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Communist and Post-Communist Studies 45 (2012) 193–200
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Communist and Post-Communist Studies
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/postcomstud
The problematic role of EU democracy promotion in Armenia,
Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh
Licínia Simão
Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Available online 7 April 2012
This article looks at the interdependences between the democratisation processes in
Armenia, Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh and the management of the Karabakh conflict,
focussing on the EU’s democracy promotion policies. The article argues that the EU’s
normative foreign policy in the South Caucasus has been limited by the permanence of the
protracted conflicts, in two interrelated ways. First, by not addressing the conflicts the EU
focused on long-term goals but failed to provide short-term incentives towards peace.
Second, by allowing only a limited involvement in the protracted conflicts, especially
inside Karabakh, the EU was perceived as a reluctant partner, undermining its normative
credentials.
Ó 2012 The Regents of the University of California. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights
reserved.
Keywords:
European Union
Nagorno-Karabakh
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Democracy
Conflict
Introduction
The processes of transition from communist regimes to pluralist liberal democracies in the former-Soviet Union have been
heterogeneous in nature and in outcomes. Issues such as the management of the Soviet and Communist legacy, the
engagement of external actors, namely the European Union (EU), and the presence or absence of ethnic and nationalist
conflict contributed to very different outcomes. The impact of the permanence of the protracted conflicts in the South
Caucasus has been acknowledged as a fundamental obstacle to the development and consolidation of democratic states in the
region (Mkrtchyan, 2007; Musabayov, 2005; Cornell, 2010; Boyajian, 2009). Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia were particularly hard-hit by violent transitions from Communist rule, with separatist conflicts accompanying the process of national
state-building and remaining a permanent challenge to political, economic and social stability.
Nevertheless, the definition of a causal relation between democratisation and violent conflict in the context of NagornoKarabakh is a delicate process. On the one hand it is hard to pin-point the direct link between the permanence of the conflict
and some of the features of unsuccessful transition to democracy in Armenia, Azerbaijan and the de facto Nagorno-Karabakh
Republic (NKR).1 Many factors have reinforced obstacles to the consolidation of democratic regimes in the South Caucasus,
including the Soviet inheritance (Shapiro and Kim, 1997), which has hampered a more equitable distribution of political and
economic power throughout the society; the development of energy resources, which had a pernicious effect in the
democracy-building efforts of Azerbaijan (Kaldor, 2007; Silje, 2010); and the regional context of insecurity and suspicion,
which reinforced nationalist discourses, aimed at consolidating a national identity and at assuring high levels of support for
national leaders in their troubled relations with their neighbours (Zaslausky, 1992; Mansfield and Snyder, 2002).
1
The use of the designation Nagorno-Karabakh Republic does not indicate recognition or support to the claims made by the Armenian de facto
authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh.
0967-067X/$ – see front matter Ó 2012 The Regents of the University of California. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.postcomstud.2012.03.001
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L. Simão / Communist and Post-Communist Studies 45 (2012) 193–200
Another question relates to the direction of the causal link between democratisation and conflict. The argument can also
be made that the lack of democracy also hampered the development of peaceful solutions for the Karabakh conflict. There has
been a monopolisation of the official speech on the conflict by the political leaders in power, preventing an effective pluralist
debate on its root causes and the pernicious impact it has had on the daily lives of many. There has been limited participation
of the broader society in designing new approaches to peace, making the lack of a solution a personal failure of the leaders in
power (Simão, 2010, pp. 9–10). This carries a clear political risk for the leaders, while leaving the populations in these
societies, especially those more affected by the conflict such as the Internally Displaced People (IDPs) and the refugees,
alienated from the peace process.
The permanence of these often called “frozen conflicts” has been seen by the EU and its member states as a major obstacle
to the development of cooperative relations, albeit one which the EU was not prepared to address. In fact, the EU was largely
absent from conflict resolution efforts undertaken during the 1990s (Stewart, 2007; Helly, 2007), focussing instead on the
stabilisation of the former-Yugoslav Federation. Russia was assigned a leading role in the management of the separatist
conflicts in the post-Soviet space (Baev, 1994, 2001), whereas the EU framed its engagement in the context of the Partnership
and Cooperation Agreements (PCAs), focussing on technical assistance and reforms, which remained the main areas of
expertise of the European Commission. The political and security dimension was clearly overlooked (Fernandes and Simão,
2010: 107). It was not until 2003 that the EU devised a more detailed approach to these countries under the European
Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), underlining a clear link between democracy and security in the region.
