European Union, as well as USA, and even Russia, have received enough food for thought following the meeting in Moscow between President of Russia Vladimir Putin and Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan on September 3, 2013. It showed very clearly, what any agreements, partnerships and joint efforts with Armenia are worth, especially in a stark contrast with Azerbaijan.
On September 3, a remarkable event took place with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan de-facto giving up another big portion of his country’s sovereignty by declaring about “decision of Republic of Armenia to join the Customs Union and take all necessary practical steps required for this and, subsequently, take a part in the formation of Eurasian Economic Union”.
Armenia currently is a nominally sovereign state, thanks to myopic and greedy policies of its government, diaspora and religious leadership, – a troika, acting against true interests of Armenian people. Here are some of the stages that Armenia has gone through after getting a “surprise” freedom, as much undeserved, as unvalued:
– Occupation of 20% of the territory of Azerbaijan Republic and territorial claims to the other neighboring countries, as a result of which Armenia isolated itself from all important regional infrastructure projects, lost the opportunity to create lots of new jobs, industries, earn revenues via tariffs, etc.
– Existence of state mainly on donations from diaspora, international organizations, Russia, US etc. Alas, those giveaways seemed substantial only in the 90s, when expectations of the population regarding quality of life were really low, but not anymore. In the meanwhile, occupation of the territory equal to 50% of its own, necessity to maintain defense lines along the front stretching many hundreds of kilometers and artificially keep population on the occupied land, drained huge amounts of money that could have been invested to create a better future for Armenia and the Armenians.
– Armenia had to give anything of value to Russia to pay off the bills for these mindless behavior. Russia, in its turn, having received all those assets as a debt repayment, had hard time figuring out what to do with those “treasures”, as it would probably not even have taken interest in them at a fair market auction. As a result, all those assets were even further deteriorating, requiring more and more investments even to keep them running. And Armenians would not accept any rational decisions by Russians to shut down loss-making assets or downsizing them to cut losses (e.g., removal or secondary railroad line station Arteni in Armenia in August 2013).
– Part of population that had an opportunity to vote “with their legs” left Armenia for a better future in other countries, demonstrating that they don’t need either Karabakh, or this kind of Armenia.
– Armenia, accustomed to constant Russian lifeline to make it to next day, agreed to renew the agreement on the Russian military base their till 2045, although there were no pressing issues to lock it that far into the future.
It is surprising that all those clear signs of a bankrupt country that has given away all the authority to somebody that agreed to pay its bills escaped the attention of politicians in EU and US, whose view have been obscured by legend of “fellow Christians being suffocated, surrounded by Muslim world” and alleged desire of to be with the West. And they somehow failed to take a note of the fact that the only non-secular islamic country in the region, – Iran, is the closest friend that Armenia has and all it needs from the West is to drain out as much funds and support it can get. And, naturally, it went unnoticed that the Armenia-Iran duo has a hand in providing weapons to terrorists in Iraq and other hot spots of the region, contributing to the deaths and woundings of American soldiers, among other things.
And, thus, on September 3, it was a payback time for the West and more is yet to come, since myopia is cured only surgically. The West was absolutely confident that Sargsyan was on his way to Moscow to officially divorce from Russia. Although some skepticism was due, because only equal partners can usually part their ways and Armenia is definitely not the one, but, still, it came as a complete surprise that the outcome would be quite the opposite and the country would give up its “multi-vectoral external policy”, if it ever really existed.
European Union had been working with Armenia preparing Association Agreement with Armenia (including Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area – DCFTA) and just had completed the work in July 2013. And to think that all that hard work, as well as huge amount of money spent on this and additional fundings for range of related and so much projects in Armenia was a complete waste thanks to “reliable” partner Armenia, which did not even bother to provide some fair advanced warning about what was to come.
Europeans were in such a shock, that almost immediately issued a press-release, in which they complained that they had been working really long and hard over the Association Agreement and DCFTA, which “would allow Armenia with the EU´s support, to drive forward a programme of comprehensive modernisation and reform based upon shared values, political association and economic integration”.
