The Armenian-Azerbaijani "Forgotten War": Historical Origins and the Great Power Factors Behind It

As the largest geopolitical upheaval of the 20th century, the collapse of the Soviet Union not only brought great shocks and shocks to the entire world political situation, but also caused the "birth" and territorial changes of many countries in Europe and Asia, and caused a series of far-reaching geopolitical problems.

The Russian-Ukrainian war, which has lasted for more than 5 months, has caused tens of thousands of casualties and displaced millions of people, which is undoubtedly the most complex background, the most intense conflict, and the most extensive range of contradictions and conflicts.

However, while the world's attention is on Ukraine, another local war with similar backgrounds and causes is also going on at the same time, but it seems to have been forgotten by the world. That is the resurgence of armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Hedging nationalism

The Armenians were the first Christian people in the world, and before the 11th century AD, they established several regimes in the Armenian plateau, and always maintained a strong political, economic and cultural influence between the Roman Empire in the west and the Persian, Arab, and Turkic forces in the east.

In 1071, the Seljuk Turks defeated the Eastern Roman Empire at the Battle of Manchikot, changing the balance of power between East and West on the Armenian plateau. In subsequent histories, except for maintaining a relatively independent position during Mongol rule, Armenia was reduced to the status of a conquered and vassal for most of the time. In 1453 AD, Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, fell to Ottoman Turkey; The following year, the Ottoman Turks annexed Western Armenia. By the beginning of the 16th century, Armenia was partitioned with Safy Persia, placing the vast majority of Armenians under Ottoman rule.

The Armenian Apostolic Church is the world's earliest "one country, one religion" and "one nation, one religion" Christian state religion organization, its doctrine and later Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and other mainstream sects are different, this religious specificity makes the Armenian nation, although in most of the time in the position of vassal and conquered, but always with this religious subjectivity to maintain national subjectivity, to avoid the fate of being "assimilated", unique religious beliefs have also become the spiritual basis of Armenian nationalism and independence movements.

Thus, during the ottoman rule, the Armenians maintained considerable ethnic independence under the religiously based "Mitler" system and had a relatively special position in the empire. This continued until the 19th century.

In 1828, Tsarist Russia defeated Persia in the war, the two sides signed the Treaty of Turkmenchay, Persia ceded Eastern Armenia and the territory north of the Arras River to Tsarist Russia, and Tsarist Russia replaced Persia as the new player in the Armenian chess game and began to play against Ottoman Turkey.

After obtaining Eastern Armenia, Tsarist Russia, as a "protector of Christianity", adopted a supportive attitude towards the Armenian nationalist movement in Eastern Armenia, which had been suppressed by Persia, hoping to trigger a chain reaction, contain and weaken the Ottoman Turkey, and further expand the gains of the weakened Ottoman Empire while stabilizing the profits from the Treaty of Adrianborough.

After the Ottomans were defeated in the Eighth Russo-Turkish War and forced to sign the Treaty of Adrianople, they began a series of reforms. The Armenians living within the Ottoman Empire were freed from the oppression of the Kurdish emirs and improved their living conditions, while partially replacing the former because the Greeks were suspicious, and the social hierarchy was raised.

But when the Ottomans lost the Tenth Russo-Turkish War in 1878, the situation took a sharp turn for the worse, the young Turks who preached the idea of "Greater Turkey" gradually gained strength, and the Sultan began to try to remove the stumbling blocks in the "Greater Turkey" road within the empire. Sultan Abdul Hamid said publicly: "The seizure of Rumiria and Greece, the Europeans cut off the feet of the Empire; The fall of Bulgaria, Serbia, and Egypt left the Empire without its hands. Now they want to take away the most important part of us by inciting the Armenians and tearing up our internal organs. This will be the beginning of total destruction, and we must fight it with all the strength we have. ”

As the Ottoman Empire shrank, a large number of people, after the land fell to Russia, entered the few remaining Ottoman territories, further exacerbating the deterioration of the armenian living conditions.

In the process, nationalist ideas and nationalist movements originating from Russian control of eastern Armenia also swept through the entire Ottoman Empire, giving rise to the idea of armed resistance to the Ottomans and the establishment of an independent Armenian state.

"Meat rots in a pot"

In the Armenian nationalist movement, the nagorno-Karabakh (hereinafter referred to as the Nagorno-Karabakh region) region has a very special status, it is part of Eastern Armenia ceded by Persia to Tsarist Russia in 1828, the proportion of Armenians among the inhabitants is more than 90%, and it is also one of the important birthplaces of the Armenian nationalist movement, and naturally one of the regions with the strongest anti-Ottoman sentiment.

On the contrary, the neighboring regions of Azerbaijan showed a pro-Ottoman attitude based on linguistic and religious ties. The Ottoman Empire regarded the Azerbaijanis in Russia as an anti-Russian force, infiltrated and co-opted the Azerbaijanis in Russia, and also pitted the Armenian and Azerbaijani communities in Transcaucasia against each other and hated each other.

Therefore, from the perspective of the great power game, in the second half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, the two peoples of Armenia and Azerbaijan were actually the tools and fulcrums of Tsarist Russia and Ottoman Turkey to pry each other's marginal territory, and the protracted strategic struggle between Russia and Turkey also made the Asian and Afghan ethnic groups as tools form a deep hatred.

