The Duran Podcast - Nagorno-Karabakh conflict ends, Pashinyan refuses to step down

Episode Date: September 24, 2023

Nagorno-Karabakh conflict ends, Pashinyan refuses to step down

All right, Alexander, let's do an update on Armenia, Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh, and the news that there is an end to this conflict. That's how it looks, a capitulation. Yes. Of the authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh, you could say by extension, Armenia. And they're negotiating now to decide, you know, I guess how Azerbaijan is going to administer. this territory. I guess that's where we're heading towards. That's...

Pashinyan, and just real quick, Paschignan, there are people out on the street that want him to step down. Committees are being formed, but he's saying no. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, that is exactly, I either you summed it up. I mean, there's a meeting apparently going to happen between a group of representatives from Nagorno-Karabakh and no less a person than Aliyev himself.

Aliyev himself, the president of Azerbaijan, but he's going to negotiate with them as the victor. There was an announcement yesterday that there'd been a ceasefire and that it'd be broken by the Russian peacekeepers. But it wasn't a ceasefire.

It was an unconditional surrender. I mean, that is what it was. The representatives, the authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh, they were cut off by Armenia. The Paschinian government said that it would not come to Nagorno-Karabakh's defence.

That meant that Nagorno-Karabakh has no prospective success by itself against the Azeri army. So they went to the Russian mediators, the Russian mediators conveyed to the Azeri authorities the fact that they were capitulating, and that's what's happened. What is being negotiated with Aliyev is the terms of Nagorno-Karabakh's surrender.

And Aliyev, who is an extremely clever man, I think we have to say this about him. I mean, he's played his cards here with extreme skill. What Aliyev might do is he might give all kinds of promises of autonomy and protection of cultural rights and things of that kind. But I think the Armenian people in Nagorno-Karabakh probably will not. trust those promises and whatever agreements are reached and I think they'd be wise not to and I suspect most of them will leave and this region which has been populated by Armenians

apparently for centuries I think it will soon be completely absorbed into Azerbaijan and that will be the end of the conflict and unfortunately and I say that with sorrow the end of the presence of the Armenians there right so So Paschignan got what he was working towards, which is he's removed in his mind, he's removed the obstacle towards getting Armenia into the security umbrella, under the security umbrella of the European Union and NATO. But it's not going to quite work out the way Paschignan is envisioning it. Correct?

Absolutely, because of course, again, this is a region where the United States and NATO and the EU would have great difficulty extending their power. I mean, you only have to look at the map to see that. I mean, there is no easy access for NATO into this region. That became obvious during the 2008 Georgia crisis. when Georgia was also trying to join NATO and the EU under Sarkashvili's leadership, got entangled in a conflict with Russia and found that it was entirely on its own. Because in this region, the Russians are dominant, and of course there are the other two great powers, Iran and Turkey.

Turkey is always going to be, at some level hostile to Armenia. I think that is one thing that is set in stone, at least for our lifetimes. Iran is friendly to Armenia and has been so historically, but it will be adamantly opposed to any relationship between Armenia and NATO and the EU and, of course, the United States. In fact, they are warning Armenia against it, because obviously, from the Armenian point of view, sorry, from the Iranian point of view,

having Armenia in the Euro-Atlantic institutions creates a threat to Iran's northern flank. So they will oppose that. So what Armenia is doing is that it is

drifting into isolation in its own region. And this, despite the fact, as I said, the Turkey will remain hostile. And Azerbaijan continues to have other potential territorial

claims against Armenia, which continue over places like Nahitjavan. At the moment, Aliyev is showing no interest in pursuing those claims. But you'll be unwise in this region to assume that's the case forever. And of course, if

Armenia sacrifices its historic alliances with his historic friends, the Russians and the Iranians, then it could again find itself in a situation of conflict with Azerbaijan. The Russians and the Iranians would be unwilling to come to its rescue in that case if it was aligned with the United States and the United States cannot come to its rescue because it has no real ability to project power into this region. I mean, how was Paschignan thinking this was going to go down. I mean, you know, you've explained the situation from a geopolitical at a geopolitical level, but Ashinian must know this. He must have had advisors telling him this.

