Progressive realism and Perfidious Albion

Britain's foreign policy is woefully naive and self-defeating

Continued from yesterday

Mount Ararat is a holy site for Armenians, a peak that has long featured in nationalist literature and art and, to western Europeans from the Middle Ages, came to be associated with Noah’s Ark. Now lying inside Turkey, the great peak can be seen everywhere in the capital Yerevan, a constant reminder of what they lost and suffered when the six Armenian provinces of the Ottoman Empire were cleared of their population in the 1915 genocide.

Ararat still features on Armenia’s emblem, which has caused disputes with its neighbour in the past: during the early Soviet days, a Turkish representative requested that they remove the image, which to their mind was evidence of irredentist claims, to which his Armenian opposite number is said to have replied that the Turks have the Moon on their flag, and no one is accusing them of claiming that.

The geopolitics of the Transcaucasus region is quite confusing to outside observers, and does not line up along obvious lines. Armenia’s position depends on keeping onside one of the three empires which have traditionally ruled and still surround it – Iran, Turkey and Russia. Linguistically and culturally, they are closest to the Persians, while they are linked to Russia by their common faith, Armenia famously being the first country to embrace Christianity.

After the genocide terminated the Armenian people’s long history in Anatolia, Russian-controlled Eastern Armenia enjoyed a brief two years of independence from 1918, before being absorbed by the new Bolshevik Empire. Mention of the genocide was thereafter forbidden, as the Soviet Union enjoyed useful relations with the Turkish Republic, a policy which only changed after Turkey joined NATO and its troops fought (heroically) in the Korean War.

This remnant Armenian state, almost exactly the size of Wales - to use the accepted international measurement - gained independence again in 1991, starting its new life in a state of war and, as always, subject to the whim of greater powers. Russia initially provided protection, and peacekeepers, although in recent years it has gone cold as Armenia has looked west - a historic tendency of its intellectual elites.

Armenia is poor - although, despite its oil and gas riches, Azerbaijan is poorer still. Much of Yerevan is a pleasant jumble of the locally distinct multicolour red and yellow brick, which make its monasteries rather resemble Minecraft buildings from a distance. The centre of the city was built in the impressive early Soviet classical style, but the outskirts are full of crumbling communist-era housing blocks and even jerrycan buildings. Stray dogs are widespread, although (mercifully, as I’m terrified of rabies) vaccinated and docile. Still, the country has made great strides since the desperate early years of post-Soviet rule, when bread and fuel were sharply rationed, and has a growing IT sector, aided by the arrival of Russians fleeing Putin’s draft.

Armenia even has dreams of joining the EU – posters around Yerevan show the 12 gold stars besides a slogan in their distinctive script – but most appreciate that it is a pipe dream, even if neighbouring Georgia were to join (the only other ‘free or semi-free’ country in the region, as rated by Freedom House, and with which Armenia enjoys good relations). In reality they are prisoners of geography.

This dream is made more complicated by its frosty relations with Turkey. The peak of Mount Ararat especially dominates from Khor Virap, the monastery where St Gregory the Illuminator spent 14 years in a pit before convincing the king to embrace Christianity (the lesson here being: never give up on an argument).

Yet the nearby road remains closed, this despite the ‘football diplomacy’ of the 2000s, when the two heads of state attended each other’s matches, and things appeared to be getting better. In 2023 the border was temporarily opened when Armenia provided help for Turkish earthquake victims, but Ankara will not normalise relations until the dispute with Azerbaijan is resolved.

The Azeris are Turkic people, the two languages are almost mutually comprehensible, and Azeris call themselves ‘Turks’ in the wider sense. They are close allies, and Azerbaijan now benefits from Turkey’s leading position in military technology, especially in the field of drones, which proved crucial in the recent war.

For this reason, many Armenians are critical of recent governments and their inability to appreciate that they lack allies. Grigor Atanesian, writing in UnHerd, recently lamented the nationalist propaganda and ‘maximalist demands’ of a ‘deluded’ leadership, writing that ‘while Azerbaijan was buying Bayraktar drones and holding unprecedented drills with the Turkish army, Armenia was oblivious of the sorry state of its own military. Moreover, Armenians believed that they would find support in the West, encouraged by such signs as the country of the year title bestowed upon them by The Economist. In the worst case, they hoped that Russia, as their formal ally, would forgive their trespasses and come to their rescue.

