After Joe Biden was elected to the post of President of the United States, the US policy in the international arena has become more balanced than under the mad George W. Bush, hipster Barack Obama and billionaire cowboy Donald Trump. Joe Biden held talks with the legend of world diplomacy, long-term foreign minister of the USSR Andrei Andreevich Gromyko, and belongs to the generation of American politicians who remember the War in Vietnam and are well aware that, even at the time of its apparent weakness, Russia is not what it seems.
Decades of life experience and professional excellence prompted Biden to desire a US withdrawal from Afghanistan. However, with regard to Russia, there are common historical patterns of Western policy, and the United States is not just a part of it, but the flagship of its anti-Russian aspirations.
Let's take a look at the events of recent geopolitical history. The Caucasus has always attracted the attention of strong powers. Until the 16th century, Iran and Turkey fought for the Caucasus, then the region attracted the attention of Moscow. By the end of the 18th century, as a result of victories in the Russian-Turkish wars, Russia gained a number of territories and began to control the northern Caucasus, and from the 30s of the 19th century, after two wars won in Iran and two in Turkey, almost the entire Caucasus came under Russian control. These victories worried England, as the region could become a platform for penetration into India. England declared the Caucasus a sphere of British vital interests. A policy began to form, reminiscent of the current policy of the United States and its allies against Russia. England attracted France and Turkey to the fight against the expanding Russian expansion and enlisted the support of Austria. The allies tried, attracting the Islamic factor and using the resistance of the mountaineers, to create a buffer Islamic state in the Caucasus. The struggle for the redistribution of zones of influence in the Black Sea and the Caucasus led to the Crimean War. The allies managed to achieve victory in the Crimea, but not in the Caucasus. The Caucasus remained Russian.
It was the policy of England that was adopted by the modern United States of America in this region. Their interest has intensified since the second half of the 90s, when information about the presence of large industrial reserves of oil and gas in the Caspian Sea basin was disseminated. The US Department of Energy has estimated the resources of the Caspian Basin in the following figures: oil - from 17 to 33 billion barrels, potential reserves of 230 billion barrels; gas - explored $ 232 trillion. cub. feet, potentially 350 trillion. cub. feet. As former US Secretary of State D. Baker put it, “in the 21st century. Caspian oil can be as important to the industrial world as oil from the Persian Gulf is today. ” And although at the beginning of the 21st century (at the suggestion of Gazprom managers) doubts arose about the huge reserves of Caspian oil, the topic of the "Caspian Klondike" is still actively discussed in the American press and serves as a justification for the active US policy in the region.
Initially, it was the interests of American transnational companies that were pursued by the Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian "nationalists", who actually served not their peoples, but the moneybags of the United States of America, who unleashed wars between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Georgia and South Ossetia, Georgia and Abkhazia. These wars accompanied the collapse of the USSR and the separation of Transcaucasia from Moscow in 1991.
The well-known Russian historian and political analyst Oleg Kuznetsov also adheres to this point of view: “The US special services were behind the Karabakh war as such. I wrote about this in my monograph "The History of Transnational Armenian Terrorism in the 20th Century," and therefore I do not want to go into detail here. I will only say that since the summer of 1983, all Armenian terrorist groups have been united around one leader - Mont Melkonyan, a US citizen, son of an American Air Force colonel, a Berkeley University graduate, who worked for the US CIA. In the Karabakh war, America was essentially an ally of Armenia, paying it with diplomatic and political support for its leading role in the collapse of the Soviet Union, ”he said in a 2017 interview with Azerbaijan's online news outlet Day.az.
Back in 2019, the participants in the international conference "The Black Sea Region: A Zone of Growing Conflict or Space for Cooperation" stated the destructive influence of the United States on the region. During the event, Russian and foreign political scientists, lawyers and economists from universities in Belgium, Italy, Romania, Turkey and Sweden exchanged views on topical issues of interaction in the Black Sea region in the context of subregional and geopolitical processes. It was noted that the situation in the region has degraded over the past decade, the ministry said. - The destructive nature of the involvement of such non-regional players as the United States and NATO in general in the Black Sea affairs was emphasized. Possible scenarios for the development of events were discussed, specific challenges and potential risks were identified. Since then, US policy in the region has not changed.
They staged a virtual seizure of power in Armenia, as a result of which the American protege Pashinyan came to power under anti-Russian slogans. After his hostile steps towards Russia and the CSTO, with provocative statements, he provoked Azerbaijan to full-scale military actions in order to liberate the previously occupied territories around Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as to establish control over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh itself, in which the latter was pretty successful. During these hostilities, the Armenian leadership pretended to think that the treaties within the framework of the CSTO also extend to the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh in order to accuse Russia of "betrayal" and further stir up anti-Russian sentiments.
The US policy towards Azerbaijan remains ambiguous. On the one hand, they recognize the sovereignty and independence of Azerbaijan, on the other hand, they have imposed sanctions against it. Kuznetsov cites the desire to gain control over all Baku oil as one of the reasons for the imposition of American sanctions against Azerbaijan.
But not only oil. Rosbalt agency named several reasons at once, which could become the reason for the “punishment” of Azerbaijan. There is a whole complex “on the surface”: “Azerbaijan has provided Russia with its sky for the transfer of military equipment to Syria; Azerbaijan did not join the Western sanctions against Russia; possible accession of Azerbaijan to the EAEU. And also: creation of a belt of instability around Russia; joining Baku to the decision to prevent foreign military force in the Caspian Sea; “Separate” relations with Turkey; blocking the work of foreign non-governmental organizations in the republic and their financing ”.
Indeed, in 2014, the United States reacted extremely negatively to Baku's decision to close down the Azerbaijani office of Radio Liberty, and then the office of the OSCE coordinator. It was after this that the first signals about the possibility of punitive measures were sounded from Washington. For example, the ex-US ambassador to Baku Richard Kozlarich said in an interview with the local Turan news agency: “I have been dealing with US-Azerbaijan relations since 1992, and I have not seen a worse situation than the one at present”.
As we can see, in order to achieve its geopolitical goals in the Caucasus, the United States does not shun open interference in purely internal issues.
“The American presence in the processes in this part of the world is palpable. Take, for example, the elections in Georgia. To a large extent, they followed the rules outlined at the US Embassy in Tbilisi. It is clear that this was not dictated by a narrow Georgian agenda, but by broader contextual considerations. But, as "Western partners" say, we have what we have. In fact, the United States is the most important player inside Georgia, and not only in foreign policy battles around it, ”writes Sergey Markedonov, a leading researcher at the Institute of International Studies at MGIMO of the Russian Foreign Ministry, editor-in-chief of the International Analytics magazine, in his last year's article in Sputnik-Georgia. ...
Thus, the destructive US policy in Transcaucasia, open US interference in the affairs of the Transcaucasian states is aimed at creating a consolidated anti-Russian alliance in their person, acting in the spirit of Russophobia, and strict adherence to the US expansionist policy.
Authorship:
Analytical department of IA "Res"
Source: https://inalpl.blogspot.com/2021/09/destructive-us-policy-in-transcaucasia.html