Performance at the international conference about South Caucasus

(Yerevan, November, 7th, 2006)

 

 

 

Principles Guiding Relations between States

in Political Settlement of Conflicts in the South Caucasus

 

 

 

I wish we could imagine the South Caucasus without the three protracted conflicts which complicate the situation in the region, turning it into a seat of international tension, hindering both the young state’s development and their cooperation with each other, as well as with other countries, and impeding the integration processes so much needed in today’s world.

 

These conflicts should be overcome but their peaceful political settlement still eludes us. In depending their interests, the parties to the conflict often refer – sometimes reasonably, sometimes not – to the principles guiding relations between states enshrined in the Helsinki Final Act. More often then not they refer to the principle of territorial integrity of states and the people’s right to determine their own destiny. And in so doing, they willfully and self-interestedly devise a sort of hierarchy whereby: one of the two principles is proclaimed to be predominating, as if overpowering the others.

 

If any of the ten principles could be made absolute, it should be refraining from the threat or use of force and that of peaceful settlement of disputes.

 

This concerns, to some extent, all the three conflicts in the region but I shall basically refer to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict as I am better acquainted with. It’s important to clarify the role played by principles in political settlement of disputes, what they can really do and what they cannot.

 

Of course, one should not abandon the alternative – that of pragmatic solutions and exchanges between the parties to the conflict on certain issues – ways totally “unprincipled”, as they could seem, they considerably facilitate the next agreements, create useful dynamics in the settlement process contrary to the long-term resistance and deadlock caused by opposing the territorial integrity to the right to self-determination. In my view, one of the mistakes of the OSCE Summit held in Lisbon was that it addressed the Nagorno Karabakh conflict through a prism of principles – which a priori led to a deadlock.

   

Here are some ideas I would like to share with you.

 

1. The term principle demands clarification. It is not an absolute, it is not a dogma, it is a cluster of general concepts, an abstraction, which does not exist beyond concrete circumstances, as if threaded on a rod.

 

All the more so since, there is not one principle but a dozen of them. All of them are equal, and are taken together and not at choice – at your will it. Those who call for the territorial integrity and the right to self-determination do not want to take into account what the Helsinki Act says, that all the principles are of primary importance, thus should be applied equally and strictly while interpreting each of them with due regard for the other ones.

 

2. In approaching the Helsinki principles, it is necessary to consider a historicism, first of all. The principles do not date back the times BC, they did not exist at the beginning of the 20th century, and they are only just outlined in the UN Charter. They are a product of their time: resulting from World War II, i.e. when the two systems and nuclear weapons existed. The Helsinki Act is a kind of a ‘truce’ between the two antagonistic systems because of inadmissibility of a new war, i.e. ‘rules of the game’ for that day and age. Let us take the inviolability of frontiers and territorial integrity of states as an example. Any territorial claim of one state against the other, especially if they belonged to different camps, was fraught with irreparable consequences.

 

Does this link between the principles and their time mean that if the time changes, the principles will die out, that they are “passing” and have no future? No! The conceptual nucleus of each principle is its considerable contribution to the international relations, and even to world civilization.

    

However on every occasion each principle is ‘screwed not into’ some abstract future but is used in some concrete historical, geographical and other circumstances that need to be taken into account. The time and specific environment are of great importance for the application of each principle and for their effectiveness. Metaphorically speaking, it is not the principles ‘command’ the time, but the time influences the principles, adjusting their effectiveness. In other words, everything is much more complicated and no simplification is admissible.

 

For those who disagree, I shall cite an example. If the principle of the territorial integrity of states is absolute, why did it not work in the case of the USSR and Yugoslavia? They will start explaining it by the situation prevailing there and then, and they are absolutely right. The permanent questions are when and where? The events do not exist out of space and time, history and geography.

            

There are two omnipresent dimensions, these of space and time. The permanent questions are where and when. All international processes and events are relief – they are not flat, developing beyond time and space, history and geography.