‘In Turkey, Azerbaijan has a powerful and steadfast ally, something that Armenia lacks altogether. Whatever hopes it put in Russia, the fall of Karabakh buried them for good. But its dramatic turn to the West is a bold and dangerous gamble: overly dependent on Russian money, tourists, and natural gas, Armenia is playing a risky game.’

With Russia alienated, that leaves the third great empire, the Islamic Republic of Iran, as Armenia’s chief protector and guarantor. Iran might be a theocracy with a Trotskyite urge to spread revolution and fund brutal Arab proxies by the Mediterranean, but it is also perversely protective of established Christian minorities: Armenians and Assyrians have MPs in its parliament; Armenians travel to Iran on the annual pilgrimage of St Thaddeus. Iran, itself a complex patchwork of ethnicities, is also determined that international borders remain unchanged, and so will potentially act if Azerbaijan decides to extend its run of victories further, Armenia’s great fear.

Because Iran is Armenia’s friend, so Israel is not, and the home of the region’s other persecuted minority supplied Azerbaijan the drones and spyware which helped win the last war. The United States, although home to a large and wealthy Armenian community, is also essentially favourable to Azerbaijan for similarly anti-Iranian reasons. This leaves Armenia only with Iran and France, which also has a large Armenian diaspora and has historically seen itself as guardian of the region’s Christians. 

Britain, with its oil interests in Baku, was not even that sentimentally protective about persecuted Christians when it was Christian; today perfidious Albion, woefully naïve on international affairs in some areas, is brutally realist in others.

Indeed in a recent substack post, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy even seemed to endorse Azerbaijan's actions in Nagorno-Karabakh, writing in his substack ‘Progressive Realism’ that it had ‘been able to liberate territory it lost in the early 1990s’. His comments were criticised by Conservative MP Alicia Kearns, former chair of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, as well as US Congressman Brad Sherman, who called Lammy’s comments ‘a stain on UK foreign policy’. But aside from that, not many in the world actually care – well, apart from Mel Gibson.

Lammy’s comments were also criticised by Luis Moreno Ocampo, a former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, who wrote this month that Azerbaijan was guilty of ‘persecution and forced deportation’, asking ‘what is the difference between [what] Putin and Aliyev are accused of committing serious international crimes?’ 

The prosecutor also noted that ‘Azerbaijan’s government is actively promoting its green vision for Nagorno-Karabakh, designating the de-populated region as a “green energy zone”. BP was the first to seize this investment opportunity. Its regional director has praised Azerbaijan’s efforts to make Karabakh “the heart of sustainable development”. 

‘This begs the question: Is David Lammy’s endorsement of Azerbaijan’s “liberation” narrative part of a business deal? Allegations of international crimes are overlooked – and green investments in Azerbaijan are going to intensify climate change, not reduce it. More gravely, they will deny the fact that 23 ethnic Armenians, including democratically elected leaders, are victims of international crimes and incarcerated just a few kilometres from COP29 venues.’

Indeed the Baku regime has many friends in Britain, and not just Tony Blair: Teneo, the PR agency which represents Azerbaijan, employs a number of senior British politicians and political advisors from both the Conservative and Labour parties. Most of all BP, the oil company with a long history in the region, is heavily invested in Baku.

Dominic Lawson also cited the example of Tory MP Bob Blackman, ‘who has for many years been chairman of the Azerbaijan all-party parliamentary group — and more recently of the Conservative Party’s 1922 Committee, now organising the election of a party leader. 

‘In 2020, as Aliyev mounted an earlier attempt to seize Nagorno-Karabakh, Blackman seemed proud to declare that in Westminster he had often “put down positions on behalf of our good friends in Azerbaijan” and that “in these types of conflicts … whoever gets the best propaganda tends to grab the attention of the listeners and viewers”. In this respect, said Blackman, he had been “fed the information through the Azerbaijan embassy in the UK”, which had been “very helpful and proactive”.’

