Unions and alliances are the most slippery and controversial topic in international relations. It is especially sensitive for small countries that have chosen the path of total dependence on a stronger player who “should” ensure their security. For now, let us leave aside the philosophical question of what “should” means in real politics and try to understand what alliance is and how it differs from the more common and primitive forms, dependency and patronage. There is no and cannot be a clear and universal definition, because it will vary greatly depending on the historical era, the actors entering into these relations, and the purpose for which this action is carried out.
On this basis, it will be correct to dwell on the fact that alliance is a temporary association of two equal actors to solve short- and medium-term tasks.
Two words are key in this definition: “temporary” and “equal”. There are two kinds of alliance: forced and voluntary. And in terms of nature, it can be political, commercial, military, technical, etc.
The alliance between Napoleon’s France and the Russian Empire was concluded at Tilsit in 1807 not by good will, but as a result of the Russian army’s defeat at Preussisch-Eylau and Friedland. Tsar Alexander least of all wanted to be Bonaparte’s ally, since the strategic interests of his empire required something else – the preservation of the trade alliance with Britain and a military alliance with Prussia and Austria-Hungary. But both emperors were happy to call it an alliance as they clearly recognized its forced and temporary nature. The Triple Alliance (one side of World War I) was born out of the League of the Three Emperors (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia) which transformed into the Dual Alliance – Germany and Austria-Hungary – against their recent ally, Russia. Later, Russia, France and Britain (longtime strategic adversaries) would form the Entente (the second side of WWI), joined by Italy, a member of the Triple Alliance. Such has been the nature of alliances in big politics since the Peloponnesian War of 431-404 BC. Nothing has changed. Unfortunately, there are no examples in history where two actors have been eternally and faithfully loyal to each other and to the commitments they made.
At a minimum because the category of “obligation” is always purely non-obligatory.
In discussions of alliances, one often hears of the United States-Israel example. But a cold-blooded understanding of this relationship requires taking several key variables into account. The first is the factor of alliance in American politics. A careful and special treatment of alliances was at the heart of the American victory in the War of Independence and the state creation. The works of Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison formed a different approach to understanding the phenomenon of alliances and unionism than the traditional European approach. Through this unique approach, the states have been able to create a historically unprecedented network of alliances spanning over all continents. Alliances are key to maintaining global leadership, with Israel playing a strategic role in a key part of the world – the Middle East. Japan and Taiwan have a similar role in Asia as does Poland in Eastern Europe. Therefore, Americans do not have the luxury of neglecting their commitments in a frequent, systematic, and clumsy manner.
The second variable is the Israeli (not to be confused with Jewish) lobby within America itself. At some point, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin came to realize that the global interests of the United States could change and the level of interest in Israel would drop dramatically. The reason for this was the policy of the Democratic President Jimmy Carter who spoke of the importance of maintaining a balance of power in the region and the need to moderate the geopolitical ambitions of Jerusalem. This is when the process of creating the Israeli lobby – a multidisciplinary and well-organized entity, whose organizer and source of strength is the Israeli state itself and the aristocratic minority it supports within the Diaspora itself – began. This complex lobbying structure does not target the Jewish communal majority (which is far from unified and extremely diverse), but American evangelicals, who number 100 million (35% of the total population of the country). They have succeeded in forging a strategic alliance with evangelical America through effective management of the scriptural meaning that the end of the tribulation period and the return of Jesus Christ will occur after the restoration of the Jewish people’s authority in the Holy Land.
During his administration, Begin most often communicated with influential preachers like Jerry Falwell, the most influential pastor of the 1970-1990s and spiritual advisor to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. During Israel’s military operation to destroy Iraq’s nuclear plant, Begin called Falwell first and only then Reagan. He knew that the pastor would do the necessary “preparatory work” with the president, senators and other right people.
It is no longer about regional geopolitics but about the art of using strategic actors that influence all spheres of their ally’s life domestically. It is about creating a deep system of mutual bonding and interdependence.
To some extent, it can be safely argued that Washington’s fulfillment of a significant part of its “allied obligations” to Israel is of an imposed nature and has nothing to do with Jewish conspiracy, Freemasonry, and even less with high feelings of morality, love, loyalty and duty. From a pragmatic point of view, the States should have supported the Arab world (26 states), which has an incomparably larger quantitative and resource base (oil, gas and so on). This is precisely the case when a small state outmaneuvered reality.
Israel is just doing its job well, since the alternative is for it to seek temporary patronage and as a result enslavement, reassignment or ruin.
The Second Karabakh War opened a great debate in the Armenian world as to how effective the alliance with Russia was. The very framing of the question is flawed, because the first thing to understand is whether it was an alliance at all. Russia is a major continental power that has been in search of a model of its civilizational and geopolitical existence since the collapse of the Soviet Empire. The very fact of being at this stage closes the question of whether it can be allied in the American model (which has been formed over a hundred years) at least in the medium term. This is not the Russian Empire with “Orthodoxy. Autocracy. Nationality” and not the Soviets with “Workers of the world, unite”, but something very complex and often self-contradictory (Eurasianism, Neo-Byzantism, Westernism, Slavophilism). A perfectly normal stage for newly constructing powers. In the United States, for more than ten years after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, there were wars between the ideological camps of federalists and confederalists, in France, revolutionaries who executed the king decided on the model of the new Republic in bloody squabbles. Nothing has changed except the actors, the sets and the speed of the game itself.