The article focuses on the EU’s democracy promotion policies in Armenia and Azerbaijan, and its limited engagement
inside Nagorno-Karabakh to assess the extent to which EU democracy promotion policies for the area have been affected by
the permanence of the protracted conflicts and the ways in which such effects have materialised. It argues that the normative
foreign policy of the EU, namely its democracy promotion efforts in the South Caucasus, has been limited by the permanence
of the protracted conflicts. This has taken place in two interrelated ways. First, by not addressing the conflicts the EU focused
on long-term goals but failed to prepare the ground with short-term efforts towards peace. Second, by limiting its engagement in the protracted conflicts to a minimum, especially inside Karabakh, the EU was perceived as a reluctant partner,
undermining its normative credentials. The article questions the ability of the EU to implement a coherent normative foreign
policy in its Eastern Neighbourhood and addresses the practical limits of the normative power Europe concept, namely the
notion that the EU acts as a transformative power in its neighbourhood by promoting the values that underlay its own
integration process (Manners, 2002; Manners and Whitman, 2003). The interplay between normative goals of deep societal
transformation (democratic development) and hard security concerns (conflict resolution) proves to be an uneasy area of the
EU’s self-perceived normative foreign policy.
This work benefited from extensive field research by the author, between 2006 and 2011, in the South Caucasus, including
Karabakh, as well as in Brussels, The author conducted interviews with officials from national governments and from
international institutions, especially the EU, as well as with civil society actors,2 focussing on EU relations with the South
Caucasus, which allowed for strong empirical input into this article. The first section of the article deals with the challenges of
democratisation in post-communist states. It is then followed by an appraisal of the EU’s approach to the region under the
ENP and the Eastern Partnership (EaP) and specific sections dealing with EU relations with Armenia, Azerbaijan and the NKR.
The final section addresses the challenges ahead for the EU’s strategy of “engagement through reforms” in the regional
conflicts of the South Caucasus.
Democracy in the post-communist space
Post-communist transitions to democracy in Eurasia have had two particularly relevant moments. First, independence
gained momentum in the Caucasus and Central Asia based on popular nationalistic movements and the sudden reality of
Moscow’s withdrawal. Violent conflict erupted in parts of these regions, diverting energy and resources from the consolidation of democracy to the management of the new found sovereignty and ravaging wars. The second moment came in the
form of the so-called “electoral” or “colour revolutions”, consolidating a fourth wave of democratisation (Kuzio, 2007). The
literature on these revolutions underlines the importance of combining authoritarian competitive environments, where some
level of dissent and popular mobilisation outside of the state was possible, with strong external support (Hale, 2005; Bunce
and Wolchik, 2006). This was the case in the New Independent States, in the South Caucasus and in Central Asia3 (Tudoroiu,
2007). The debates and policy-making on these events were polarised between those who believed the effect of contagion to
other semi-authoritarian regimes or incomplete transitions, and between those set on curbing the development of favourable
conditions for popular uprising against authoritarian rule (Fairbanks, 2004; Silitski, 2005; Krastev, 2007).
Since the end of the Cold War, democracy promotion policies have become an integral part of the West’s foreign policy
agenda. In Europe, the enlargement of the European institutions motivated a powerful long-term process of political,
economic and social transformation of the continent, along the lines of the western European model (Sadurski, 2004;
2
In 2009, the author was responsible for elaborating the report on EU engagement in the Karabakh conflict through local civil society actors, in the
framework of the MIROCON project and conducted extensive interviews in the region on the topic. See Simão (2010).
