Not much time is left before the Brussels meeting. The decision to hold it was made exactly six months ago, on October 6 last year in Spanish Granada, where, as we know, the Armenian Prime Minister went alone, without his Azerbaijani counterpart, who had initially been supposed to join another informal meeting on the sidelines of the summit in the format that was once (in June last year, to be exact) tested in Moldova, together with the President of the European Council Charles Michel, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz. But since prior to the Spanish summit Emmanuel Macron voiced his strong objection to Baku’s proposal to expand the format and include Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in it, the Azerbaijani head of state decided not to go to Granada.
So, the meeting to discuss Yerevan-Baku relations was held there without Azerbaijan, like a wedding without a groom. It was at that get-together that it was decided to speed up the divorce process and, to this end, to bring the Armenian Prime Minister to Brussels in about six months, to be joined by US Secretary of State Blinken.
They can swear all they want that this meeting is not aimed against third countries. These assurances are good for political newcomers, which, as it is easy to guess, Vladimir Putin and Ilham Aliyev are not. Pashinyan’s new “sugar daddies” are pulling Armenia out of the Kremlin’s orbit to pit it against Azerbaijan. Armenia would be happy to forget about the nightmare of Bayraktars in the sky, but the West has other plans: not to let Armenians forget, but instead to convince the Armenian leadership that it now has a reliable patron, so it is possible and necessary to take an irreconcilable position in the peace process.
We all remember well how such assurances ended in the past, in other countries as well: we remember what happened to Ukraine, Georgia, Syria and Libya. We can also recall examples from the interwar period, when the allies, without blinking an eye, merged Czechoslovakia, just to appease the aggressor. How did that work out?
A hundred years ago, the Allies also promised the First Armenian Republic their support, but how did it end? Armenia has always been and remains in the hands of the West a tool for achieving its own geopolitical goals. In Brussels, Pashinyan will be promised the moon again, but when the moment of truth comes and Yerevan, trusting the assurances of the West, will again turn against its neighbors, no one will come to its aid. The bitter disillusionment will follow once again.
It is better that Nikol Pashinyan understands this truth now, before he steps on the rake that is so familiar to his people: the guarantee of security for Armenians is good relations with neighbors, not the false patronage of faraway nations. They will be abandoned, as it has happened many times in history, and not a tear will be shed for them.