Why did he push forward with this strategy? Well, you know, Russia is, is the one player in this region who can guarantee Armenia's safety, security, and sovereignty. Yes. Why is he trying to isolate Armenia in this way? Does he really think that France and the United States, that's what we're talking about, France and the United States, does he really think that they're going to be the ones to just move into this region and everything's going to be okay in Iran and is not going to say anything, Turkey is not going to say anything?

Russia's just going to leave it be? I think that's exactly what you think. He's not the first person to think that. Look at the Ukrainians. Look at the Georgians. Look at so many people around the world. They always have this assumption that the Americans and the Europeans are, you know, have almost unlimited power behind them, that they have unlimited wealth behind them, that if the United States wills its presence in particular region,

it can establish itself there, and that once it is there, it will, changed everything about the region, you know, by the mere fact of its presence. Sikashvili made that calculation in Georgia. The Ukrainian leadership made that calculation. Also, it's a lesson that a certain type of political leader, and importantly, the electoral base upon which these leaders depend, because there's a critical mass of support for this sort of thinking in all of these countries. It's a lesson they never seen able to learn.

They are always willing to sacrifice the geopolitical interests of their countries and their geopolitical security of their countries to this ephemeral promise of becoming part of the greater West and Europe and all that. But the power, the spell of this attraction still remains very strong. It's interesting where this attraction is coming from. You know, I don't think that it's people like Sarkasvili or Pachignan or even Zelensky. I don't think they're the ones that are coming up with these ideas. Someone, some very powerful people, are feeding them these ideas.

I mean, in Pachinian's case, there are all kinds of photos now floating around, floating around about Pachinian, his connections to Sotos and his connections to other NGOs. Zelensky, we know Zelensky's story, Sakkazvili, we know his story and his closeness to McCain. I mean, McCain was pretty much his mentor. Yes. Obviously, there's something there that is that is connecting these leaders to certain organizations, institutions, politicians, politicians, and they're being fed. They're being influenced these ideas. Yes.

They're toxic. They don't realize it, though. Well, I mean, I can only speak for what I've heard. I mean, you know, we have the presence of the NGOs, the Western NGOs. Both they're very visible in Georgia. They're very visible in Armenia. They're, of course, constantly relentlessly promoting these ideas that come from the West. And, of course, they're always packaged very skillfully, you know, about democracy, human rights and all that. And, you know, they can be made to sound very attractive.

and that does influence some people. But there's also financial interests. And never forget this. There's money passes. Lots of money circulates around. Some of it, you know, not illicit, but the NGOs themselves. Spend money, they hire people. Those people are then influenced by the ideas of the NGOs.

The NGOs then fund educational institutions. That produces a certain type of person, also with a particular set of ideas. and this gradually snowballs and it has an effect and it creates a constituency that, you know, accepts these things. I've encountered it. I've encountered it with people from Eastern Europe who have been through some of these institutions and some of these schools

and I find them almost impossible to reason with and argue with because they've become so completely, you know, they've accepted so completely this particular sort of outlook. And of course that exists in Georgia. It exists to some extent. In Armenia, the other thing they're very skilled at is gaining control of the media in these countries, and the media also is very skilled in promoting certain stories and planting them and encouraging people to develop a certain outlook.

And last but not least, and I have to say this, and I do this with some regret, there is the effect of the diasporas, you know, the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada, the Armenian diaspora. diaspora in the United States, the Armenian diaspora in France as well, the Georgian diaspora in some of these places, these people are often very wealthy. Some of the people there are very wealthy. They're also able to provide an awful lot of funding. They tend to be very loyal and very, you know, committed to their own countries, the countries where they live in, the United States, Canada, France, understandably enough. But of course, that predisposes them when they come to countries like Armenia or Georgia or Ukraine to support people in Georgia, Armenia and Ukraine, who are going to be inclined to pivot their countries towards the West.

And one of the problems of the diaspora's, and I have to say this, and we both encountered this, I think, as Greeks, because Greece also has this issue, is that the diaspora's don't always understand very well the issues that exist in their own historic homelands. They're not always very connected to their historic homelands, and they don't fully understand that things in these homelands

are not necessarily the way they look from the perspective of, say, New York or Los Angeles, or San Francisco, that, you know, that this is an inadequate lens and that the ideas that the diasporas have for the development of those countries is not necessarily the best solutions for those countries. Yeah, well said. All right. The dera.

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