Meltdown In Armenia Demands Reassessment, Redirection Of U.S. Policy In The Caspian Basin

(Washington, D.C.): The apparent theft
of the election in Armenia by a
government increasingly indifferent to
the rights of its own people and aligned
with Moscow and Tehran should be a
wake-up call for policy-makers in
Washington and elsewhere in the West:
While the handwriting has been on the
wall for many months, it is now
indisputably clear that an imbalanced
U.S. policy toward the Caspian Basin has
done immense damage to American strategic
and economic interests — some of which
may be irreparable. The United States
simply cannot any longer afford to
accommodate a domestic constituency
determined to give preferential treatment
to Armenia at the expense of a secular,
Western-oriented Muslim Azerbaijan that
is America’s natural partner in the
region.

As the attached
editorial published in today’s Washington
Post makes clear, the Armenian
government of Levon Ter-Petrossian has
mutated into an increasingly
authoritarian and despotic regime:

“…More than a year ago,
[Ter-Petrossian] started down the
slope toward rule by Diktat,
banning a major opposition party and
gagging much of the press.
Parliamentary elections last year
were widely condemned for violations
of fairness….According to
international observers, the vote [in
the just-completed presidential
election] was marred by ‘significant
and serious breaches in the
law’…leaving the legitimacy of
[Ter-Petrossian’s] victory in strong
doubt.”

Worse yet, the Armenian government
employed brutal repression to silence
legitimate, peaceful protests of
Ter-Petrossian’s election fraud. As the Post
put it: “…The incumbent has sent
troops and tanks into the capital,
imposing a virtual state of emergency.
Opposition deputies have been beaten and
kicked out of parliament. Troops have
stormed into opposition party
headquarters and shut them down.”

That this is occurring in a country
that receives “more U.S. aid per
capita than any other country besides
Israel” ⁽¹⁾
and that has just received
congressional approval of a further gift
of $95 million ⁽²⁾
from unwitting American taxpayers (in
addition to the roughly $500 million
already disbursed to Armenia in past
years) is reprehensible. Insult is added
to injury by what even a newspaper like
the Washington Post, which is
reflexively sympathetic to U.S.
diplomatic sensibilities, called “a
mealy-mouthed American response” to
Ter-Petrossian’s sacking of his nation’s
fledgling democracy.

Reckless Endangerment of
U.S. Interests

The gravity of the strategic mistake
being made by U.S. policy-makers towards
key countries of the Caspian Basin is
highlighted in a newly-released summary
of a Roundtable Discussion sponsored last
spring by the William J. Casey Institute
of the Center for Security Policy. Held
on 13 March 1996 in Washington, the
Roundtable examined the enormous
strategic and economic implications of
the approximately 200 billion barrels of
oil believed to be recoverable from the
Caspian Sea region — a quantity larger
than the combined reserves of the North
Sea and the North Slope of Alaska. More
than sixty participants took part in the
half-day conference, including
representatives of the Departments of
Defense, State and Energy, diplomats,
industry experts, senior congressional
staff and members of the press. The three
lead discussants during the symposium
were:

• Senator Jon Kyl,
  Republican of Arizona — a member
  of the Center’s Board of Advisors
  and recipient of its prestigious
  1994 “Keeper of the
  Flame” award who serves on
  the Senate’s Energy and National
  Resources and Intelligence
  Committees — who provided a
  valuable overview of the
  strategic implications of the
  Caspian Basin’s vast oil
  reserves;
• Dr. T. Don Stacy
  — the Chairman and President of
  Amoco Eurasia Petroleum
  Corporation — who gave a
  detailed briefing on the physical
  location, size and geo-political
  complexities associated with
  bringing to market what he
  characterized as potentially the
  world’s second largest oil
  reserves; and
• Hon. Richard Perle
  — the former Assistant Secretary
  of Defense for International
  Security Policy who argued that
  America has interests virtually
  everywhere around the globe, in
  particular in such areas as the
  Caspian Sea, where secular
  governments like that of
  Azerbaijan are seeking to emerge
  from decades of Communist misrule
  and aspiring to become integral
  elements of the Western financial
  and trading systems.

To receive a copy
of the seven-page summary of this
important Roundtable Discussion, please
contact the Center.

The Bottom Line

Against this strategic backdrop, the
meltdown of any pretense of democracy in
Armenia must occasion an immediate U.S.
policy course-correction toward the
nations of the Caspian Basin. Elements of
such a course-correction should include
the following:

• An immediate White House
  invitation to President Heydar
  Aliyev of Azerbaijan to meet with
  President Clinton in Washington,
  D.C. to consolidate U.S.
  strategic and investment
  interests in the region.
• The convening of hearings in both
  the Senate and House — ideally
  in both the respective energy and
  foreign affairs committees — to
  increase congressional and public
  awareness of the opportunities
  and stakes involved in bringing
  Caspian oil to international
  markets on an accelerated basis
  while thwarting Russian and
  Iranian efforts to contest and
  control such export activities.
• Towards this end, as well, the
  dispatch of congressional
  delegations to the region —
  including Azerbaijan.
• The immediate revocation of
  Section 907 as a necessary
  first-step toward establishing a
  genuinely balanced U.S. policy
  toward the region.
  (Interestingly, this Section is
  practically unique insofar as it
  fails to provide the President
  the latitude to waive its
  strictures on the grounds of
  national security or other vital
  interests.)

– 30 –

1. See on this
point Caspian Watch #4:
House-Senate Conference Must Strike
Proper Balance for American Interests,
(No. 96-D 85,
17 September 1996).

2. Fortunately,
Congress narrowly rejected an effort that
would have compounded the misbegotten
favoritism shown Armenia at Azerbaijan’s
expense enshrined in Section 907 of the
Freedom Support Act of 1992, which bars any
direct U.S. humanitarian or other
assistance flows to Azerbaijan. The
latest effort took the form of an
amendment offered by Rep. John Porter
(R-IL) to the FY1997 foreign operations
appropriations bill, a measure that was
rejected in conference committee
following the publication of Caspian
Watch #4.