The year 1994 is considered a landmark year for Azerbaijan. Despite the military defeat in the Artsakh war, it secured a strategic victory, avoiding capitulation and all ensuing consequences. The Armenian side accepted the ceasefire regime by signing the Bishkek Protocol, thus giving Baku the opportunity to prepare for revenge. Heydar Aliyev succeeded in marketing his country’s energy potential to the leading global powers (Russia, Great Britain, the United States, Japan) who convinced Armenians that there was no need to capitalise on their military success. The then leadership in Yerevan agreed to this quite easily without making any substantive demands in return. In the same year, with the signing of the “Contract of the Century”, the Azerbaijani side was able to build an international lobbying network. The tangible results of the next 25 years have demonstrated how successful they have been in accomplishing this.
For a series of objective reasons, the United States became the primary focus of the Azerbaijani lobbying efforts. In the late 80s and early 90s, Washington staked on Armenia, taking into account the large Armenian community in the country. There was a considerable Armenian component in the Democratic and Republican parties represented by influential politicians and philanthropists. The then Governor of California George Deukmejian was among the top three most influential Republicans in the nation. In 1988, he declined George Bush Sr.’s offer to run as a vice-presidential candidate in the presidential election. This decision was due to his preparations for the same role in the next election cycle (1996) with another Republican, Senator Bob Dole, an outspoken friend and the most powerful lobbyist for Armenian interests in Washington.
The Oil Contract of the Century with Azerbaijan, signed during the Democrat Bill Clinton’s administration (who was an active supporter of Heydar Aliyev’s agenda), altered the balance of power. American oil corporations sharply reduced their contributions to the Grand Old Party (Republicans), backing the Democrats. The redistribution of inner donor flows effectively predetermined the fate of the 1996 presidential campaign. Having realised the futility of the struggle, Deukmejian decided to terminate his political career. Dole followed suit, having lost to Clinton. The Arkansas-based Clinton clan had no links to Armenians, unlike the Massachusetts-Delaware Democratic Kennedy faction, which featured Senators Edward Kennedy, Joseph Biden, and John Kerry as members. During the Clinton’s second term, the administration sought to pass a repeal of the Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, which presented impediments to expanding U.S.-Azerbaijani political and economic dialogue. Representatives of the oil and oilfield services lobby succeeded in passing the Silk Road Strategy Act through Congress in 1999, which enabled the U.S. president to unilaterally lift the restrictions imposed under Section 907.
This legal loophole was seized by the next president, George W. Bush, who attributed his decision to Azerbaijan’s strategic role in the combat against terrorism. Having deftly exploited the US counter-terrorism operation in Afghanistan, Baku managed to forge close bonds with another powerful lobby group – the military and intelligence lobby (which became the second layer of the Azerbaijani lobby). Azerbaijan, unlike Armenia, adopted a path of geopolitical diversification, playing a complex, multi-level, and meaningful game with all the centres of power. Baku offered itself to the Atlantic world not only as an alternative source of energy resources, but also as an ally in the long-term strategy of containing Russia and Iran, as well as in the fight against Islamic fundamentalism. Yerevan, on the other hand, has turned a blind eye to the increasing Azerbaijani factor and was content with Moscow’s security umbrella, while only nominally engaging in some Western projects.
Facing no resistance, Aliyev Sr. and afterwards his heir managed to easily trade the image of Armenia as a careless and dependent country, recklessly devoted to Russia and Iran. They succeeded in gravely shifting the balance of geostrategic perception in their favour. No wonder that deepening military and technical cooperation with Azerbaijan has been lobbied for by such prominent figures in American foreign policy as Henry Kissinger (Secretary of State in the Nixon administration), Zbigniew Brzezinski (National Security Advisor in the Carter administration), Dick Cheney (Vice President under Bush Jr.), Leon Panetta ( Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and Secretary of Defense in the Obama administration) and Robert Gates (Secretary of Defense in the Bush Jr. administration). Moscow, witnessing Azerbaijan’s rapid rapprochement with the West, realized the need to step up. But this was already a dialogue among equal partners, as Baku had something to offer and manipulate. The strategy worked, and it is apparent that the process of resetting Russian-Azerbaijani relations a priori came at the expense of Armenian interests, since Moscow’s perception was based on the formula that Armenia “is not going anywhere”.
The Azerbaijani lobby’s third layer comes with Israel. Baku promised Tel Aviv energy resources, investments in high technologies, protection of the Azerbaijan’s Jewish community and preservation of its cultural and historical heritage. A significant role was played by the stance of predominantly Shia Azerbaijan in favour of preserving a secular mode of living in the country, which implied watchful relations with neighbouring Iran, the historical master of much of the modern Azerbaijan’s territory. In return, the Israelis began supplying Azerbaijan with advanced weaponry, opened up opportunities for its personnel instruction and training at its elite schools, and began providing lobbying services of its organizations in Europe, Russia, and the United States.
And the final layer is the direct lobbying. On average, Azerbaijan allocates more than 1.5 million dollars a year to lobbying activities, while Armenia has spent only 55,000 dollars in the last three years. Certainly, the amounts going towards direct lobbying do not reveal the efficiency of lobbying activities, but they are not negligible and are indicative. Especially if we consider that Pashinyan’s government granted about 6 million dollars to arrange the American rapper Snoop Dogg’s concert in 2023.
In just 25 years Azerbaijan has managed to build a multi-layered lobbying machine from scratch, which effectively protects the interests of both the country and the Aliyev clan personally. The results speak for themselves. The absence of any significant sanctions and lack of any accountability for the aggression against Artsakh and the expulsion of the entire Armenian population (150,000 people), the destruction of the Armenian cultural and religious heritage, the occupation of Armenian territories, and escalating ultimatum demands. The White House is not restraining Baku or even reanimating Section 907 as a symbolic gesture to demonstrate its stance on the actual ethnic cleansing of the Armenian population that had lived in their historical land for centuries. To the contrary, economic, energy and military and technological dialogue is steadily intensifying. Yet all this is taking place under the passive eye of the Yerevan-based authorities and in conjunction with the degeneration of what was once perceived as the Armenian lobby.
