Donald Trump in the White House (Image: Getty)
Love him or loathe him, you can’t accuse President Donald Trump of being a stickler for the truth.
But perhaps the US leader’s most blatant fantasy has been to dub himself the “President of Peace”. His White House and State Department regularly issue communications trumpeting all the wars he claims to have ended. These include – among many others – Thailand and Cambodia (still raging), DRC and Rwanda (ongoing) and Israel and Iran (Trump dragged his own country and the entire Gulf into that one and he appears to have negotiated the world’s first “ceasefire” where both parties are allowed to continue attacking each other).
That said, even a broken clock tells the right time twice a day. While it might not warrant the Nobel Peace Prize the decidedly war mongering president covets, one peace agreement he can claim at least some credit for is between the former Soviet bloc nations of Azerbaijan and Armenia. In that rare instance, a fragile peace actually seems to be holding.
The two neighbouring countries in the South Caucasus had been locked in a frozen conflict since the collapse of the Soviet Union, all over a piece of land internationally recognised as Azerbaijan’s but illegally occupied, militarily, by ethnic Armenians.
Following a lightning offensive in 2023, in which Azerbaijan won back its territory, a tortuous peace process began. While not, as he claims, responsible for the actual peace process (that was already in motion) Trump has undeniably acted as a catalyst, hosting both sides at the White House to sign a peace agreement and setting in motion plans to build a transport corridor that would connect the isolated but energy-rich region to Europe and beyond.
With typical Trumpian modesty it is to be called the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity”.
This is no small achievement. Azerbaijan and Armenia have been at each other’s throats for the better part of three decades, and a lasting peace between the two would be a boon for everyone.
It would be good for Armenia, hitherto isolated from the rest of the world and entirely dependent for its security and economy on Russia. It would be good for Azerbaijan, a longstanding ally of Britain and the West (and very keen to step up as our alternate energy supplier to Russia). And it would be good for the rest of the world – especially Europe and Britain – opening up new transport and energy routes that bypass both Russia and Iran at a time when such routes are sorely lacking and when, thanks to Ed Miliband’s green energy obsession, our energy security is at an all-time low.
Only one party objects, predictably, to peace in the South Caucasus: Russia.
Putin’s vice like grip over Armenia and the other small countries in his backyard has been a source of his power and influence. But now those countries, sick of his threats, war-mongering and unkept promises – and cognisant of the horrors still being perpetrated on former Soviet state Ukraine – are starting to break free.
Azerbaijan, already a Western ally, is asserting itself as the dominant regional power. Armenia, previously a Russian vassal state, is publicly turning its back on the Kremlin and actively deepening ties with the European Union. Even Georgia, led by the pro-Kremlin Georgian Dream party, is abstaining from restoring diplomatic ties with Russia. All this is made possible by a more peaceful and more stable South Caucasus.
So, and this is a sentence you don’t hear much, well done The Donald.
It hardly needs saying this Western-facing, Europe-embracing, zeitgeist is something Britain – and all those in favour of Western freedom and democracy – should be encouraging, not hindering. A weakened Russia and a stronger, freer, more stable South Caucasus is clearly in our national energy and security interests.
And yet leading Azerbaijan voices are concerned some British parliamentarians are doing the work of Kremlin propagandists.
Last month, UK parliamentarians held an “inquiry” into the alleged destruction by Azerbaijan of Armenian cultural heritage in the lands won back by Azerbaijan in their recent war. I put “inquiry” in quotation marks, because in reality it was not an inquiry at all. It was entirely one sided, with all those asked to give evidence advocates for Armenian and Russian interests and not one Azerbaijani involved. In other words, it had no procedural validity and runs entirely against UK government policy.
Those who were called to give evidence included Luis Moreno Ocampo, a former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, who was recently in the Azerbaijan media after being covertly recorded allegedly discussing receiving funding from “rich” Russian Armenians.
These days Ocampo has a lucrative line in consultancy and advocacy for wealthy clients which, according to respected German investigative publication Der Spiegel, have included a Libyan billionaire linked to the former Gaddafi regime and indeed the former Russia-backed leader of “Artsakh” – the name given by the Armenian occupiers of the Azerbaijani lands that were the source of the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict. It was in that latter gig Ocampo was commissioned by the then illegitimate leader of “Artsakh” to author a report accusing Azerbaijan of genocide – a report that has since been discredited by British lawyers and genocide experts as “fundamentally flawed” and “fail[ing] to undertake a rational and balanced analysis of the available evidence; it is more concerned with accusing an individual by name, perhaps for the sake of seeking headlines.”
Many pro-Azerbaijan commentators have claimed “seeking headlines” seems to be the main purpose of this curious British-led inquiry which comes not long before Armenia goes to the polls to elect their prime minister next month. In the running is incumbent prime minister Nikol Pashinyan, who seeks peace with Azerbaijan, freedom from Russia and closer ties to the West. He is up against three pro-Russia opposition parties, who oppose any perceived concession to Azerbaijan on ideological grounds and wish to bring Armenia back into the folds of the Kremlin. To them, this British “inquiry” is a gift.