 

3. Applicability and effectiveness of this or that principle is relative. It is not enough to declare a principle correct by itself. Its applicability and effectiveness should be justified in that particular case. And when there is a lack of arguments, principles are refered to in a general way, as if this done would bring about results.

 

Let us take an example. Baku has often underscored that many Armenians have lived compactly not only in Nagorno Karabakh but also in Marseilles, California, Krasnodar region, etc. President Ilham Aliyev asked rhetorically: does this mean that they will be given the right to self-determination too? He seems to be right. And he is correct in as much as the self-determination right is conditional and not absolute.

 

So is the right to territorial integrity, still he insists on making it absolute. The Azerbaijani politicians reiterate the slogan of territorial integrity as if this was a magic refrain. Here an oriental proverb comes to mind: saying 'halva-halva' won't make your mouth sweet.

 

I would also like to point out the difference between Nagorno Karabakh and Marseilles, California or Kubane. Are there many other places, besides Nagorno Karabakh, where the Armenians constitute the majority of the population? Especially, when it is so explicitly evident at 75 per cent? Where else in the last decades were Armenians driven away from, as it was in Nakhichevan and Karabakh, or persecuted, as it was in Sumgait and Baku? Where else did they endure more than two decades of resistance and a violent war for more than two years? Moreover, Karabakh and Nakhichevan were considered disputable territories since the first republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan were proclaimed in 1918-20. (By the way without knowing what happened in Nakhichevan, it is impossible to understand the Nagorno Karabakh conflict at all).

 

(Incidentally I must condemn both the Stalin resettlement of peoples, and Soviet Armenia’s petitions in front of Moscow for moving the Azeris, and Armenians being driven away from Nakhichevan, and the “demographic changes” of Nagorno Karabakh initiated by Heidar Aliyev and acknowledged by him in his 22 July 2002 interview. Isn’t it time to proclaim yet another principle – that of inseparability of the population and the territory it occupies. At present we know only one of the negative aspects of this phenomenon – ethnic cleansings, but many aspects of this painful problem are not covered by it yet).

     

4. What is to be done when in relation to the Nagorno Karabakh issue, some appeal to the territorial integrity, others – to the self-determination right? Should the specifics of the case be taken into account? Or is it of no importance – suffice it to name the preferred principle and the opposing arguments shall be ignored?

 

Appealing to territorial integrity is the favorite argument of the Azerbaijani and Georgian diplomats, while ignoring the other principles guiding relations between states. Their interest in it can be understood, but they have to prove that this principle is applicable and effective for the given case. All the circumstances relevant to the case should be taken into account.  

 

5. Considering the specific nature of the 90s is of great importance. This time differs drastically from that of Helsinki in 1975 – it is the age of the collapse of one of the two world systems, disintegration of some states, and creation of others in Eurasia. In Helsinki, Europe dictated the fashion to the entire world but only for that season of normal, ‘every-day’ relations between the states of the two systems.

 

The shifts in the 90s shook the world, and the South Caucasus was the first to experience a shock. The changes and deformation affected almost all the region. One cannot pretend that nothing has changed.

 

In this time and in this region, people’s right to self-determination in most cases prevails over that of territorial integrity. Could the principle of territorial integrity, in this tectonic, force- majeur age and particularly in an area where states were collapsing, work as reliably as before? Of course, not. And which of the two principles led to the sovereignty of the 21 union republics (15 in the USSR + 6 in SFRY)?

 

Who could decide that dissolution must stop at the level of the union republics? You cannot afford to make them smaller, they said. Kosovo, Abkhazia, Nagorno Karabakh are both actors and products of dissolution of states in that time of objective circumstances, demographic shifts, and wars. It is important to understand and explain the logic of the shifts that took place. Not to continue the disintegration but to take objective realities into account. Raising the issue of waiting for the precedents to occur, in my view, is not quite precise. Kosovo may serve as another argument but only a supplementary one, and not the initial one. It will aggravate the controversy as to what is superior: the right of self-determination or that of territorial integrity? Anyway, the point of departure is the nature of the time and the region as well as prevailing circumstances.