3
The New Independent States refer to Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus. The South Caucasus refers to Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Central Asia refers
to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
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Pridham, 2005). Democracy promotion also became a central feature of the EU and United States (US) development and
cooperation assistance programmes under the banner of political conditionality and good governance (Zanger, 2000). Overall,
the business of democracy promotion has become highly institutionalised, with the United Nations promoting numerous
post-Cold War peace missions, and developing a model of state-building applicable, both in post-conflict scenarios and in
collapsing and failed states (Paris, 2004; Ottaway, 2002).
The context of the post-Soviet transitions to democracy in the South Caucasus does not lend itself to straight forward
comparisons with either post-conflict or failed state scenarios. Although international presence has increased in the area,
state-building and democracy promotion in this context are better assessed in a post-communist studies light, dealing with
transitions from authoritarian and centralised regimes (Schmitter and Karl, 1994; Bunce, 1995). The permanence of some of
the features of the Soviet communist regime has marked the political choices of the new leaders in the South Caucasus,
leading to populism and conflict. The panoply of regimes under analysis ranges from the so-called “hybrid regimes”
(Diamond, 2002), to “competitive authoritarianism” (Levitsky and Way, 2002), to notions of “electoralism” and “pseudodemocratic procedures” taking root in many post-Soviet states and making an analysis of the underlying features of such
regimes more urgent and needed (O’Donnell et al., 1986; Ottaway, 2003).
Liberal democracy, promoted by the EU, is largely dependent on the role played by political elites and the perceptions they
hold of the benefits and potential losses of consolidating a democratic regime, as opposed to maintaining a low intensity
democracy (Schimmelfennig et al., 2003). The notion of “low intensity democracy” is linked to a minimum practice of
democracy, measured by the holding of regular elections and the respect for basic human rights (Gils et al., 1993). This choice
presents political leaders in power with important benefits. First, it allows for some level of control over the electoral process,
keeping limited possibilities for societal mobilisation and the emergence of political alternatives. Second, it maintains the
pressure of the international partners at a distance, presenting the lack of democracy as an unavoidable stage in an ongoing
long-term process of democratisation.
The processes of ethno-national consolidation in Armenia and Azerbaijan were closely shaped by the political demands for
autonomy by the authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh. Altsadt (1997, p. 120) argues that “[.] the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh
did not create national consciousness among the Azeri elite, but did act as the catalyst which accelerated the emergence of
Azerbaijan’s national movement in the late 1980s”. In Armenia, the nationalist movement emergent in the late 1980s was also
closely linked to the goal of achieving reunification with Nagorno-Karabakh. Dudwick (1994, p. 78) mentions that the
nationalists regarded the conflict as a “national liberation struggle” and that there was intensive debate between nationalists
and reformists on the importance of democratic reforms to the outcome of the conflict. Inside Nagorno-Karabakh, there has
been a deliberate attempt to consolidate formal institutions, seen as a fundamental stepping-stone to international recognition (Panossian, 2001). Moreover, the fight against illicit practices, which the international politics on “non-recognition” has
partly facilitated, has become a priority for the de facto Karabakh authorities, aiming at normalising its domestic politics
(Caspersen, 2008).
Lessons from democracy building in post-conflict societies do shed light on the challenges posed to actors involved in
building new political regimes in the Caucasus. The physical damage caused by war represented a challenge to the new
governments and the psychological damage took a heavy toll on communities, shaping the post-conflict speech. The current
“no-war, no-peace” situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has come to serve the immediate interests of all actors
involved in the peace process, both domestic and external. By portraying/accepting the conflict structure and “frozen”,
Armenian and Azerbaijani elites have presented themselves as victims of this unsolvable dispute and have felt short of
meaningful concessions. External actors mediating the conflict play a central role in offering incentives for political elites to
change their perceptions and conceive of a new context for peace. However, their actions are limited when they are perceived
as being biased or having private interests in the perpetuation of the armed dispute or in a specific outcome. In the bargain
process between local elites and international partners, societies remain largely disengaged from conflict resolution and
become suspicious of both sides. This means that the chances for conflict transformation are reduced, due to the top-down
nature of the peace process, and that democratic consolidation is continuously hampered.
