Caspian Watch #6: Weinberger Issues Timely Alert Against Interest Group’s Highjacking Of U.S. Caspian Policy

(Washington, D.C.): Last Friday,
former Secretary of Defense Caspar
Weinberger issued a powerful warning that
American policy makers, in their
preoccupation with NATO’s expansion, may
be missing the fact that Russia has a
truly ominous enlargement initiative of
its own — “dominance of the energy
resources in the Caspian Sea
region.” As he observes in the href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_66at”>attached op.ed.
article which appeared on 9 May in
the New York Times and was
co-authored by Mr. Weinberger and Peter
Schweizer (as was their recent book, The
Next War), “If Moscow succeeds,
its victory could prove much more
significant than the West’s success in
enlarging NATO.”

“Russia’s Oil Grab” offers a
concise strategic overview of American
national security and economic interests
in the oil-rich Caspian region. It also
underscores the urgent need to correct
forthwith what amounts to U.S. policy
discrimination against Azerbaijan. The
Weinberger-Schweizer analysis should be
considered required reading for
those currently fixated on NATO
enlargement — to say nothing of those
who appreciate the stakes of the
“Great Game” in the Caspian
Basin for the future of world oil
supplies.

The authors’ insights are particularly
important against the backdrop of the
efforts by Russian Foreign Minister,
Yevgeny Primakov, to pocket military
concessions being served up by the United
States and NATO in the Conventional Armed
Forces in Europe (CFE) context. These
concessions will enable Moscow to retain
forces in the Southern Tier that lend
themselves to the intimidation — and
perhaps even the undermining — of
Western-oriented, secular Azerbaijan and
other key littoral and pipeline states of
the Caspian Sea region.

Sherman’s March to the
(Caspian) Sea

Incredibly, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA)
has chosen such a moment to introduce an
amendment to H.R. 1486 (the FY98 foreign
aid authorization bill) that would, if
adopted, further estrange Azerbaijan and
jeopardize U.S. interest in the Caspian
Basin. The Sherman amendment would
mandate direct U.S. assistance to
Nargorno-Karabakh, sovereign Azeri
territory currently occupied by Armenia.

As U.S. aid to Armenia — which the
Weinberger-Schweizer op.ed. notes is
already the largest per capita
recipient of U.S. assistance in the world
after Israel — currently reaches the
people of Nargorno-Karabakh via the
Armenian-controlled Lachin corridor, the
amendment is as unnecessary as it is
insidious. Its inference that
Nargorno-Karbakh is a sovereign entity
flies in the face of internationally
recognized boundaries and gratuitously
places the U.S. in the middle of the
long-running and violent territorial
dispute between Armenia — and its allies
in Moscow and Teheran — on the one hand,
and Azerbaijan on the other.

Unfortunately, the Sherman Amendment
is not the first such mischievous
legislative initiative.⁽¹⁾
Rep. John Porter (R-IL) previously
engineered an amendment that also sought
to legitimate the self-declared
sovereignty of Nargorno-Karabakh.

As Secretary Weinberger and Peter
Schweizer make clear, previous
legislation, prohibiting direct U.S.
humanitarian assistance to Azerbaijan
which became Section 907 to the Freedom
Support Act of 1992, followed intense
“lobbying by
Armenian-Americans.” Indeed, it
is no understatement to suggest that this
financially well-endowed and politically
well-connected interest group constitutes
a key impediment to the United
States’ ability to advance its strategic
interests in the region. Even
the Clinton State Department appears to
concur in this assessment; the
Administration is reportedly urging the
Sherman amendment’s defeat lest it create
a major new obstacle in the path of
bolstering the U.S. relationship with
what is, arguably, the most pivotal
player in the region, Azerbaijan.

The Bottom Line

The Center has long shared the view
expressed by Caspar Weinberger and other,
key members of the original Reagan
national security team and by
congressional leaders like Senator Robert
Byrd (D-WV): The
Armenian-American lobby must no longer be
allowed to skew U.S. policy toward the
region in a way that not only harms U.S.
interests but, ironically, those of
Armenia as well. Were Armenia to
demonstrate a more constructive attitude
toward Azerbaijan, it stands to benefit
enormously from the development of the
region’s oil and other resources.

The repeal of the Section 907, which
would permit direct U.S. humanitarian aid
to flow to Azerbaijan, as well as an
immediate invitation from President
Clinton to Azeri President Aliyev to
visit Washington, would go a long way
toward making up the strategic ground the
U.S. has recently lost to Russia, Iran
and, increasingly, to allied commercial
competitors. Naturally, the
Sherman Amendment — a kind of “Son
of 907″ — which was defeated in the
House International Relations Committee
last week — should be decisively
rejected by the full House floor if, as
expected, it is offered in the next few
days.

The Center welcomes the commitment
expressed in the Resolution of
Ratification for the CFE Flank Document
that was adopted coincidentally last week
by a unanimous, bipartisan vote of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It
requires the President to focus future
U.S. diplomatic efforts on “ensuring
the right of…Azerbaijan…to reject, or
to accept conditionally, any request by
another State Party [read, Russia] to
temporarily deploy conventional armaments
and equipment limited by the Treaty on
its territory.” The Resolution also
calls on the President to submit both
classified and unclassified reports by 1
August 1997 regarding whether Armenia was
in compliance with the Treaty when it
allowed proscribed armaments and
equipment to be transferred through
Armenian territory to the secessionist
movement in Azerbaijan.

Regrettably, there is reason
to believe that the Clinton
Administration has in the past pressed
Baku to accept the “temporary
deployment” of Russian troops and
equipment on Azeri territory — and that
it may well do so once again if Primakov
insists. Accordingly, with the
arrival today in Washington of Russian
Defense Minister Igor Rodionov, it is to
be hoped that the executive and
legislative branches of the United States
government will make clear that the
sentiments contained in the CFE Flanks
Document’s Resolution of Ratification now
before the Senate are an accurate
reflection of U.S. policy, not empty
rhetoric. The same message
should be sent on behalf of America’s
NATO allies by Secretary General Javier
Solana, who will be meeting with Foreign
Minister Primakov in Moscow tomorrow.

– 30 –

1. See the Center’s
other products in this Caspian
Watch Series: Caspian
Watch #5: Senator Byrd Takes the Lead in
Securing U.S. Access to 200 Billions of
Barrels of Oil in the Caspian Sea
(No. 97-D 32,
25 February 1997); Caspian
Watch #4: House-Senate Conference Must
Strike Proper Balance for American
Interests, ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-D_85″>No. 96-D 85,
17 September 1996); Caspian
Watch #3: Center, Washington Post
Agree — Congress Must Do The Right Thing
By U.S. Interest In The Caspian Basin
(No. 96-D
76, 1 August 1996); Caspian
Watch #2: The Great Game Is On — Will
the Republicans in Congress Play?
(No. 95-D
87, 1 November 1995); and Caspian
Watch: Russian Power-Plays on ‘Early Oil’
Hallmark of Kremlin Expansionism Past —
And Future? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_71″>No. 95-D 71,
2 October 1995).