- Last week, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey announced that they would expand military cooperation. Most will likely see this as fairly trivial and surely not important for Americans. However, it is actually a major event that impacts the broader region.
It means Eastern Europe and the United States’ long-term strategy to contain Russia’s resurgence is finally coming together. I have written extensively in the past decade about the Intermarium. It is the idea that for Eastern Europe to be secure from Russia, Germany, or any other country that could try to take over Europe, an alliance must extend from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.
Until now, the missing link has been Turkey. With Turkish-Russian relations sour, Turkey is now moving closer to the US and, therefore, to the Intermarium. It is using its regional power to bring Azerbaijan in as well.
This is not your typical announcement that another trivial defense agreement will be signed in a far-off place in the world. It is a clear sign that the Intermarium is emerging. This will affect American strategy in Europe, Russian national security, and Turkey’s role in the area.
Poor Armenia :( If they stick with Russia, they're fucked and could easily become a belligerent proxy, and if they pivot westward, the west isn't going to give them the time of day when it comes to their Azeri and Turkish problems. Both of them have no problem wiping Armenia off the map, and, given the ridiculous bullshit we keep letting Erdowan get away with sans repercussions, we seem to have gone all in on our "friendship" with Turkey. And Azeris have oil so... The Nagorno-Karabakh issue is either about to get solved, or get a lot worse, and then still get solved, but with a lot more dead Armenians. I will attending the protests here in the states.
What's the beef between the Azeri and Armenians? I don't know anything of their relations.
Geopolitically, it's another aftershock of sectarian blowback that stems from Stalin's carving up of central Asia and gaming ethnic enclaves against one another à la England's "Divide and Conquer" colonial strategy. Of course, this was only a recent interruption of centuries of ethnic clashes in the area. This is a decent summary of the current conflict and some history, admittedly done by an Azeri who is usually pretty reliable. Also, Armenians have a very politically active and media-savvy diaspora in the face of both Azeri and Turkish denials of the Armenian Genocide, including a recent and bizarre campaign in New York, and even an even more bleakly humorous attempt at Azeris to not only deny the Armenian Genocide, but to claim that they are, in fact, the victims of genocide themselves. Needless to say, it's about to get interesting. It's really frustrating watching us being forced to work with such shitty allies who, by the luck of the draw, happen to inhabit desirable regions in certain geopolitical atmospheres. I mean, there's no saints in this world, but, for fuck's sake this guy was greeted as a hero when he was extradited back to Azerbaijan after brutally decapitating an Armenian while participating in a NATO seminar...I have been a soldier for 14 years now, but I cannot give an answer whether I would kill if I were a civil person. I haven't thought on the question whether I would kill Armenians if I were civil [sic]. My job is to kill all, because until they live we will suffer.