A recent effort to look at the role of external actors in promoting democratic transitions and consolidating peace and
stability deals with the EU’s transformative role in its neighbourhood. One of the most visible trends in this regard is the
notion of “Europeanisation”, and its impact in diverse contexts from conflict resolution, to democratic stability (Olsen, 2002;
Coppieters et al., 2004; Emerson et al., 2005). Tocci (2007, 158–164) and Diez et al. (2006) have underlined the potential and
the limitations of the EU’s structural approach to conflict resolution in its neighbourhood, namely by underlying the relevance
of credible membership perspectives, with incentives in the short-term and the perceived subjective value attached to the EU
by the conflicting parties.
The establishment of a normative agenda in the EU’s foreign policy has been addressed by Manners (2002). His argument
being that EU’s foreign policy was inherently normative due to the normative principles the EU institutionalised in its
domestic order. Others have pointed out that the nature of the EU’s external actions borrows heavily on the historical past of
European integration, and the desire to build peaceful regional relations (Rosamond, 2000). This explains the EU’s transformative approach to external relations, especially towards its European neighbours. During enlargement, the EU was most
successful in transforming the former Warsaw Pact countries of Central and Eastern Europe into full member states of the
European Union, sharing the founding values and principles (the Copenhagen Criteria). The ENP was a further attempt to
extend the power of attraction of the European model, hoping to elicit change without the possibility of accession. This was
particularly visible in relations with the Eastern neighbours, whereas relations with the Mediterranean countries remained
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largely devoid of any meaningful considerations on democratic and human rights-related conditionality, until the Arab Spring
began, in 2011. Further reinforcing the notion that the EU had different expectations for its foreign policy towards its European
neighbours, even in relations with Russia, the EU was actively pursuing a normative agenda with clear transformative hopes.
The challenge posed by the South Caucasus, as opposed to these other European neighbours, lies primordially in the presence
of these protracted conflicts. These reflections become all the more relevant to this work, as the EU increases its engagement
in the South Caucasus, with a clear peacebuilding agenda.
Democratisation and conflict resolution under the European Neighbourhood Policy
In 2004, the EU decided in favour of the inclusion of the three South Caucasus states, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, in
the ENP. The inclusion of the South Caucasus was not without controversy, especially due to the permanence of the protracted
conflicts in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh, but also due to Russia’s perception that the EU was increasingly
entering its space of “privileged interests” (Medvedev, 2008). Regardless of these concerns, energy interests in the Caspian
region and the activism of new member states, such as Poland and the Baltic states, finally resulted in the celebration of the
bilateral ENP Action Plans, establishing a road map for reforms, which the EU hoped could provide a meaningful contribution
to conflict resolution (European Commission, 2006; European Parliament, 2005; Council of the European Union, 2008). As
stated by the former-EU Commissioner for External Relations and the ENP, Ferrero-Waldner (2006, 139), “through promoting
democracy and regional cooperation, boosting national reform programmes and improving the socio-economic prospects of
the region, [the ENP] can contribute to a more positive climate for conflict settlement”.
The EU’s approach was one of complementing the work being carried within the formal negotiation mechanisms, as
opposed to taking over responsibilities in the framework of the Common Foreign and Security Policy or the European Security
and Defence Policy (now Common Security and Defence Policy under the Lisbon Treaty). The EU opted for Europeanisation as
a conflict resolution approach (Coppieters et al., 2004), focussing on the consolidation of political reforms and institutions,
including respect for human rights and civil liberties, making civil society actors more visible and engaged partners, and
creating a political, economic and social environment, to which the separatist entities might feel attracted. This is a structural
approach to conflict resolution, acting as a stabilising force in the neighbourhood, through the promotion of democracy and
changing the conditions within which conflict thrives, in line with the EU’s structural foreign policy (Keukeleire and
MacNaughtan, 2008) and its structural diplomacy (Keukeleire, 2003).