It was a moment when Armenia had all the opportunities to succeed: a special place in the history of Christianity, a large community within Russia, historical ties (positive and negative), close economic and industrial relations, and much more. In this short historical interval, Yerevan had to form a strategic Armenian component within the emerging Russian imperial meanings. The Armenian heritage in the history of the Russian state has a strategic character: from the factor of the Armenian Princess Anna from Byzantium, who was instrumental in Knyaz Vladimir’s decision to baptize Russia, to Loris-Melikov – Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire and father of the great transformations of Tsar Alexander II and Yakov Davtyan – founder of foreign intelligence (foreign department of the Cheka). This legacy was to become an integral part of building a policy of creating strategic interdependence with Russia.
Armenia itself, as a state, should have developed a national security strategy and foreign policy concept that would clearly and unambiguously describe its regional and global functionality (utility).
Instead, the Armenian side chose the path of patronage, erroneously or ignorantly mistaking it for alliance. Patronage implies that actor A (the strong one) protects ward B (the weak one) until it gets tired of it or until this protection requires a lot of effort, costs and resources. The difference between alliance and patronage is that in the first case the big player will sacrifice an “ally” (pawn) only in conditions of extremely high probability of achieving the final victory. The patron will do the same even to create the appearance of improving the position in a game where the probability of ultimate victory is at best 50/50.
Azerbaijan began building its line of influence in the West and East, realizing the great opportunities of the post-bipolar reality. Baku realized that in international relations only force gives birth to the right to be right quickly enough. And it was from the Armenian side that they gained this invaluable experience. In Russia, they have built a multi-layered system of influence using oil and gas, Turkic and Islamic factors. The lobbying whirlpool created by them sucked in various groups of influence, including a significant part of the local Armenian elite. It is hard to find an ethnic business elite that is as closely intertwined with the Azerbaijani lobby as the Armenian one. The three members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization – Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan – objectively have much more bilateral political and economic interests with Azerbaijan than with their formal “ally” in the military bloc – Armenia. The Armenian leadership tried to explain this by saying that all Eurasian projects are just another format of an alliance with Russia.
No one objects to such a simplistic position, but for Russia, the CSTO and the Eurasian Economic Union have never been an additional format for an alliance with Armenia. On the contrary – it is more about the alliance with Belarus, which has always been perceived as a civilizational part of the Russian world, and Kazakhstan, whose common border is the longest in the world.
Add to all of the above the Turkish factor, the importance of which for Russian foreign policy strategy (especially in Syria and Ukraine) has increased manifold over the past ten years. Yerevan did not just lose this most important front for itself – it did not even fight for it. The country lived by inertia, hoping to avoid the consequences of refusing to make its own decisions. With no national security strategy, no foreign policy concept, no roadmap for the strategic and professional repatriation of Armenians, no economic vision. It is hard not to agree with former Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who noted that the great tragedy of Armenians is that they have no politicians.
The western front was also a failure. The Armenian side did not set out to sabotage the oil “Contract of the Century”, failed to stop the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzrum oil pipeline projects, failed to block the U.S. Silk Road Act, which gave the George W. Bush administration carte blanche to freeze the 907th Amendment to the Freedom Support Act which prohibited the White House from providing any support to Azerbaijan.
Baku used everything in its fight against Armenia: oil, geography, transnational corporations, Turkey, Israel, the West and Russia. Armenians swallowed everything: the release of Ramil Safarov, who had axed Armenian officer Gurgen Margaryan in his sleep, Nazarbayev’s reading of Aliyev’s letter at the session on Armenia’s admission to the EAEU, the April 2016 aggression against Artsakh, etc.
As a result, the balance of strategic perception, which was on the Armenian side in the 90s, changed in favor of Azerbaijan. This is the reason for the tacit consent of the international community to the aggression against Artsakh, the expulsion of the entire Armenian population and the systematic destruction of Armenian architectural, cultural and religious heritage. They did this in the 21st century under the hundreds of cameras of the world’s leading media outlets without being punished. This is not at all an attempt to show how unfair the world of the big political game is, just a statement of bare facts. None of Armenia’s “allies” surrendered it, because it had no allies, and for thirty years it has done nothing to change that. None of the external players surrendered Artsakh, because you can’t surrender something that means nothing to you. Armenia and Artsakh were surrendered by their corrupt, shortsighted and self-confident leaders, who not only failed to understand how international relations work, but for the illusion of control and power they strangled their only natural ally – the Armenian community of many millions, whose qualitative potential is not inferior to that of the Jewish, Irish or Polish communities.