In World War I, the Ottoman Turkish offensive in the direction of the Caucasus was met with a head-on attack by Tsarist Russia, and according to the direction of the war, Russia would gain the entire Transcaucasian region, including Armenia, after the war, but the outbreak of the Russian Revolution gave Ottoman Turkey a relatively moderate ending to some extent.

On October 13, 1921, the treaty of Kars was signed between the nascent Republic of Turkey and the newly formed Soviet republics of the Caucasus (later Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan). For the sake of "bondage" and "appeasement of Turkey", the latter divided the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Armenian population of more than 90% to Azerbaijan. After that, the three countries underwent a merger and were separated again in 1936 under the Soviet Constitution, leaving the "holy land" of the Armenians completely in Azerbaijan, laying the fuse of explosives in the future Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Armenians living in this region want the region to be united with Armenia, while Azerbaijan wants to preserve it.

In the Soviet era, similar territorial divisions abounded. In the view of the leaders of the time, it was not a big deal to divide the land of the A majority to the republic named after the B nation, or to the area of the B nation named after the B nation, to divide the territory of the A nation with a majority of inhabitants, to divide the republic of the A nation, or to leave a large section of "undetermined borders" in areas where the situation was too complicated. On the contrary, it was an effective means for the Union to balance the nations and republics within its borders.

Under the guidance of this idea of "rotten meat in the pot", a series of territorial changes were carried out at that time. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were a series of territorial entanglements such as the Current Wudong Issue, the Crimean Issue, and the Nagorno-Karabakh Issue, which caused thousands of military and civilian casualties, as well as incalculable property damage. The tragic consequences of these exploded "landmines" have also terrified people in places that also have "territorial demines" buried but have not yet been detonated, such as the Fergana Basin in Central Asia and the left bank of the Transnistria River.

In the late 1980s, as soviet state control declined, mines that had been suppressed in the Nagorno-Karabakh region for more than half a century finally detonated and eventually turned into a bloody and brutal war that lasted from 1988 to 1994 without a declaration of war, and in October 11, 1993, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolutions 874 and 884 to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, recognizing Azerbaijan's sovereignty over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. By 1994, Armenia had full control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region and had established an independent regime attached to Armenia. The formation of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, nominally azerbaijani, but in fact controlled by Armenia, set the stage for the subsequent conflict.

The tragic era of "Caucasian outcasts"

After that, although there was continuous small-scale friction in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, no major conflicts and wars broke out, and the reason was that Azerbaijan did not have enough military superiority to retake the Nagorno-Karabakh region. In the Soviet era, Armenians occupied an important position in the Soviet military system, and at the time of the dissolution they had a large number of excellent soviet lieutenant commanders and skilled non-commissioned officers, and were superior to Azerbaijan in the quality of the army. At the same time, after a period of sinking, the revived Russia regained its influence in the Caucasus and tended to avoid major military conflicts in the region, where the Nagorno-Karabakh region remained relatively calm under armenia's military superiority and Russian deterrence.

The main factor is that Azerbaijan has used its geographical location and rich oil and gas resources to gradually reverse its military inferiority to Armenia, and has established considerable advantages in weapons and equipment.

Secondly, Turkey once again made the revival of the Ottoman Empire its political ideal, began to infiltrate the Transcaucasia region, and will also support Azerbaijan in the struggle for the Nagorno-Karabakh region as a springboard for a struggle with Russia.

The third is that Russia has been subject to continuous Sanctions by the West since the Crimean crisis, and sent troops to Syria during the economic downturn, which has dispersed its military deterrent power in the Transcaucasia and further reduced its influence. This change has changed the situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh region from Russia's suppression of Azerbaijan and Armenia to a confrontation between "Turkey-Azerbaijan" and "Russia-Armenia", returning to the situation at the end of the 19th century. As Russia becomes increasingly "unreliable," Armenia has also tried to reach out to the United States and other Western countries, hoping to introduce new checks and balances to help it hold Nagorno-Karabakh.

In this context, on the morning of September 27, 2020, large-scale military clashes broke out again between The Asian and Afghan sides in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, known in history as the "Second Nagorno-Karabakh War".

Azerbaijan, with the strong support of Turkey, has made considerable progress in its attacks, while Russia has acted as a mediator with a peculiar ambiguity, showing the changing offensive and defensive momentum between Russia and Turkey in the struggle, and the deepening of Russia's dependence on Azerbaijan. At the same time, the United States and its Western allies, which Armenia pinned its hopes on, have failed to give Armenia substantial help, forcing it to accept the pain of losing ground.

On August 3, 2022, the Two Sides of Asia and Afghanistan once again clashed in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, and the three points worth noting in the conflict are: First, the conflict between the two sides occurred in the area controlled by the Russian peacekeeping force, and the Russian peacekeeping force "witnessed" the process of the conflict throughout the process. Second, after the outbreak of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Russia and Turkey, which were deeply mired in war, signed a series of in-depth economic and trade cooperation, and the relations between the two countries, far from deteriorating due to the conflict, have further deepened, and the status of the two sides has also changed from being strong and weak in the past to being relatively equal.

Turkey's strong intervention, Russia's attitude change, and the inaction of the United States and the West have made the situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh region extremely dangerous at the same time.

• (This article is only the author's personal opinion and does not represent the position of this newspaper)

Liu He