and his father, who was president before, were always very careful to maintain contacts in Moscow.

They never completely turned against the Russians. And now they're reaping the benefits of that. So Azerbaijan now very friendly to Russia, receiving Putin. What has happened is, if you're looking at this in crude geopolitical terms, the West has swapped a poor, weak Caucasian country, Armenia. They've taken, they've brought that on side, and they've lost the richer, more powerful one, which is Azerbaijan. This sounds like bad news for our media.

It's very bad news for Armenia. And it's a given that I'm somebody who, and I think we both are, are instinctively sympathetic to the Armenians. We were, you know, we're Greeks. Armenians and Greeks were both subjects of the Ottoman Empire. So we've all had that experience. And we've always been friendly with each other. For me, I mean, this is very distressing.

It's a very, very bad news for Iran. Armenia. It's another product of where the Paschignan government is leading things. Paschignan seems completely outmatched by Aliyev. Absolutely. Absolutely. Aliye's a far clever man. Aliyev is running rings around him. And the result is that Azerbaijan, not only now has the whole Nagorno-Karabakh, that they're starting to push on. in all sorts of other places, gradually demanding the border villages which are in contested zones be transferred under Azerbaijanian control. Aliyev has good relations with Turkey. He's developing better relations with Iran.

Step by step, he is encircling Armenia and is putting enormous pressure on it. he's a far cleverer man than Paschignan. Well, Parcenae is not clever in that way. Yeah, okay, so a final question. Armenia heads towards some sort of integration with NATO or the EU, whatever form that may take. And Azerbaijan moves towards bricks. Is that possible? Yes, absolutely.

I think that's where it's heading. I mean, bear in mind that, um, Turkey, which is Azerbaijan's other major ally, is now also talking about the fact that he's interested in one day joining the bricks, because EU membership is no longer on the table. So I don't see why Azerbaijan would not want to join the bricks. And I think the Russians will strongly support it when it happens. And Azerbaijan is a key energy player. Absolutely. It's one of the, it's a major energy player. It's as I said, potentially a rich country.

it will be a major asset for the bricks and of course it's also a Caspian Sea power it's from the major players on the Caspian Sea the moment

Azerbaijan fully integrates into bricks the Caspian Sea becomes a bricks lake I mean Iran to the south is in bricks Russia to the north which is by far the biggest naval power on the Caspian Sea it's the only one

country that has a significant navy in the caspian sea russia is of course in the brics Kazakhstan um is also not yet a member of the bricks but it's very friendly to china and russia if uh Azerbaijan joins the bricks so as i said the caspian is a briggs lake the the americans are completely cut off and that is significant because they need to get access to central asia the way they get access through Central Asia is via the Caspian. And the Europeans, they've been talking about access to Azerbaijan energy resources via various pipelines

that run through the Caspian and make their way into Europe. So that would be gone as well. Or at least that would be under the control of bricks, that route of energy. Well, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, way back 10, 50, plus years ago, the big plan to get to win

Europe off Russian energy supplies was to create this great pipeline to Azerbaijan to the Gaspian, the so-called Nabucco pipeline.

And it never got off the ground. But partly because Azerbaijan, to its credit, was never very keen. And I think one

needs to say that. The Aliyev government always understood that in the end, it would need to develop good relations with Russia. They never let themselves be, you know, lose their connection to Russia entirely. So Nabucca never got off the ground and there's no prospect of that happening anymore.

I should say Azerbaijan was also a very, very important place for the US and Israel at one time to try to establish bases and monitoring stations. and all kinds of things. There's lots of reports about this, very little factual detail, but that they were always present there, and it was supposed to be a northern front against Iran.

That's all, I think, ending now. All right. Interesting. All right, we will end it there. The durand.orgas. We are on Rumble odyssey, pitchry, telegram, Rock Finn, and Twitter X, and go to the Duran shop,

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