Reports & Papers
from
Caspian Studies Program
Ambassador Carey Cavanaugh, U.S. Special Negotiator for Nagorno-Karabagh and NIS Regional Conflicts,
OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair Professor Hamlet Isaxanli, President of Khazar University, Baku
Professor Ronald Suny, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago
Chair: Dr. Brenda Shaffer, Research Director of the Caspian Studies Program
Summary by Emily van Buskirk, Research Assistant, Caspian Studies Program
From April 3-7, 2001 the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe convened negotiations in Key West, Florida, aimed at achieving a peace settlement for the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict. The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabagh, a mountainous enclave within Azerbaijan's borders but with a majority Armenian population for decades, has waged since 1988, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and over a million internally displaced persons. A Russian-brokered ceasefire has held since 1994. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell opened this set of talks between Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev and Armenian President Robert Kocharian, each of whom met separately with Secretary Powell in Florida and, subsequently, in Washington D.C. with President Bush. The United States, France and Russia were the mediators at the negotiations, as co-chairs of the OSCE "Minsk Group" (which includes 13 countries) established in 1992 as part of an effort to end the conflict. The current members of the Minsk Group are Norway, Austria, Belarus, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Turkey, France, the Russian Federation, the United States, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The chief negotiator on the U.S. side at Key West was Ambassador Carey Cavanaugh, who is the State Department's Special Negotiator for the conflict on a constant basis. The negotiations were held in proximity format, meaning that the facilitators held separate talks with each of the heads of Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Pursuant to the Key West peace talks, the Caspian Studies Program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government held a panel discussion entitled, "Negotiations on Nagorno-Karabagh: Where do we go from here?" on April 23, 2001. Dr. Brenda Shaffer, Director of Research at the Caspian Studies Program, moderated the panel, which included Ambassador Carey Cavanaugh, Professor Hamlet Isaxanli, and Professor Ronald Suny. Together, the panelists discussed the progress made at Key West, potential policies for selling peace to the populations of Azerbaijan and Armenia, and the prospects for peace moving forward.
Brenda Shaffer framed the discussion with a series of questions for the panelists. She asked, what are the potential pitfalls on the path to peace? What role do history and identity (or their construction) play in conflicts and their resolution? How does one prepare public opinion for peace? She discussed the role of democracy in peace negotiations, pointing out that successful negotiations often demand secrecy, and that the presidents were elected to lead and that leadership often demands making unpopular decisions.
Ambassador Cavanaugh opened by explaining the need for peace in the region, arguing that "Peace is a prerequisite for progress" in all spheres, especially economic development. The Nagorno-Karabagh conflict has already killed 35,000 and there continues to be a casualty rate of 1 person per day. The population of Armenia is hemorrhaging from an enormous outflow of economic refugees, and 800,000 Azerbaijanis are sitting in refugee camps. It is the task of the Presidents of both countries to explain to their publics that peace is "possible, permissible, and practical."
The international community, through the OSCE Minsk Group, has been involved in the peace process for the past ten years. But the structure of negotiations has changed over time. Ambassador Cavanaugh explained that after the Presidents rejected three proposals from the Minsk Group in 1997-98, it was felt a better indication of what might be possible was needed. This led to direct engagement between the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia. The two presidents have met 16 times since 1999, and the details of those talks have been confidential. Earlier this year the format changed again as the Presidents met with one another in Paris and then with French President Jacques Chirac. After a second meeting in Paris, a different format was chosen which would bring mediation performed by the Minsk Group co-chairs to peace negotiations between the Presidents: so-called "proximity talks." The Key West summit occurred in this new format, and afterwards all parties agreed that substantial progress had been made, and that the format should be repeated in June in Geneva, Switzerland.
In fact, Ambassador Cavanaugh continued, the progress between the two Presidents has been so great he believes that they are ahead of their people in their acknowledgment of the necessity of peace and their willingness to find workable solutions. The Presidents know that "peace cannot be perfect, but it must be better than the present," and that while the peace will please some, it will anger others. However, it is essential to realize that very few people have come up with viable alternatives to a peace solution: a resumption of war would lead to a deplorable situation which would benefit neither side. Fighting in the past did not yield for either country what they need or want. "Peace is the only way," Cavanaugh concluded.
According to Hamlet Isaxanli, the optimal proposal for peace would be a "common house" solution between Azerbaijan and Armenia. This solution would entail a power sharing agreement ("shared competencies") for Nagorno-Karabagh but also a vertical link from Karabagh to the center of the country in Baku. The "common house" would allow transparency of borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan, trade development between the two countries, academic initiatives, and cooperative regional educational and cultural developments. He described such arrangements of shared competencies as ideal for Georgia as well.
