Azerbaijan is the first and, by all accounts, the most important point of Jens Stoltenberg’s South Caucasus tour. Yes, unlike Georgia, Azerbaijan has not applied to join the alliance. Moreover, our country cannot do so due to geographical realities: to join NATO, a country must either have a border with a member country of the alliance or access to the open sea, which means that Baku will be able to talk about NATO membership either after Georgia joins the alliance or after Nakhchivan is unblocked.
However, Azerbaijan plays a key role in ensuring the energy security of many European countries, and Stoltenberg stated it bluntly: “I welcome that Azerbaijan is developing closer and closer ties with several NATO allies and that your country is playing a more and more important role in delivering gas, but also, in the future, electricity to key NATO allies in Europe. Therefore, you play an important role for the resilience of our societies.” Since the beginning of the Ukrainian war, Azerbaijan’s role in the European energy sector has increased manifold, and the importance of securing energy supplies even more so.
While Azerbaijan is not a NATO member and has not applied to join the alliance, by signing the Shusha Declaration, the country entered into an active military alliance with NATO member Türkiye and is bringing its army closer to the standards of the Turkish Armed Forces, which are NATO standards.
And, most importantly, the Azerbaijani army has already proved itself in action. Azerbaijan is the first country in the post-Soviet space to build a really powerful and combat-ready army from scratch. It is the first country that has been able to resolve a long-standing conflict and restore its territorial integrity by military means. And to win a victory that the world military-expert community simply did not believe was possible: Karabakh is a natural mountain fortress, storming it from the exposed plain is an almost impossible mission, but Azerbaijan accomplished this task brilliantly. Today, many aspects of the 44-day war, from the “drone revolution” to the storming of Shusha, are being studied in the world’s leading military academies. The anti-terrorist operation of September 19-20, 2023, when a 15,000-strong group of the Armenian Armed Forces was defeated in less than 24 hours, certainly did not escape the attention of experts.
Finally, for the first time in the entire post-Soviet space, the rule “the one who wins is the one who is helped by Moscow’s weapons” did not work. And NATO, no matter what they say, is first and foremost a military alliance, and only then an association of democratic states. It was not for nothing that the President of Azerbaijan, among other things, recalled the “good results” of reforms in the Azerbaijani Armed Forces and emphasized: “We are modernizing our defense capability and can demonstrate a high level of professionalism today.” Brussels understands perfectly well that it was Azerbaijan’s victory in Karabakh that completely reshaped the entire geopolitical balance of the South Caucasus. According to President Ilham Aliyev, the changes in our region may seem localized, but in fact they have broader implications.
And, finally, one more factor, which perhaps goes beyond the Azerbaijan-NATO agenda as such. Jens Stoltenberg’s visit to Azerbaijan took place almost immediately after the closing of the 11th Global Baku Forum, which was attended by current and retired “political heavyweights”, including, for example, President of the Munich Conference Foundation Council Wolfgang Ischinger, current heads of state and retired European Commissioners. These are the figures that come to the forefront when the situation has changed dramatically and it is necessary to find a new course and new formats of cooperation. The meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Türkiye in Baku and the visit of the new Prime Minister of Georgia Kobakhidze to our country took place almost at the same time. Lastly, at the same time, US President Joe Biden congratulated President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev on Novruz holiday and expressed his desire to develop cooperation, prioritizing energy over democracy and human rights. Azerbaijan is a strong, established state, capable of liberating its territories from invaders and solving economic and infrastructural problems at the level of the Middle Corridor and SCC, and the West is understandably interested in building a mutually beneficial partnership with Azerbaijan.
This is not just a reminder that we should not take the recent anti-Azerbaijani hysteria in the European Parliament as an absolute. Apparently, some excuses for experts, who were eager to talk about the mythical “crisis” of the West and almost predict that our country would join the union state of Russia and Belarus, once again fell flat on their faces. And the fact that they made this maneuver together with the members of the European Parliament does not change much in terms of reputational losses.
The question that should be asked is who was pulling the strings of the PACE leadership and MEPs ahead of the visit of NATO Secretary General to Azerbaijan.
Nurani
Translated from Minval.az
