An interview with Major General Hayk Kotanjian, Commandant of the Institute for National Strategic Studies of the Armenian Ministry of Defense, Advisor to the Minister of Defense on Defense Security Policy, Dr. of Political Sciences

- Dr. Kotanjian, how would to correlate President Ilham Aliyev’s departure from Saint-Petersburg right after the trilateral meeting with the coincidence of the timing of the raiding sortie by some Azerbaijani soldiers beyond the ceasefire line in Karabakh?

- After the meeting with Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Serzh Sargsyan on the Karabakh Problem, initiated by the head of the Russian state, President Aliyev hastily left Saint-Petersburg so as to avoid answering the questions about the provocation happened during his sojourn in Russia and done by his own command on the ceasefire line several hours passed by the trilateral meeting. The sultanate style regime existing in Azerbaijan excludes the initiative of such a war provocation to be unsanctioned, moreover, synchronized with the peace initiative by the Russian President.
It is worthwhile to mention that this next military provocation by Azerbaijan against the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh is synchronized not only with the peace initiative by President Medvedev, but also with the US President Barack Obama’s address recently delivered to Baku by the US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, enclosing an imperative for the peaceful resolution of the Karabakh Conflict.
It is not the first time that such a disrespectful approach to the Russian President’s peace initiatives has been made by the President of Azerbaijan. About a year ago the public attention was focused on Aliyev’s statement in the Chatham House emphasizing Azerbaijan’s readiness to resume hostilities for returning Karabakh, which was quite contradicting to the Maendorf Declaration signed by him a while ago, initiated again by President Medvedev.

- Major General, could you anticipate the possibility of transformation of Aliyev’s bellicose statements into real actions? - If we take into consideration the absence of a serious counteraction by the international community towards the demonstrative arms race thrust by Azerbaijan, multiple exceeding of the CFE (Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe) ceilings, one should not exclude the transformation of the revanchist calls by President Aliyev and the armed provocations plotted under his guidance to the new war in Karabakh. The catastrophic influence of such a policy on the regional stability and security is evident; remember the tragic events in Georgia. - In Brussels President Sargsyan mentioned about Yerevan’s possession of a weapon of which a lot of countries exceeding Armenia by territory might be envious. What counteractions Armenia should undertake in case Azerbaijan unleashes a new war in Karabakh? - To answer your question I find it feasible to apply to the conventional war the approach developed by Robert McNamara, the US Secretary of Defense during the Cold War period. Such an approach became a basis for the strategy of deterrence of the USSR and the US, as well as the military blocs led by them from unleashing a thermonuclear war with guaranteed mutual annihilation. McNamara’s team formulated this very principle as causing a retaliatory “unacceptable damage” to the war initiator. Highly evaluating the consistent efforts by the Presidents of Russia, the US and France on the peaceful resolution of the Karabakh Conflict, the Armenian side at the same time has got all the reasons to warn President Aliyev that unleashing a new war in Karabakh will force Armenia, according to McNamara’s principle, cause an unacceptable damage to Azerbaijan. And our neighbors in Eastern Transcaucasia ought to soberly perceive that unless they went for the second war adventure against legitimately self-determined Karabakh, the unacceptable damage will follow instantly to the full extent. - What should be like the productive application of the trinity principle of “the non-use of force, free self-determination and territorial integrity” for the Karabakh Conflict resolution? - The ground for the constructive convergence of the given principles may be the acknowledgement by Azerbaijan, as well as by the Minsk Group Co-chair countries; Russia, the US and France, the legal fact of Nagorno Karabakh secession from the SSR of Azerbaijan in compliance with the USSR Law “Concerning the procedure of secession of a Soviet Republic from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”. This legal and political fact should become the basis for Armenia’s foreign policy. What we are talking about is that the Minsk Group Co-chairs should acknowledge, as a basis for their intermediary activity, the fact that the application of the principle of territorial integrity for the Republic of Azerbaijan including the NKR is illegal, taking into account the legitimate secession of the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh from the latter in 1991. And so, on 10 December, 1991, a legitimate referendum was held in Nagorno Karabakh, due to which two independent republics; the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh were formed on the territory of the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan. It should be noted that on the order of Baku authorities the Azeri minority residing in Karabakh refused to take part in it. The referendum, which actually was a success, was held before the official dissolution of the USSR according to the Alma-Ata Declaration of 21 December, 1991. We think this legal and political fact should become the ground for the Minsk Group’s activity on the peaceful resolution of the Karabakh Conflict. Interview by head of the RA MOD Information and Information Policy section Mushegh Aghekyan