And then the rest of the text there does not make much sense. Here is the quote: “We take note of Armenia’s apparent wish to join the Customs Union. We look forward to understanding better from Armenia what their intentions are and how they wish to ensure compatibility between these and the commitments undertaken through the Association Agreement and DCFTA. Once this consultation has been completed, we will draw our conclusions on the way forward.”
And the reason it did not make much sense is that it does not take a professional lawyer to know that a Customs Union with one set of countries is not compatible with a Free Trade Area with other countries or their blocs. And, what is interesting, EU is absolutely aware of this fact and they had warned Armenia at the highest level in December 2012 and, once again, in May 2013.
Last year, Maja Kocijancic, a spokeswoman for Catherine Ashton, the EU High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, warned that “if Armenia were to join any customs union, this would not be compatible with concluding a bilateral Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement between the EU and Armenia. Because a customs union has a common external trade policy and an individual member country no longer has sovereign control over its external trade policies.”
And the same point was made in May 2013 by EU Commissioner in charge of Expansion Stefan Fule: “More than two months ago the European Commission was in Moscow for a meeting with the government. For the first time we raised three important issues related to the shared neighbourhood: we explained the lack of compatibility between Association Agreements and the Customs Union. We explained that the reason for that incompatibility is that we cannot make legally binding agreements with partners that are not in charge of their external trade policies.”
The largest economic power of the planet, EU, responsible for a quarter of the global GDP, had to go through humiliation of publicly lying to save face, all thanks to Armenia. Interestingly, even few days past the “shock therapy”, EU’s Fule is still using soft euphemisms like “it is difficult to imagine the initialling at Vilnius summit in November”, and “compatibility of obligations to the Customs Union with those under an Association Agreement/DCFTA with the EU looks problematic”, and “are convinced that it is in the interest of all to further strengthen together with Armenia what we have jointly achieved”. EU has to show some self-respect to be able to get any from the likes of Armenia.
This should be a good lesson for the United States as well, where many politicians and even public opinion has been formed thinking that Armenia is pro-western. Even Russia has a lot to learn from the experience. For example, should it even trust the decision by Armenia to join the Customs Union with Russia, if it had no issues cheating out its EU partners, with whom Armenia had completely agreed and drafted Agreement in place due to go through the Parliament? The President of Russian Federation should send a quickly drafted agreement to Armenia literally next day and demand it to be returned within couple of days signed and sealed by Sargsyan and approved by the Parliament and, even after that, be on alert for any Armenian surprises.
In other words, Armenia accepts “multi-vectoral diplomacy” as a synonym for figurative expression of “the servant of many masters”. The only problem for them is this cannot work indefinitely and at certain point all the masters will require services simultaneously.
Interestingly, in contrast, Azerbaijan’s stance on partnerships and international relations is complete opposite of the above. This country is building its relationship with long term perspective and vision, highly values its reputation and any taken commitments, maintains equally high level partnerships with the all important global and regional players and has a lot to offer and ask for from all of them.
For example, Azerbaijan is one of just a few countries which has never revised its Product Sharing Agreements, even though it had opportunity and rights to do it. Azerbaijan is stable in its support to the US war on terrorism, makes invaluable contribution to guaranteeing energy security of Europe and Israel, does not any foreign military bases on its soil, which seems to satisfy even Russia, the country with which it builts good partnership relations in many areas and whose culture and language are well regarded and maintained. Azerbaijan has very close relationship with Turkey, saves Georgia in cold winters with no pre-conditions and is not using its diaspora as destabilizing factor, again, in stark contrast with Armenia.
And this is the reason why the President of Russia Vladimir Putin visited Baku with large high level delegation to meet Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and sign range agreements on equal cooperation in various areas, but, when it comes to the President of Armenia, he summons Serzh Sargsyan hastily to Moscow just to release have a page statement shortly after, which mundanely informs the world about such an unimportant issue as Armenia giving up an important part of its sovereignty or whatever was left of it.
It is really important for Azerbaijan and Azerbaijanis around the world to bring these fact to the attention of public opinion, press, politicians in the US, EU, Russia and other countries.