Guest Column: America's Ostensible Ally in Baku

Next week, Dmitry Medvedev travels to Japan for his first G-8 summit as president of Russia. But before that, he is on a three-day trip to Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. If the West hasn't taken note of that, it should -- Vladimir Putin and now Medvedev have neatly cemented strong relationships with the oil- and natural gas-rich Caspian countries of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, nations that during the 1990s the U.S. sought to bring into the Western fold. These countries continue to be strategically important, both because of the tight energy supply, and because of the energy independence they can provide to Europe. In an email exchange, my friend Tom de Waal -- co-author of the classic Chechnya, and author of the trenchant Black Garden -- told me that in The Oil and the Glory I overplayed Azerbaijan's alienation from Russia. His argument was compelling, and I asked him to expand it into a guest column. The result follows.

By Tom de Waal

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev arrives in Baku today.

In the West, there is a widespread assumption that Azerbaijan is an ally, and in the same anti-Russian camp as Georgia. I think that is a misperception. Azerbaijan is now developing a foreign policy of “complementarity,” which used to be the aspiration of the Armenians – be on good terms with everybody and get the best out of everybody. The model here is Kazakhstan, rather than Georgia.

Actually this was always the case. I suspect the Azerbaijanis have always been good at delivering the message in Washington, “You are our main ally and friend” and then going to Moscow and repeating the same refrain. Heydar Aliyev, the first post-Soviet Azerbaijani president (and father of the current president), was careful to keep good relations with Russia; before he talked seriously to Western partners about the non-Russian Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline, he got a Russian oil pipeline in place – the so-called Early Oil line from Baku to Novorossiisk. Aliyev also wanted to give the Iranians a stake in the offshore Azerbaijani oil consortium, known as AIOC, but was of course over-ruled by the Americans. Aliyev kept his good contacts in Moscow, but was held back by Boris Yeltsin’s personal antipathy to him -- although he did successfully bury the hatchet with another Gorbachev-era reformer who had been his enemy in the Politburo, Eduard Shevardnadze.

Once Vladimir Putin came to power, Aliyev made it a strategic priority to rebuild relations with Russia. Aliyev was very successfully at charming the Putin Kremlin, and his daughter, Sevil, made a useful marriage with a well-connected Moscow Azerbaijani, Mahmud Mammadquliyev. The elite-level relationship has deepened under his son, Ilham Aliyev.

Medvedev, with his background as former chairman of Gazprom, the Russian natural gas giant, now speaks the same language of money and energy as the Azerbaijani elite. They must find it a relief not to have to bother with all that talk of democratization and human rights that enters conversations with Western politicians.

The Georgians enjoy the access they get in Washington but I wonder if they secretly envy the lobbying power in Russia of people like Vagit Alekperov, the Azerbaijani chairman of Lukoil, who have made sure that Azerbaijan doesn’t suffer the kind of boycotts, visa bans and border closures that the Georgians do.

The price for Azerbaijan is that it will not pursue NATO membership, which would alienate Russia, but I believe that is not a big priority for the country’s elite. The Azerbaijanis now feel secure enough because of their vast and growing oil wealth. Moreover, NATO standardization would also threaten to bring unwelcome transparency to the notoriously corrupt Azerbaijani armed forces.

This is not a love-match but a marriage of interests—as indeed is the Azerbaijani-U.S. relationship. Both Baku and Moscow are still capable of actions that hurt ordinary people:

In Azerbaijan, the authorities have needlessly banned the re-broadcasting of Russian television channels, barring Russian-speaking pensioners who cannot afford satellite television from their only form of entertainment; in Russia, the authorities have played to a xenophobic constituency by stopping Azeris from trading at markets. The newspaper commentariats in both countries continue to exchange hostile remarks, and men like former Azeri presidential adviser Vafa Guluzade continue to blame all of the country’s ills on the Russians.

But on an elite level, there are plenty of common interests. And consider also an opinion poll conducted by Azerbaijani political analyst Rasim Musabekov in Azerbaijan in February 2008.

Asked to name the three nations friendliest to Azerbaijan, 89% of Musabekov’s respondents unsurprisingly named Turkey. But Russia came in second place with a 20% vote of approval, well ahead of the United States, which was named by 5.7%, just behind Iran and on the same level as Ukraine.

This suggests that, on the street level, Russia and Russians remain popular with ordinary Azeris. They are still on the same wavelength in a way that Americans or Europeans will never be.

Russia: Note to Presidential Candidates

This week's U.S. reversal on Iranian nuclear aims is a wake-up call on multiple fronts for those who will run American foreign policy for the next few years.

Among them is this: Vladimir Putin isn't a simple gadfly. Instead, he's one of the most important leaders the U.S. can cultivate over the next few years. Why? Because he's engaging and challenging the U.S. on issues that both countries care about, and happens to get it right -- and the U.S. wrong -- at important times.

As we learned this week, Iran is one. For years the U.S. tried to stampede him into supporting ever-escalating sanctions, leading to possible war, against Iran. But he resisted, asserting that President Bush's claims about Iran's nuclear weapons capability were overblown, and according to the new U.S. intelligence estimate it is Putin's judgment that was correct.

The new Iran intelligence highlights another needed correction: Putin in fact isn't inaccurate -- nor belligerent -- when he asserts that the U.S. presumes to know the only way on foreign policy.

U.S. policy on Russia currently amounts to this: You hurt my feelings.

It would be better to focus on issues, and the main one is energy, the foundation of Russian -- and Putin's -- power, how he's asserting Moscow's prerogatives in Europe and elsewhere.

As readers of this blog know, I think that one of the most potent instruments of power in Europe today is control of the flow of oil and natural gas. Putin has learned the lesson of the momentous U.S. foreign policy triumph last year with the completion of the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline and is conducting his own, much more ambitious pipeline policy.

Putin's strategy is market-oriented -- to cement and increase Russia's current control of 30% of Europe's natural gas market. It so happens, in my opinion, that that aim is incompatible with European and U.S. interests in a more diversified natural gas supply so that no one can dictate terms.

The U.S. is attempting to counter the Russian pipeline thrust, but is late to the game. U.S. energy bureaucrats led by Steven Mann are meeting in Sofia tomorrow and Friday to talk over how the U.S. can polish its strategy, and it'll be interesting to know the outcome.

I personally think that the new intelligence assessment on Iran -- like the previous one -- sounds too smugly certain. Anyone who has read Tim Weiner's excellent Legacy of Ashes can see that the intelligence business is barely manageable at best, like herding cats as the saying goes. But the fact that the intelligence services did not have rock-hard evidence before on Iran's intentions gives little comfort to those reading this week's abrupt, contrary assertions.

And it's equally discomfiting to those who have watched American policy on Russia amount to finger-pointing.

Photo: a2gemma
Rights: Creative Commons