This structural approach, inherited from the enlargement processes, proved very limited once a clear prospect of accession
was absent. To the EU’s “enlargement-lite” policy (Popescu and Wilson, 2009) corresponded a “reform-lite” engagement by
its neighbours. Despite Georgia’s hailed reforms after the Rose Revolution in 2003, fighting corruption and attracting foreign
investment, steps towards the consolidation of democracy have been less clear. The political space is polarised and the
opposition is only minimally represented in parliament, often harassed and belittled, and freedom of the media has deteriorated considerably. As a Georgian member of the opposition has argued, “Western praising of [president] Saakashvili made
him believe the west had his back”,4 but the tone of the partnership has changed considerably after the war in 2008, as
Georgia ENP Progress Report of 2011 makes clear (European Commission and High Representative of the European Union for
Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, 2011).
The establishment of the EaP, in 2009, following the war in Georgia, was aimed at injecting new energy in relations with
the neighbours to the East. The EaP was based on the idea of deepening bilateral relations between the EU and the Eastern
partners, so as to differentiate among their aspirations towards European integration and reward those who reformed faster.
It was also meant to send out a clear political message of “solidarity” and “additional support for [.] democratic and marketoriented reforms and the consolidation of their statehood and territorial integrity” (European Commission, 2008). Although
the expectations about the EU’s focus on the Eastern neighbourhood were high, the EaP failed to instil a sense of renewed
political partnership between the EU and its neighbours (Korosteleva, 2011). Despite the potential for renewed political
influence as regards the conflicts in the neighbourhood, the EaP reinforced some of the trends visible in the ENP, including the
aforementioned commitment to territorial integrity at the expense of a more balanced and nuanced approach towards the
protracted conflicts of the South Caucasus. Overall, the EaP added very little to the EU’s conflict prevention and conflict
resolution policies (Mikhelidze, 2009) and failed to compensate for the instability inherent to this institutional transition
period the EU’s is still experiencing after the Lisbon Treaty.
EU–Armenia relations
The engagement of the EU with Armenian authorities through the ENP opened the possibility for new incentives and for
more careful monitoring of the democratisation process, reinforcing the work developed in the framework of the Armenia’s
membership to the OSCE and the Council of Europe. In exchange for a renewed commitment by local authorities to democratic reforms the EU would display a stronger engagement in conflict resolution (EU–Armenia ENP Action Plan, 2006;
German, 2007, 360). In the context of Armenia, the EU’s contribution to regional security, in the transformative model
proposed above, would need to address the intricate processes through which political elites use national security concerns,
4
Interview with a member of the Georgian opposition party Free Democrats, Tbilisi, May 9, 2011.
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notably the Karabakh conflict and relations with Turkey, to prevent pluralist views from emerging in the Armenian society.
Thus, the understandings of what “improved security” might mean differ substantially between the EU and Armenia. The EU
is perceived in Armenia as having an interest in creating a buffer zone in the South Caucasus5 and stable and predictable
neighbours,6 which might mean either greater conflict resolution efforts or more restrained policies of stabilisation (with
a clear preference for the latter). Security provision, from the Armenian perspective, focused instead on the deepening of
Turkey’s EU accession process, seen as a fundamental step towards regional confidence-building measures (CBMs),7 as well as
greater control over Azerbaijani military spending and war rhetoric. Democracy and transparency were portrayed as a longterm process, but not one with clear short-term security implications.
Thus, European integration has been stated at the highest level as the most important long-term direction of Armenia’s
foreign policy (Freire and Simão, 2007). Both through political statements and drafting of legislation, Armenia has engaged in
the path towards closer approximation to EU standards on several areas, and the nature of the bilateral relationship is becoming
deeper and more encompassing.8 Trade relations have broadened and the two actors are in the process of negotiating a Deep
and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement, which will further interdependence between the EU and the South Caucasus. A
survey conducted by the Armenian Sociological Association also found that most Armenians favour full integration into the EU,
largely due to perceived high living standards, political freedom and reduced corruption (Melikyan, 2005: 42).
