Energy, security and democracy: the shifting US policy in Azerbaijan

Abstract

Since the 1990s, US policy in Azerbaijan has gone through several important shifts in the areas of energy, security and democracy promotion. How can we make sense of these decisive shifts in the orientation of US policy? In this paper, I identify major shifts in US policy in Azerbaijan based on relative weight given to energy, security and democracy issues. I divide US policy into four different time periods: 1994 to 2001, 2001 to 2007, 2007 to 2015 and 2015 to present. I analyze the changes that took place in US policy in the dimensions of energy, security and democracy. Then, I provide plausible explanations that can account for shifts in US policy. To do so, I utilize foreign policy analysis theory that focuses on domestic and international parameters that bring major foreign policy shifts. My explanation is not monocausal, and focuses on several factors that have influenced US policy in Azerbaijan.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Ronald Cox, Markus Thiel, and Mehmet Ulubasoglu for their feedback on previous versions of this paper and the reviewers for their very helpful reviews.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributor

Galib Bashirov is a PhD student and research assistant in political science, Deakin University. He does research on state-society relations in Azerbaijan and Turkey, US foreign policy in the Caspian Sea region, and Muslim immigrant mobilization in the West. His previous work has appeared in various journals including Democratization, Third World Quarterly and Central Asian Survey.

Notes

1 For example, then US Ambassador to Azerbaijan Anne Derse mentioned in 2008 that the US wants to ‘strengthen our partnership across the board, with strong dialogues on economics, energy, security and democracy’ (Today 2008). Recently, the State Department mentioned that the United States and Azerbaijan ‘work to promote European energy security, expand bilateral trade and investment, and combat terrorism and transnational threats. The United States is committed to strengthening democracy and promoting economic diversification in Azerbaijan’ (US Department of State 2018).

2 For example, following the 2005 elections, the State Department expressed positive remarks about the conduct of the elections, claiming that the elections “were an improvement over previous elections in some areas” (US Department of State 2005).

3 This policy was not limited to Azerbaijan as the US lifted sanctions that were placed on Armenia, India, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (now Montenegro and Serbia) to initiate bilateral military assistance in this period. It also waived additional military assistance restrictions to Thailand and Indonesia.

4 As late as in 2006, a Council on Foreign Relations report (Deutch and Schlesinger 2006, 53) pointed at ‘growing dependence on vulnerable energy infrastructures’ and urged the US to ‘address such infrastructure protection’ in Central Asia.

5 For more on the dynamics of political contention between Islamist elements and the Azerbaijani state, see Bashirov (2018).

6 Indeed, as the Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair (2010, 38) warned, the Rapprochement ‘has affected the delicate relationship between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and increases the risk of a renewed conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.”

7 For example, Obama did not convene any trilateral summits amongst the US, Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents. In contrast, Medvedev and Putin hosted more than a dozen such summits in the same period (Ambrosio 2011).

8 In the words of one US intelligence officer, ‘We frankly don’t care about human rights or democracy-building, or Israel and Turkey, or peace in Karabakh or Georgia, or even Azerbaijani energy. There is only one thing we really care about right now, and that is Afghanistan’ (quoted in Goltz 2010).

9 Named after Russian lawyer Sergey Magnitsky, the Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act is a bill passed by US Congress in 2012 as a means of punishing Russian officials for repression of dissent. Since 2016, it has gained global character (hence the Global Magnitsky Act), allowing the US government to introduce targeted sanctions against human rights abusers.

10 Instrumental in this endeavor was the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

11 These programs were the Global Shale Gas Initiative (GSGI) and the Energy Governance and Capacity initiative (EGCI).

12 This further demonstrated that rather than a geopolitical rivalry with Russia, US policy in the region followed its short-term interests, and rather than being intrinsic, values of each country in the region ‘resid[e] in how it comports with external interests,’ such as energy security and the war in Afghanistan (Denison 2012, 3).

13 The Freedom Agenda refers to the Bush Administration’s goal to actively promote American-style capitalist democracy to Middle Eastern countries via political, economic and military means (see Hassan 2013).

14 In light of these developments, some observers, such as Jarosiewicz (2016) have argued that ‘closer relations with Russia in fact mean a withdrawal from the previous vision of Azerbaijan’s foreign policy based on co-operation with the West and Turkey.’ However, Jarosiewicz’s account heavily exaggerates the level of newfound cooperation between Russia and Azerbaijan, and dismisses the ongoing cooperation between US and Azerbaijan. Jarosiewicz (2016, 4) refers to Putin’s visit to Baku in 2013, when agreements were signed on economic cooperation and Russian gas imports from Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijan’s purchasing of vast majority of its weaponry from Russia as evidence for her claims. However, the Aliyev regime had never given up on its objective of selling the vast majority of Azerbaijan’s natural gas to the EU, and the Russian gas imports had been on the agenda since the mid 2000s. That Azerbaijan agreed to sell a small portion of its gas to Russia does not constitute a blow to its aims in the SGC (Valiyev and Mamishova 2019). Regarding the weapons sales, the Aliyev regime is forced to deal with Russia in military purchases. Indeed, for over a decade, the Aliyev regime insisted on purchasing American weaponry, but due to Section 907 restrictions, and America’s general policy of not selling weapons to any party in the NK conflict, it could not purchase any significant weaponry from the US. Nonetheless, Azerbaijan still tried to diversify its weapon sources, establishing military cooperation with Israel in this period. Similarly, the limited economic cooperation that began in 2013 between Azerbaijan and Iran in the context of Ahmadinejad’s replacement with Rouhani and the economic recession in both countries does not amount to a shift in Azerbaijan’s international orientation, but rather a pragmatic decision to alleviate the effects of sudden drop in global energy prices. Moreover, pursuing a ‘multidimensional and balanced foreign policy’ has been the official line of the Azerbaijani government since the mid 1990s (Strakes 2010). In order to successfully pursue the balanced foreign policy, Azerbaijan needs to engage with the US. Indeed, Azerbaijan continues to participate in the Afghan mission and in various NATO training courses. Azerbaijan actually increased the number of its servicemen in Afghanistan from 94 to 120 in 2018 (See Azernews 2018). While the Azerbaijani establishment has been frustrated with the lack of US attention to security matters vital for Azerbaijani interests, most importantly, the NK conflict, as I have discussed in this paper, this amounts to a ‘disengagement,’ not a total break-up in bilateral relations.