![A zoomed in view of the waterfront promenade running along the shores of the Caspian Sea, Baku, Azerbaijan. [Photo via Getty Images]](https://aze.media/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/GettyImages-1178395339-e1723534011484-860x482.webp)
Blinken’s “telephone diplomacy” confirms once again that Azerbaijan’s firm and uncompromising reaction to the meeting scheduled for April 5 has seriously worried Washington.
Baku has been able to communicate to its partners in Washington, and not only in Washington, that they cannot “cuddle” with Armenia without consequences for their relations with Azerbaijan. Especially if these “cuddles” involve military assistance to Armenia, where the plans of military revanche and re-occupation of Azerbaijani territories are still on the agenda, and the authorities are promoting the myth of “Azerbaijani threat” in every possible way.
And now the US Secretary of State called the President of Azerbaijan with an understandable purpose: to minimize the fallout of the April 5 meeting, which has not yet taken place—if you are irked by the phrase “explain himself”.
Moreover, both Peter Stano and Matthew Miller tried yesterday to convince Azerbaijan “not to worry”. It did not work. They had to use “heavy artillery”: not so long ago it was hard to imagine that Blinken would call the capital of Azerbaijan to “normalize relations”.
But calls alone were not enough: Baku insists on postponing the meeting. And it is all the more clear how even hints of providing “security guarantees” to Armenia will affect the relations between the United States and Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan has every reason to be suspicious. The “status quo” that existed in the region practically up to the 44-day war, with the occupation of 20% of Azerbaijani territory and a million internally displaced persons, seemed to suit the external players quite well. But now that President Ilham Aliyev has “broken the game” of the external forces and liberated Azerbaijani territories with military force, too many people began to worry. It is not that they are so concerned about the fate of Armenia: the conflict was a convenient tool for political manipulation.
However, whether Yerevan should pin all its hopes on these guarantees is a rhetorical question. The fate of Ukraine or, more precisely, Syria awaits Armenia, which for 30 years has been Russia’s outpost against the West, and which is now willing to take on the role of the West’s tool and open a second front against Russia.
The West is unlikely to “save” Armenia should things get really hot. Especially if Donald Trump wins the presidential election in the United States. Russia will not silently watch Pashinyan’s “maneuvers”. And these games are not only Yerevan’s problem. This, in turn, presents many countries of the region with a choice, first of all Georgia, where the authorities should make up their minds about the extent to which they are ready to get involved in the peculiar games of the West, because in this situation it makes much more sense for the country to be close with Azerbaijan and Türkiye: as the saying goes, better a neighbor nearby than a relative far away. Azerbaijan knows its interests and defends them firmly and consistently. Moreover, it would make more sense for the “extra-regional forces”, too, to place their stakes on the promotion of the peace process, rather than continue to fuel revanchist sentiments in Armenia. The ball is in their court now.
