That Armenia 2024 is not Armenia 2014 is obvious to all Armenians and most observers of world affairs. Ironically, it is a reality which continues to elude many think tankers in Washington.
Perhaps hatred of Armenia blinds them or, more likely, a desire to ingratiate themselves to Azerbaijan combined with the perquisites of close ties to the embassy, government, or state oil company. Intellectually, though, the idea that countries, regimes, and even leaders change orientation or flip alliances is neither new nor surprising. That is, after all, the goal of diplomacy.
Not every reorientation is good for the United States. A decade before Chinese Communists launched a revolution that led to their control across mainland China, Mao Zedong studied American history, lionized George Washington, and believed that the United States and China could cooperate to defeat Japan. He turned against Washington and joined the Chinese Communists after American realpolitik toward Japan led him to conclude China could not trust the United States. Nevertheless, more than two decades after Mao established the People’s Republic of China, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger capitalized on Washington and Beijing’s suspicion of the Soviet Union to drive a rapprochement that led the United States to recognize Communist China.
Read also
Nor was China the only example of diplomacy and world events leading to sudden reorientation. At the APRI Forum in New York, the Atlantic Council’s John Herbst likened Armenia’s pivot to the Ogaden a half century ago. It was an astute example. On September 12, 1974, the Derg, a group of Marxist military officers, overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie, head of a dynasty that ruled Ethiopia for more than 700 years. They unleashed a red terror and replaced U.S. patronage with Soviet support. Soviet leaders, who until then counted Somalia as its chief regional ally, hoped Ethiopia and Somalia might form a communist confederation in the Horn of Africa. It was not to be. In July 1977, Somali dictator Siad Barre invaded Ethiopia’s Somali-populated Ogaden region against Moscow’s wishes. When the Soviets refused to support him, he flipped Somalia’s Cold War orientation. Just years after a state visit to Moscow and preaching communist revolution alongside Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, Barre was sitting in the Oval Office with Ronald Reagan. The Berbera airport, built in the mid-1970s by Soviet engineers to support the Soviet Union’s heaviest bombers, almost overnight became the crown jewel of America’s own presence in Africa.
Somalia was never a good ally; genocidal dictatorships never are. Likewise, hindsight suggests throwing Taiwan under the bus was not a wise decision. Kissinger’s efforts in the Middle East were more positive, though. Egypt was the most powerful and populous Arab state and controlled the Suez Canal. When President Richard Nixon entered the White House, Egypt was a solid Soviet ally. After Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sided with Egypt’s Arab nationalist regime against Israel, France, and the United Kingdom for realpolitik reasons: Arabs outnumbered Jews in the Middle East.
Israel licked its wounds and withdrew, but Eisenhower’s gambit almost killed NATO before it even began. Nor did it win Washington Arab friends two years later during the Lebanon crisis. Nasser continued both to send Egyptians to study in the Soviet Union and purchase Soviet weaponry. On May 27, 1971, Nasser’s successor Anwar Sadat and Nikolay Podgorny, chairman of Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, signed a Soviet-Egyptian Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation. It would not last. Egypt abrogated the treaty in 1976 and expelled Soviet advisors, eventually welcoming Americans in their place. In the course of just a few years, Egypt switched from being Soviet ally to a pillar for American policy.
Armenia’s pivot is likewise not unique, nor did it begin with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s 2018 rise to power. Even prior, Armenia sought balance between Russia and the United States. In 2008, Armenia became the first country in the Caucasus to host NATO exercises, even as it continued to host Russian forces at Gyumri. In January 2014, Armenian peacekeepers exercised with the US Army in Germany to prepare for the Kosovo Force (KFOR) mission. In 2011, Armenia tripled its contingent in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan to 130; on a per capita basis, this meant Armenia’s contribution was four times that of Turkey and ten times that of France.
If Armenians look increasingly to the West, Russian President Vladimir Putin has no one to blame but himself given his repeated betrayals in the lead up to Azerbaijan’s conquest of Nagorno-Karabakh. Washington may relish Armenia’s pivot, especially after Pashinyan upstaged Putin at the November 2022 Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Summit in which he refused to sign its final declaration and subsequently when Pashinyan cancelled CSTO military drills in Armenia.
It is legitimate for Armenians to debate if their pivot has gone too far given lack of US guarantees and the likelihood that Putin will seek revenge against Armenia should he emerge victorious in Ukraine. Analysts are also right that Azerbaijan’s pivot to Russia and Iran occurred simultaneous to Armenia’s pivot to the West. What is counterfactual and dishonest, however, is the mantra repeated in some quarters in Washington that Armenia is in Russia’s pocket. This suggests either profound ignorance of history and world affairs or dishonesty motivated by other causes.
(Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum.)