This might be realpolitik, but it comes with a cost. William Martin wrote in The Critic that: ‘The ultimate irony in throwing Armenia under the bus is that, in contrast to Azerbaijan, in recent years it is Armenia that has moved away from Russia and towards the West.’ Lammy and others are repeating past mistakes, ‘embedding an alliance with an autocratic and unreliable petro-dictator to fill a short-term economic need. When the next Azeri invasion of Armenia takes place — and it will — Britain will find itself stood on the sidelines watching yet another instance of ethnic cleansing, unable to respond.’

Indeed it seems very unlikely that Britain would respond. Unlike France or Germany, the United Kingdom does not even recognise the Armenian Genocide, afraid – in that simpering Foreign Office manner - of upsetting Turkey, as if the number one destination for British tourists is going to cut off ties in response. Ankara is important in the region, an extremely effective military player and check on some of the dangerous elements beyond, and a long-standing ally, but it is also led by an autocrat who uses increasingly alarming rhetoric.

This language, and the country’s approach to the past, is important. It was reading about the mass murder of Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians that Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin conceptualised the idea of genocide. After the Holocaust – with tragic irony, almost all of Lemkin’s family would be murdered – international organisations began to formulate ways to recognise, prevent and atone for the mass murder of a people. And one sign of approaching horror persistently identified is the increasing use of dehumanising language.

For the Turks to admit to the genocide would tarnish the founding fathers of the Republic, which went onto make many admirable reforms, and force the country to come to terms with the ethnic cleansing which preceded its establishment. (Next time Recep Tayyip Erdoğan weighs in on the Holy Land, it is worth pondering that, at the time of the Balfour Declaration, Istanbul had more Christians than Turks, mostly Greek and Armenian.)

But instead of following Germany’s lead, Turkey and its Turkic allies have increasingly ramped up the language of the past. Lawson noted that Aliyev had described ethnic Armenians as ‘barbarians and vandals’ infected by a ‘virus’ for which they ‘need to be treated’, reminiscent of the increasingly violent rhetoric used in the build-up to 1915. Since seizing territory, the Azeris have not only vandalised or demolished churches, but have even renamed streets after the perpetrators of the 1915 genocide, which they officially deny. Azerbaijan even produced a commemorative stamp to celebrate their military victory and the defeat of Covid, ‘portraying a man in a biohazard suit fumigating the area of Nagorno-Karabakh’ - a combination that can be described as unfortunate at best.

Peter Oborne also observed how Aliyev had called Armenia ‘a country … of no value’ and labelled Armenians ‘savages’, while Turkey’s Erdoğan has repeated the phrase ‘leftovers of the sword’ (kılıç artığı), a mocking term used to describe orphans of the genocide. These are the ‘liberators’ and ‘reliable partners’ of the British Government.

Perhaps more troubling, Azeri nationalists even try to recast Armenians as outsiders to the region, perhaps introduced by the Romans or originating in India - whereas Azeris are the real natives, descendants from the Caucasian Albanians (not to be confused with the Balkan Albanians). This is, to put it mildly, not the conventional historical consensus - Armenia is mentioned by Strabo and Pliny the Elder, and its historical roots are deep – but it’s the kind of historical language that has often preceded atrocities. In December 2022 Aliyev even declared: ‘They…  established a state for themselves in someone else’s land. Armenia was never present in this region before. Present-day Armenia is our land.’

This is especially concerning because, to complicate things further, to the west of Armenia lies the Azeri enclave of Nakhchivan, and the Armenians fear that their larger neighbour will next try to unite it by force. Militarily, Armenia would find it irresistible without Iran’s help – and the Iranians have rather given themselves quite enough to worry about.

Armenia and Azerbaijan are currently holding yet another round of peace talks, and have made some progress, including the delimitation of 12.7 km of border, which involved handing back four Azeri villages. But there is a long way to go, and the brutal reality is that Azerbaijan is strong and Armenia is weak and lacking allies. Many Armenians expect a fresh assault some time in 2025, perhaps the spring, once Baku has successfully buttered up the international community with lucrative public relations contracts and phoney climate conferences – and when that happens the West, and especially Britain, will not speak a word.