Moving from providing assistance to being a political actor in the South Caucasus would mean the EU would have the
capacity to make use of its increasing financial and economic presence in Armenia, to push forward some level of conditionality in line with the EU’s stated goals of being a normative and transformative power in its neighbourhood. However, the
process of ‘Europeanisation’ through soft transfers has not managed to create and strengthen formal institutions in Armenia,
as opposed to lingering informal ones, from the previous regime. For instance, the presence of the oligarchs in parliament has
reached such a disproportionate level, that the current leadership is under pressure to deal with the merging of business and
politics in the legislative branch. The outcome has been an “imitation of democracy”,9 aimed at maintaining external
assistance, crucial to the survival of the regime, but unable to assure more freedoms and equity within society. Moreover, the
EU’s soft power has also been harmed by the continuation of these practices. The attribution of the award of “Best European of
the Year 2009” to the leader of the Prosperous Armenia Party, Gagik Tsarukyan, a well know oligarch with dubious democratic
credentials, contaminated the EU’s normative image (Haykyan, 2011).
Almost five years into the ENP, the achievements in democratic reforms in Armenia and conflict transformation are very
modest. Regarding political and social pluralism, the Armenian political spectrum has remained impoverished by a clear
domination of the so-called “Karabakh clan” and by a strong link between the elites and the Karabakh conflict.10 Social
pluralism, namely through the development of a vibrant civil society, political parties and other forms of social mobilisation
has remained limited to some organisations with capacity to manage funding from international donors (Simão, 2010, 29). To
transform the incremental European integration of Armenia into a sustained shift towards a common values-system, the ENP
must build on the existing commitments and reinforce monitoring processes of implementation.11 This would contribute
decisively to transform the formal practice of democracy into a genuine practice. Implementation is openly recognised by
Armenian officials as the “hardest” phase of the ENP, but a necessary step if we consider that “relations with the EU are more
about quality of relations and a social model to aspire to, in a long-term perspective”.12
EU–Azerbaijan relations
The EU was one of the first international donors in Azerbaijan and developed close work with other International Financial
Institutions and bilateral donors. This early engagement and the long experience of the European Commission in sustaining
reforms legitimised the EU’s engagement and paved an important road for further engagement in political issues, after 1999,
when the PCA came into effect. Positive impact from this early cooperation has been possible in areas where there was mutual
interest, including the promotion of trade and investment flows, through the TRACECA and INOGATE programmes. As one
Azerbaijani official has put it “the new oil routes [linking Azerbaijan to the EU] helped Azerbaijan to be recognised as part of
the European family”.13
5
Interview with Tevan Poghosian, Executive Director, International Centre for Human Development, Yerevan, May 14, 2006.
Interview with Karen Bekaryan, Director, European Integration (NGO), Yerevan, May 11, 2006.
7
Interviews with civil society actors, Yerevan, May 2006. Interview with Vahe Gevorgian, Head of EU Division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia,
European Department, Yerevan, January 14, 2008. Interview with Armen Baibourtian, deputy Foreign Minister, Republic of Armenia, Yerevan, January 14,
2008.
8
Statements by Karine Kazinian, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Armenia at the seminar “The EU’s Role in the South Caucasus. From Cooperation to
Partnership through Reforms: Challenges and Opportunities”, Yerevan State University, Yerevan, May 12, 2011.
9
Interview with Armenian independent researcher, Yerevan, April 3, 2009.
10
Interview with Richard Giragosian, Director ACNIS, Yerevan, April 2, 2009.
11
Interview with Larisa Minasyan, Open Society Institute Armenia, Yerevan, May 10, 2007.
12
Interview with Paruyr Hovhannisyan, Counsellor at the Armenian Embassy, Brussels, March 21, 2007. Interview with Armen Baibourtian, Deputy
Foreign Minister, Yerevan, January 14, 2008.
13
Interview with Galib Isafilov, Head of International Security Division, Security Affairs Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, Baku, May 2,
2007.