 

6. In Africa, the colonial powers fixed rather arbitrary borders. The Soviet inner, administrative borders were also, in a number of cases, rather arbitrary (a string of decisions by Caucasus Bureau regarding Nagorno Karabakh, forcible transfer of the Crimea, etc.). Now the Westerners rejecting everything that is Soviet are idolizing the frontiers in the USSR. Is it good or bad? I will take the risk of saying that it is good. If only to avoid the proliferation of new conflicts. And what is to be done in places where blood has been shed? Should this factor be taken into account? Or should we evading realism, pretend that nothing has happened?

 

7. In Baku, they like to reiterate that the territorial integrity of the Republic of Azerbaijan cannot be an object of negotiations. But this can be said only of unambiguous, indisputable things, while this case is full of contradictions, and the situation is very specific. Is it accidental that the UN GA resolutions less frequently refer to the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan? What does it mean?

 

It is important to specify, about whose territorial integrity, what state there is a speech? In the case of Nagorno Karabakh, it turns out that it concerns Azerbaijan SSR. But in Baku, they conceal the deficit of continuity. The founders of the Republic of Azerbaijan took that issue lightly, without due concern for the succession from the Azerbaijan SSR: they preferred to politize problems over to observe legal purity, they neglected the real Soviet heritage in pursuit of symbolic succession from the “centuries-old traditions of their statehood” (as the first line of the 1995 Constitution of the Republic of Azerbaijan says) and from Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, 1918-20. They borrowed from the Soviet past only the outlawed decision by the Caucasus Bureau to transfer Nagorno Karabakh to Azerbaijan. Is this selectivity logical? It was an administrative border within the USSR, wasn’t it?

 

Abolishing the 1978 Constitution of the Azerbaijan SSR, the authors of the present day Constitution of the Republic of Azerbaijan did not even want to give a legally correct name to their Soviet republic. (Few people know other notable articles, e.g. Article 9 rejects war as a means of settlement of international conflicts). But official Baku does not speak about it, since their threats to settle the conflict by force violate both the Helsinki principles and obviously contradict the Constitution of the Republic of Azerbaijan. It should be noted that they just prefer a peaceful solution.

 

In Azerbaijan SSR, Soviet laws were in force including the law of the procedure of ceding from the USSR. But the Republic of Azerbaijan was proclaimed (in place of Azerbaijan SSR) outside of legislation, without any referendum, i.e. resorting to self-proclamation. In this context, Nagorno Karabakh gaining independence from Azerbaijan SSR was more in compliance with the law. So, how lawful is it to say that the Republic of Azerbaijan is the successor of the whole Azerbaijan SSR and that Nagorno Karabakh’s gaining independence violates the territorial integrity of the Republic of Azerbaijan? It is high time to understand that there is a price to be paid for everything: including the legal turmoil and the “demographic shifts”, and the rate on force, which led to a fierce war.   

 

The destine of Nagorno Karabakh should be settled through negotiations, and if they fail, through the expression of the will of the population, and not through forcible attempts of a restrictive use of unfounded, unmotivated references to this or that Helsinki principle, without full account of all the essential circumstances.

 

8. A serious impediment to the settlement of conflicts in the South Caucasus is that the parties to the conflict often prefer the propaganda approach to tactical flexibility in resolving disputable issues. They are even unable to call disputable problems disputable. Try to tell them Nagorno Karabakh is a disputable problem. The parties to the conflict would deny it categorically, considering the territory to be solely theirs. Such an admission, however would be the first small step towards realism, and towards taking into account not only one’s own interests but also the interests of the opponent, without which it is impossible to come to a compromise agreement.