Baku Calls on Washington To Pursue Balanced Policy in South Caucasus

The new U.S. administration's foreign policy for the South Caucasus region remains reportedly unclear, although three months have passed since President Joe Biden took office in January.

President Biden’s administration has not contacted Baku with regard to regional developments, including the latest war in Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region.

“We didn’t get any message from new administration so far,” Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev said last week during the international conference titled “New vision for South Caucasus: Post-conflict development and cooperation” in Baku.

“We don’t know what is the position of the US government on issue related to our region. I received a kind letter from President Biden with respect to Novruz holidays and I am grateful for that, but that was probably the only message of congratulations,” he added.

Azerbaijan’s top official is convinced that Washington’s new government should deliver a balanced foreign policy in the region with regard to its relationships with Armenia and Azerbaijan as a Minsk Group co-chairing country.

“Mr. Blinken called Pashinyan, I don’t know what they talked about, but again, the balance is disturbed. I am not saying that we are waiting for the call of Mr. Blinken. But it’s a co-chair country. They should at least behave in the way that is balanced,” President Aliyev explained.

The US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken has reportedly discussed the bilateral relations between Yerevan and Washington in a phone call with Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on March 6. Blinken said the US welcomed efforts aimed at achieving lasting peace in the region.

Earlier, in his confirmation hearings in January, Secretary Blinken said the US should boost the security of Armenia and step up its (the US) involvement in the Armenia-Azerbaijan negotiations to help prevent another war in the region. Blinken believed that the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan still needed a permanent settlement and the US would engage with key stakeholders to find it.

President Biden criticized the lack of such engagement at a time when Armenia and Azerbaijan were fighting in the autumn of 2020 in the Karabakh region. Washington’s actions were limited in urging the sides to stop fighting due to the fact that the war coincided with the US presidential election. In an October 28 statement, President Biden said his predecessor Donald Trump must “push for an immediate de-escalation.”

“The United States should be leading a diplomatic effort to end the fighting, together with our European partners, and push for international humanitarian assistance to end the suffering; under my administration that is exactly what we will do,” the statement read.

Since his swearing-in in January, neither President Biden nor other high-ranking officials in his administration contacted the Azerbaijani authorities to discuss the relationship and the post-war developments in the Karabakh region. Analysts believe that such stance of the White House does not match with its commitments as a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, the primary international organization co-led by Russia, France, and the US aimed at mediating the negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Daniel Baer, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former US ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), believes that the new US administration should see the South Caucasus region as an opportunity to demonstrate the value of serious US engagement.

Baer explains that more active US diplomacy in South Caucasus could guarantee more hope for progress. He is convinced that the Biden administration can take four steps to encourage Armenia and Azerbaijan toward lasting peace, including contribute to the implementation of the ceasefire, support humanitarian work and resettlement activities, drive a region-wide economic development strategy, and reinvigorate diplomacy.