Introductory Note: President Levon Ter-Petrosyan (LTP) has a position paper for the resolution of the Karabakh conflict, called “War or Peace, Time to Get Serious”. This article is a response to Ter-Petrosyan’s thesis. Norayr Eblighatian
This document is being marketed as a vindication about LTP’s attempt at negotiations with Azerbaijan. The key point is “I told you so, but no-one listened”; and the consequences of the palace coup resulted in a belligerent policy that ended in disaster.
I believe this is a false narrative and a weak attempt at shirking personal responsibility. I should hasten to add that the Karabakh Movement leadership (all members) are responsible for the disaster that followed.
Internal Factors
The movement was started with no exit strategy. The Bishkek Protocol on May 5, 1995 was a provisional ceasefire agreement. In other words, the Armenian side agreed on a ceasefire, even though it was on the winning side, with no final peace agreement.
Following the ceasefire, both sides were expected to prepare for another round(s) of fighting that would end the war decisively. The Azeris immediately started preparations:
· They consolidated their leadership, and
· Started a serious rearmament process. It is public knowledge that on average, the military budget of Azerbaijan was six times that of Armenia during the years between the two Karabakh wars.
Meanwhile the Karabakh leadership:
· Took control of the leadership of the republic of Armenia, and
· Engaged in oligarchic activities; i.e. the fire sale of the industrial base left by the Soviet Union. Without an industrial base, Armenia went back to an agrarian society and a natural resource extraction economy.
We are to believe that in November, 1997, LTP came up with a proposal of land-for-peace negotiations. But negotiations assume two sides that would talk and come up with a mutually agreed upon conclusion.
LTP and the Karabakh Movement leadership did not have anyone to negotiate with. The Azeris had already decided to resolve this issue by force (the same way as they lost the territory by force). The subsequent Minsk negotiations reinforce the idea that the Azeris were pursuing time-to-rearm policy as opposed to a serious bargaining approach.
The Palace coup reinforces the conclusion that the Karabakh Movement leadership, as a group, did not have a coherent strategy:
1. For continuing the fighting to the end, i.e. the jure liberation of Karabakh, and
2. The unification of Karabakh with Armenia.
It was the unification with Armenia resolution that started the conflict. LTP and his comrades did not pursue that key political objective, even though they were in power both in Armenia and Karabakh.
Why did they start the war, without a clear objective of attaining a peace treaty with Azerbaijan and did not pursue the unification with the republic of Armenia?
The unification with Armenia had two aspects:
· The jure unification, i.e. a resolution by the Armenian republic parliament declaring Karabakh as an integral part of the territory of the Armenian republic.
· The facto unification by populating the region of Lachin. Building two roads to Karabakh does not secure the unification; however, populating Lachin and settling more families in Karabakh makes it harder to invade.
The Karabakh Movement leaders also point the finger at the public that was in furor at the thought of concessions. The simple fact is that it is the responsibility of the leadership to shape the expectations of the masses. In other words, they unleashed expectation with their rhetoric that they could not control. Eventually by not pursuing their proclaimed objectives, both the public at large and their second echelon leadership turned against them.
One of the key failures of LTP himself is that he refused to work with the Diaspora, and chose to pursue a solo policy of rule (both in Armenia and in Karabakh). Personal animosities led to a tunnel vision and hindered a broad coalition, which was essential for the monumental task that had started. Without the Diaspora, Armenia simply did not have the means to pursue its strategic objectives.
My opinion is that the Karabakh leadership belonged to a regional Soviet apparatchik class, with no experience of international politics. These were KGB trained administrators that did not have either the experience or the vision to accomplish the political goals of their movement. They were transformed into petty dictators who were more concerned about keeping their fiefdom than the liberation of Karabakh.
And now, they are diffusing the blame, by a he-said-she-said narrative.
· One of them pushes the I-told-you-so story.
· The other wants us to believe that international relations are an exercise of personal friendships with other powerful leaders. He-is-a-friend-of-mine syndrome.
· Others blame Russia for interfering in Armenian sovereignty and not letting the Armenian leadership to pursue its own objectives. The adherents of this narrative do not realize that they reveal a lack of sovereignty of ‘Independent’ Armenia.
· Still others blame the ‘Turkic mindset’, instead of being introspective. The Turks are the bad guys.
The sad phenomenon is that these narratives are repeated so many times that the public starts believing that there must be an element of truth in them. This phenomenon seems to be the real motivation of these false narratives. Spreading doubt and confusion with the hope that history might be tempted to record them as extenuating circumstances.
External Factors
One of the key assumptions of LTPs land-for-peace negotiation strategy is that there is a willing negotiating party.
My thesis is that assumption is false.
After stopping the bleeding (Bishkek Protocol of May, 1995), Azeris had to assess the situation, and one of the key conclusions was that time was on their side, and this setback can be overcome.
The first step was the consolidation of leadership. Heydar Aliev was installed as the president of Azerbaijan in 1993 after a military coup. He was a high-ranking KGB officer and even though he was despotic, he was ruthlessly efficient. As a side note, one can mention that even as late as October 1999, the Armenian side was divided (the killing of Vazken Sargsyan, Karen Demirchyan and six others in the Armenian Parliament).
The second step was the initiation of oil diplomacy. In international circles the Karabakh issue was described as two competing claims:
· Self determination of a region with minority Armenians, vs.
· Territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.
Aliev started advocating the thesis of territorial integrity and by the second Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020, Azeri diplomacy had prevailed. The majority of international actors were swayed by the territorial integrity argument. We had already lost the case, and were desperately searching for ‘friends’ and saviors.
The third step was to bolster the Azeri armed forces. As mentioned before, between the first and the second Nagorno-Karabakh war, Azerbaijan spent 6 to 1 on military preparedness compared to Armenia.
In addition to purchasing the latest hardware and getting trained on it, there was a difference in strategy:
· The Armenians adopted a Maginot line strategy.
· The Azerbaijanis adopted a test-and-learn agile strategy which included ISTAR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance) coupled with drone and artillery targeting and special operations forces (SOF).
Test-and-Learn operations were conducted:
· On the border of Karabakh (during the one-to-four-day skirmishes).
· While Turkey tested and fine-tuned their Bayraktar drones in the Syrian war theatre.
The irony is that Armenians have a large community in Syria that could have easily gathered information on the Bayraktar drones, before they were utilized to target our youth in 2020.
The Armenian General Staff was expecting large columns of tanks and armor, while Azeri special forces outmaneuvered the defensive lines and reached Shushi.
In conclusion, President Ter-Petrosyan’s attempt at vindicating himself and pointing the finger at his collaborators is not convincing.