6
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Energy revenues have become the other major issue in Azerbaijani foreign policy, after the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. As
noted above, the link between energy revenues and the permanence of the conflict, with its maiming effect in Azerbaijan’s
territorial integrity, has had a negative impact on the process of democracy promotion from outside. Firstly, the contribution
of the ENP has been limited by the lack of interest of Azerbaijani authorities in EU’s financial assistance. Azerbaijan is today an
important energy supplier and transit country for EU markets, increasing its strategic leverage over the EU. This has limited
the role of conditionality in promoting reforms in Azerbaijan and has also limited the appeal of the EU as a model for internal
development, at a time when Azerbaijan is looking to define its own indigenous model of development based on the
extraction of natural resources. Azerbaijan has privileged stability over democracy; a view silently shared by its partners and
costumers (Alieva, 2008). This is linked to the second issue, which is the perception that the EU is losing the battle for
Azerbaijan’s future. As several people acknowledged in their interviews with the author, the EU needs to address the sources
of grievance and gradually develop a long-term perspective in its relations with Azerbaijan.14 The EU’s inconsistent approach
to Karabakh, most notoriously, the reluctance to openly support Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, as it has done with Georgia,
Moldova, has been a major source of distress in bilateral relations.
The EU faces in Azerbaijan a dilemma. The power of attraction of the European model is limited by the perception that the
European states favour Armenian positions, vis-à-vis Karabakh and by the EU’s desire to impose some form of democratic
conditionality. Azerbaijani authorities have chosen to consolidate a form of semi-authoritarian rule around President Ilham
Aliyev (Vorrath et al., 2007; Guliyev, 2009), creating the idea that western partners, including the EU, have no leverage over
Azerbaijani politics. Interdependence in terms of energy markets, transfers of technology and the prospect of integration into
the western community of states have not been properly managed by the ENP as important tools to rebalance relations with
the authorities in Baku. As the Azerbaijani society grows further polarised, with the gap widening between the elites and large
sections of its population, the EU’s restrained policies could be further resented by all asides. The elites will still dismiss the
limited EU conditionality as domestic interference in the absence of clear incentives for reforms and the population will see
the EU as another uncritical partner, disconnected from Azerbaijani needs.
EU relations with Nagorno-Karabakh
EU relations with the de facto NKR leaders have been severed by the politics of non-recognition (Lynch, 2004: 42–54),
namely in its democracy promotion policies. Non-recognition has bore on the pluralism of ideas, despite attempts by de facto
NKR authorities to portray the regime as more democratic than in Azerbaijan and in Armenia.15 The lack of communication
and the curtailing of all forms of cooperation with Azerbaijan have pushed Karabakh even further towards Armenian control
and dependence. So far, the opposition of Azerbaijan to include the de facto NKR authorities in the official negotiations has
prevented the Karabakhi society from having an official voice in settling its future, making any peace deal very fragile.
Moreover, the lack of opportunities for participation in the peace process of the Azerbaijani refugees from Karabakh further
limits the sustainability of peace.
EU’s lack of engagement with the NKR should be assessed against the backdrop of its limited but increasing interaction with
the Abkhaz and South Ossetian authorities. The EU’s approach to the protracted conflicts in Georgia, prior to the war in 2008, was
based on the notion that, by promoting Georgia’s development and supporting rehabilitation, the EU was not only improving the
living conditions of the IDPs, but it was also promoting CBMs. After the war, the EU has enacted a policy of “engagement without
recognition” (Cooley and Mitchell, 2010; Fischer, 2010), mediating between the sides and developing CBMs. This, however, was
not extended to Karabakh; a position that has undermined the potential role the EU might play in this territory.16
The EU has financed sporadic events organised by CSOs from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Karabakh (see Simão, 2010), which
are important to support the development of an active civil society inside this unrecognised entity and to illustrate to the
wider societies the possibility and the need for normal relations to be re-established. However, the EU’s conflict transformation approach to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict remains constrained by the prioritisation of the official mediation
process within the OSCE Minsk Group. As such, no efforts have been made to engage the authorities in Stepanakert, nor the
wider Karabakh society in a dialogue with Brussels, Yerevan and Baku, which would prove helpful for the peace process and
for the democratisation processes in the Caucasus region.
