What Azerbaijan has to offer to the U.S. here will trump any regard for Armenia’s “sovereignty” over the road or, ultimately, over Syunik itself: Karnig Kerkonian
Karnig Kerkonian, an international lawyer and lead counsel in several precedent-setting Armenian rights matters in U.S. and international courts, writes on his Facebook page.
“THE SQUEEZE IS COMING. #Armenia’s giddy embrace of granting #Azerbaijan access through Syunik — dressed up as “neutral” because a U.S. company would operate it — will be a textbook case of Helmuth von Moltke’s warning that no plan survives contact with the enemy.
In the press, Yerevan is eagerly trying to sell it as a “win”: apparently commerce will flow, peace will be incentivized, and outside management will guarantee fairness—even security. In reality, the first manufactured crisis, border provocation, or “security” demand from Baku will shred those assumptions completely.
Azerbaijan’s technique in strategically manufacturing crises, learned expertly from its Israeli intelligence advisors and implemented flawlessly in Artsakh, is already well honed and tested. Remember the calculated ratcheting of one manufactured crises after another, the unending Azerbaijani demands in the #Artsakh affair—gas pipes cut, electricity flow interrupted, eco-protests, access to mines, blockade, forced starvation, the green tent on the Hakkari Bridge, and the cement pylons? All surgical steps to eventually choke, overrun, and assume control of all of #NagornoKarabakh.
This same Armenian government watched that happen in real time, and it appears to have learned little from the ordeal. Now, it’s inviting a taste of it—a feast of it—to Syunik.
This much is absolutely clear: Azerbaijan will not treat #TRIPP as a frozen arrangement. It will use it as a living lever — pressing for the jurisdictional erosion of Syunik, normalizing its “Western Azerbaijan” narrative, and extracting further Armenian concessions. It has done it in the face of a world power before, and it will do it again.
And U.S. corporate control is no shield. Corporate incentives bend toward appeasing power, not defending Armenia’s sovereignty. #SOCAR’s deal with #Exxon Mobil, actually signed just hours before the “initialing” of the peace agreement text, is plain evidence of the which way the wind will ultimately blow. And what Azerbaijan has to offer to the U.S. here will trump (no pun intended) any regard for Armenia’s “sovereignty” over the road or, ultimately, over Syunik itself. Remember: no plan, especially one misguided from the start, survives contact with the enemy.
By the time Yerevan awakens from the stupor of #WhiteHouse selfies and discovers this, it will be reacting from inside a tightening corporate/military/political noose that it helped legitimize and over which it has no substantive control. At that point, it will be too late: one more easy addition to Azerbaijan’s map, and another historic deletion from Armenia’s”.
