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Is War Over Karabakh Inevitable?

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  • Is War Over Karabakh Inevitable?

    IS WAR OVER KARABAKH INEVITABLE?
    by Joshua Kucera

    EurasiaNet.org
    http://www.eurasianet.org/node/62716
    Jan 14 2011
    NY

    In considering the long-term prospects for a new war in Nagorno
    Karabakh, the key factor is of course Azerbaijan's growing wealth,
    especially relative to Armenia's stangnancy. But that could lead
    to two opposing results: either Azerbaijan would not want to risk
    damaging its vibrant economy by starting a war, or its oil-funded
    military will be so much stronger than Armenia's that trying to retake
    Karabakh would be inevitable.

    Azerbaijan scholar and consultant Svante Cornell has written a new book
    on the country, Azerbaijan Since Independence, which he introduced at
    an event yesterday in DC. And the part that was most interesting to
    me was that he came down very much on the side of war being inevitable.

    His argument: that while an Azerbaijan invasion of Karabakh would
    elicit international condemnation, it would probably be short-lived
    and not amount to much, comparable to what happened with Croatia
    when it ethnically cleansed the Serb-dominated eastern part of the
    country in the 1990s. (UPDATE: I should have mentioned originally,
    Cornell assumes that the invasion would be quick; if not, a protracted
    conflict would cause a lot of foreign companies to not be interested
    in operating there.)

    In addition, Azerbaijan, as the party unhappy with the status quo,
    always has an interest in keeping the situation at high tension. And
    that raises the risk of an accidental escalation of a small incident
    into a full-scale war.

    And for domestic political purposes, it may eventually be worth
    it to start a war, even if it had disastrous consequences. Cornell
    suggested that the current government wouldn't do this, only a future
    one. But I can't help but think of the Wikileaked cable that compared
    President Ilham Aliyev to Sonny Corleone, hot-headed and considering
    the affairs of state to be personal, not merely business.

    Karabakh was thus not comparable to Cyprus -- a frozen conflict that
    seems to soften over time -- but rather to more entrenched conflicts
    like Israel-Palestine or Kashmir. "Every year without a resolution it's
    becoming more dangerous, not less dangerous... the situation is not
    sustainable because the balance of power between the two protagonists
    is changing. Armenia is sitting on the land, and whether you like it
    or not, Azerbaijan is getting richer, its economy is four or five times
    larger than Armenia's and sooner or later, something's got to give."

    Cornell is generally pretty pro-Azerbaijan, and his framing of the
    situation as something inevitable seems to absolve Azerbaijan of any
    responsibility for its actions, which I think one could quibble with.

    But he knows Azerbaijan well, and this is an analysis worth
    considering.




    From: A. Papazian
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