Inside the NKR, knowledge of the European Union, its projects and what it can do for the region is limited. The
predominant discourse is that the links with the EU are a natural option, because the EU is seen as representing the West,
meaning a perceived Christian identity and a project of regional integration where conflicts can be addressed and diluted.17
This, however, requires the EU to acknowledge and address the balances of power in the region and account for the paramount and non-negotiable nature of national security and survival for the Karabakhis.18 Democracy comes, at best, as
a second tier concern, and is often not articulated as a fundamental factor in regional peace and stability.
14
Interview with Rza Zulfugarzada, deputy coordinator and Project Advisor at Europa House, Baku, May 1, 2007; with David Eisenberg, Head of Office and
Fargan Abbaszadeh, Communications Manager, UNDP Azerbaijan, Baku, May 4, 2007.
15
Interview with Karlen Avetisyan, Permanent Representative of the de facto NKR in Armenia, Yerevan, April 1, 2009.
16
Idem.
17
Interview with David Babayan, Head of Information Department, de facto NKR Presidential Office, Stepanakert, April 7, 2009.
18
Interview with Gergam Bagdasaryan, Editor in Chief of the “Demo” Newspaper, Stepanakert Press Club, Stepanakert, April 6, 2009; with Irina Grigorayn,
Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation Resource Centre, Stepanakert, April 7, 2009.
Author's personal copy
L. Simão / Communist and Post-Communist Studies 45 (2012) 193–200
199
Reflections on the challenges ahead
Through all of its post-communist history, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the NKR have lived in conflict, hampering democracy
and making the process of reconciliation within and across societies very difficult to set in motion. Without peace, without
trust, the trend has been to perpetuate the outcomes of the war. External actors have also been criticised as having so far
lacked the incentives to push through a peace agreement and democratic reforms, which would facilitate an open debate on
its benefits. The EU, for one, has been largely absent from any direct engagement in the peace process, despite its wish to
contribute to regional peace, through the ENP. This approach, which can be called a strategy of stabilisation through reforms,
reproduces the logic of enlargement to a certain extent, while simultaneously seeking to position the EU as a fully fledged
security actor in its neighbourhood. Through its structural foreign policy or “Europeanisation”, the EU aims to provide the
elites of the neighbouring countries with the incentives to develop a new outlook on their regional relations. This process sees
the promotion of democracy as a fundamental step towards peace in the long-term, but as argued in this article, it fails to
address short-term issues of conflict resolution, namely the complex balances of power in the Eurasian region.
As the ENP reaches a new level with the activation of the EaP and the negotiation of new political agreements it is time to
assess the achievements of this approach. If we look at the overall situation in the neighbourhood countries, instability has
increased, both related to ongoing conflicts (the war in Georgia in 2008 and the unstable situations in Libya and Syria), and to
the domestic political conditions in these countries. The Caucasus has been particularly instable, with the political situation in
Georgia and in Armenia deteriorating in 2007 and 2008. Reforms in Azerbaijan have been cautiously thwarted by the
authorities due to financial reserves and increased leverage in its relations with the EU. Considering the lack of substantial
achievements in democracy promotion, the EU’s normative foreign policy is jeopardised, and the limitations of this structural
approach to conflict resolution are exposed. This requires that the EU address the need for short-term policies that reinforce
its position as a credible partner to all the actors involved in the Karabakh conflict.
As the periphery of the EU is overrun by consecutive crises triggered by the Arab Spring, the EaP countries run the risk of
being considered non proprietary in budgetary allocations and political attention. This would be a dangerous trend, especially
considering that, despite the limitations of the EaP, the EU still retains considerable power of attraction among its eastern
neighbours. The last thing the EU needs is another full-blown war to erupt on its borders, something that could happen in the
Caucasus and especially in Karabakh, considering the level of military spending and war rhetoric in the region. This should be
the most important incentive for the EU to complement its long-term structural approach to the region, with concrete shortterm policies that would reinforce both its standing as a reliable security partner in the South Caucasus, and as a promoter of
democracy in its periphery.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the organisers and participants at the conference on “Conflict as an Instrument in Internal
Political Struggles. Secession Crises in the Post-Soviet Area”, December 2nd–4th 2010, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin,
Department of Social Sciences, as well as to the anonymous reviewers of this article for their comments and suggestions.
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