Sergei Sargsyan Deputy Head of the Center for Political Studies, “Noravank” Foundation; Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Currently military and political situation round Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is mainly characterized by a general influence of the following factors: - Combat readiness and fighting capacity of the armed forces of the conflicting parties, sustaining of the acceptable balance of offensive/defensive arms between them; - Availability of a sufficient level of mobilization resources, including Diaspora potential by Armenia, NKR and Azerbaijan; - Military and technical, military and political cooperation of Armenia and Azerbaijan with neighboring states; their direct involvement in military and political blocks; - Tendency of development and availability\absence of threats to the domestic political situation in all three states; - Level of interest in the conflict on behalf of the regional and global powers; - Dynamics and efficiency of the negotiations process; - Condition and dynamics of economic development of Armenia, NKR and Azerbaijan; - Development of military and political situation in the Black Sea, Caspian and Middle East regions in general. Amid the situation when a process of accumulation of an experience of appearance of new states – from East Timor and Kosovo to Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Eritrea and South Sudan – with different levels of recognition, the Armenian sides of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict are sure that Azerbaijan will not manage to attain its separate advantages, and that time is not on Azerbaijan’s side either. This is also proved by drastic changes in the attitude towards NKC of a wide range of international organizations which previously gave absolute preference to the principle of a territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and did not go into judicial details of appearance of Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, which proceeded in compliance with the existing laws in the period of collapse of the USSR. Such a tendency is among other factors which are conditioned by the dynamics of the development of domestic political situation in Azerbaijan which is on the one hand characterized by the public discontent by the authoritarian state control methods and on the other hand by the intensification of the process of Islamization of the society. The latter factor make Azerbaijan more vulnerable to the influence of the “wave of revolutions” coming from the Muslim countries of Africa and Middle East, because these states, under the availability of definite social and cultural, ethnic-national, social-economic and public and political differences, are united by the practice of using the mobilization potential of the so-called “Muslim street” – most socially unprotected part of the population which is more exposed to the reception of the Islamist propaganda as an alternative to the ideology of the ruling regime. The current interests of the key actors of the global politics, which are in variance to a large extent, due to a number of reasons objectively promote non-admission of initiating a force solution of the conflict by Azerbaijan. For the EU Azerbaijan is of some interest first of all as a source of energy carriers which can be alternative to the Russian, and as a corridor for gas and oil supply from the countries of Central Asia by-passing the territory of Russia. Its role has become even more important against the background of increasing instability in the countries of North Africa and Middle East and especially in the context of developments round Iran which was manifested in the form of imposing and gradual strengthening of economic and political sanctions, not to speak of a possibility of carrying out military operation against the Islamic Republic. The interest of the United States (and Israel) is supplemented by assigning a minor but important role to Azerbaijan in case of carrying out military operation against Iran. Russia is interested in close partner relations with Azerbaijan first of all in the context of mutually advantageous cooperation on the Caspian Sea, not-allowing the warships of non-Caspian states in its water zone, as well as prolonging the lease agreement of “Daryal” Information-analytical center (phased-array early warning radar) dislocated near the population center of Gabala, which expires in 2012 (it is rather of military and political than military and technical interest). But the prospects of such economic cooperation with the EU and military cooperation with the USA and Russia, directly depends on preservation of at least relative stability in the zone of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, maintaining of current status-quo and continuation of negotiation process within the framework of the OSCE Minks Group, which has been stated for many times on different levels and from different political grounds. It means that it depends on an absolute exclusion of military and political risks connected with escalation of the military actions in the zone of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Consequently, resumption of military actions by Azerbaijan may be initiated exclusively under the influence of growing threatening tendencies of the development of domestic political situation in the country, prospects of loosing a control over the country by the political elite of the Azerbaijani Republic and fear for their political, and may be even physical survival. It should be mentioned here that the scenario of escalation of tension in the zone of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can be triggered only by Azerbaijani party as resumption of military actions by Nagorno-Karabakh Republic: - firstly, will bring to the loss of a whole political and diplomatic groundwork and all the achievements of the Armenian diplomacy for recent 20 years on explanation, prospects and historical background of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict; - secondly, is irrational from the military and political viewpoints. There is no practical sense in changing current and established configuration of a confrontation line by the Armenian parties – today it is the most optimal for the minimization of the defense expenses – mobilization and technical. The balance of strength today is mainly provided due to the modern and consistent engineering infrastructure of deep layer in depth defense. Going beyond this line will cause undesirable and may be even catastrophic for Armenia and NKR rebalancing in favour of Azerbaijan. - thirdly, it differs drastically from the purpose of Yerevan and Stepanakert to obtain recognition of the independence of the NKR through a wide democratization of authorities and society, which sets the NKR apart from Azerbaijan with its tendency to strengthen authoritarian methods of control. - fourthly, resumption of military actions by Armenian parties will put a pressure on the economies of the Republic of Armenia and NKR, bring to a breakdown of social and economic and moral and psychological condition of the population. In order not to allow resulting of this situation in uncontrollable political processes, very forcible arguments of resumption of war should be presented; objective and real goals and tasks should be set, meanwhile today there are no such goals, tasks and motivation. Real distribution of political forces in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, free functioning of oppositional parties and movements, democratic way of transition of authority by means of elections (in contrast to dynastic moves, like in Azerbaijan), does not threaten domestic destabilization, create necessity of artificial shift of the attention of the Armenian society to the situation in the conflict zone or demand an occasion for strengthening of the control over the public and political life in the country under the precise of “being at war”. Besides, the Azerbaijani authorities need softening of the critics – on behalf of both nominal secular opposition and real gaining in weight Islamic or Islamist opposition – of their actions taken in the direction of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution by any means – both diplomatic and military – concerning not keeping their promises and factual useless embezzlement/spending of budget funds directed to the strengthening of the force structures of the state. Absence of any tangible results from the armaments race carried out for many years, sounding of numerous threats of using the armed forces for returning “20% of occupied territories”, without substantiating it by real strengthening of combating activity in the conflict zone, is considered by opposition as a direct indicator of non-efficiency of the incumbent authorities, large-scale plundering of the military budget on the state level and strengthening of the security agencies only for the reason of self-preservation of a ruling elite. At the same time escalation of tension in the conflict zone against the background of a continuing race of armaments, supplemented by the policy of promising a military revenge and enrooting of the image of the enemy-Armenian, is dangerous because very soon it may come out of control and spin up autonomously. According to the statement of the Minister of Defence of Nagorno-Karabakh Movses Hakobyan, Azerbaijani side mounts tension at the front line year after year: in the first six months of this year the number of cease fire regime violation cases by Azerbaijan has doubled as compared to the same period of last year and the number of diversions has quadrupled. In the first six months of the last year enemy arranged two diversions and this year four diversions have been registered1. Such provocations tend to obtain some military and political goals for both domestic and foreign political purposes, such as: - exposure of a level of battle readiness and combat effectiveness of the units of the Armed Forces of the NKR and Republic of Armenia; system of defence of the Army of Defence of the NKR, mode of the protection of the state frontier of the RA; density of firepower at lines of engineering facilities; tactics and operational flexibility of the units of the Army of Defence of Nagorno-Karabakh and Armed Forces of the RA; - writing off non-combat losses among the personnel of the armed forces of Azerbaijan for the sporadic minor actions and mutual exchange of fire; - presenting such combat activities to the Azerbaijani society as an indicator of military build-up and justification of mismatch of the stated rates of the economic growth of Azerbaijan with the real improvement of the social and economic condition of broad layers of population; - sustaining in the society of Azerbaijan a psychological “state of war”- revanchist organizations and individual activists state about the reduction of its level among the modern Azerbaijani youth; - justification of authoritarianism in domestic policy, restriction of the activity of the public and political, human rights organizations, freedom of expression as well as their possible stiffening in the future; - attraction/retention of the attention of the international community at the issue of pendency of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. At the same time the ruling elite in Azerbaijan should realize that the escalation of the military situation in the zone of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict plays into hand of the Islamic and Islamist opposition, because, first of all almost any scenario of development of the military actions, excluding a “Blitzkrieg”, will affect the stability of the ruling regime, and secondly, it will become a convenient occasion to turn for help to the Islamic countries, receiving financial support from them (in some cases bypassing official state structures) as well as recruitment for military actions human resources, which mostly adhere Islamist ideology and proved their mobility during the events in Libya and Syria in 2011-20122. The appeals of the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan to declare martial law in the country and declare jihad3 prove that the Islamist opposition in Azerbaijan has stirred up for recent years; in August it established the “Organization of Karabakh Resistance”4, which acts alongside with “secular” organizations of the same kind, and the most active and odious among them is the “Organization of Liberation of Karabakh”. Increase in number of the revanchist statements by the representatives of the Azerbaijani authorities, threats to withdraw from the negotiations process which is held through the intermediary of the OSCE Minsk group and to solve the conflict by military means caused the correction of the mode of military and technical cooperation not only with Azerbaijan but with Armenia either. Despite the concern expressed by Baku regarding fomenting tension in Azerbaijani-Iranian relations and using it as a pretext for strike heavy arms build up, a tendency of tightening of control over the stock-list of the arms and military equipments tap to Azerbaijan can be observed. The latest example is the decision of the Department of State of the United States to remove Azerbaijan from the list of countries eligible to purchase American military equipment, which was taken on the assumption of justified anxiety that it might be used against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh5. And alternatively, possible negative aftermaths in case of increasing military and technical imbalance between Armenian and Azerbaijani conflicting parties resulted in reconsideration of the restrictions to the stock list of heavy attacking arms tap to Armenia by Russia within the framework of Military and Technical partnership of the CSTO member countries and increasing of the level of military and political cooperation by two parties. Formation of deceptive feeling of military dominance in the atmosphere of military euphoria in isolation from the realities and tendencies of the regional and global policy should not tempt Azerbaijan to use power in the zone of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, at least taking into consideration a negative experience of the authorities of the neighboring Georgia which went through such psycho-emotional condition on the eve of war in August 2008. 1 http://panorama.am/ru/politics/2012/07/09/m-hakobyan/, 9 ???? 2012?. 2 ???????????? ????????? ?????? ????????????: ? ?????? ????? ? ???????? ?????? ?????????? ??? ??????? ????????????. http://www.salamnews.org/ru news/ read/8421/eksklyuziv-predsedatel-islamskoy-partii-azerbaydana-v-sluchae-voyni-v-karabaxe-dixad-obyazatelen-dlya-kajdogo-musulmanina/, 20 ??? 2010?. 3 «???????? ? ?????? ??????? ?????????», ????????? ????????? ?????? ????????????. http://www.zerkalo.az/2009-07-17/politics, 17 ???? 2009?. 4Azeri Press Agency, 02 ??????? 2010?., http://ru.apa.az/print.php?id=169031. 5 http://news.am/rus/news/111528.html, 29 ???? 2012?. “Globus” analytical journal, #8, 2012

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