While Azerbaijanis are of one mind that "peace is good," they also believe that the peace must be "just." Professor Isaxanli cautioned that the armed forces and certain political and powers in Azerbaijan are against any kind of power sharing, and that a military frame of mind is taking hold of increasing numbers of Azerbaijanis. He suggested that a "market for peace" could be created only with the participation of the opposition parties: Musavat, the Popular Front, the Azerbaijan National Independence Party and others (these parties are influential, while they do not recognize the legitimacy of the Azerbaijani Parliament). Finally, he argued, "Historical justification by all parties is important for understanding of the political situation of collective identity, but not in solving the problem."
Ronald Suny sees reasons for both pessimism and optimism concerning peace prospects in the South Caucasus. From a negative angle, the political regimes can be seen as controlled by elite institutions plagued by infighting and having quasi-democratic practices that lend only some degree of legitimacy. On the positive side, states of the South Caucasus have a "long history of interaction and dependency" and they "can only grow stronger with the end of these debilitating conflicts." Each state has a strong interest in peace, which alone can bring prosperity. Professor Suny drew these points from two of his papers. Laitin, David D. and Ronald Grigor Suny, "Karabakh: Thinking a Way Out," Middle East Policy VII, 1 (October 1999), pp. 145-176 (optimistic conclusion and from a talk that he gave a year ago to a State Department forum. (pessimistic).
Professor Suny contrasted lessons from the academy with the worldview of nationalists. The latter speak of "ancient hatreds" and consider identity to be "primordial and continuous." The vast majority of academics, on the other hand, have a modernist-constructivist view of identity: "the way people think about themselves is a human construction built up over time," based on memories that have been "silenced and repressed," as well as those that have been accented, Suny explained. And if identity is a construct, it can be reconstructed and thought of in new ways, which has positive implications for peace and friendship in the Caucasus.
Broadly, Professor Suny called the idea of the nation-state— the idea that every nation should have one state, and every state should have one nation or one dominant nation— problematic. It is necessary to "rethink the notion of sovereignty," he argued. The Caucasus is an ideal place to pioneer the idea of "shared sovereignty," or multiple sovereignties because this region has a long history of at least approximations of such an arrangement.
Finally, Professor Suny turned to the subject of negotiations. In 1997, President Aliyev and former President Ter-Petrossian came very close to reaching a peace settlement that had two main ideas: 1) Karabagh should be run by the majority population (ethnic Armenian) 2) The principle of territorial integrity must also be respected. In other words, Karabagh would formally remain part of Azerbaijan ("very formally, perhaps a flag over the city hall"), but be run as a fully independent state by local people, the majority of who are Armenians. Suny speculated that the present negotiations seem to have gone in a different direction, although thankfully he said the idea of a territorial "swap" seems to be off the table. He speculated that current proposals involve "linking Karabagh and Lachin directly to Armenia, and giving Azerbaijan some kind of connection to Nakhichevan through Armenia."
He concluded by discussing the prospects for "selling" this particular solution to the publics, suggesting that the nature of politics in both countries (only democracies in the formal sense) means elites have a tremendous power to manipulate public opinion. "I think that Armenians could be convinced to accept a solution in which Karabagh and Lachin were formally part of Armenia, and no longer under Azerbaijani sovereignty, and even concede a sovereign road to Nakhichevan. I am very doubtful that the Azerbaijani public will accept such a thing." He noted that bellicose attitudes are currently more prevalent in Azerbaijan.
Discussion
The question and answer segment of the discussion brought out several interesting points about the private nature of the peace talks, international cooperation, the participation of diasporas, preparations for peace, and changes that are expected to follow a settlement. Ronald Suny noted that if Azerbaijan and Armenia were real democracies, things such as minority rights would be easier to guarantee. When asked about the return of refugees, and of expatriates living in Russia, Suny explained that once the architecture for peace is in place, people would naturally move back. Russian companies, too, have a lot to gain from political stabilization, and will invest in the region.
On Russia, Suny and Cavanaugh agreed that Russia seems to be playing with "the same game plan" as the United States and France in the Caucasus, realizing that it is time to peacefully settle the conflicts, and that stability would be beneficial to its interests. Professor Isaxanli was more skeptical, arguing that Russian diplomacy has two faces, "it speaks one way but acts another." Russia's current position even without peace is favorable, he said, involving "access to Caspian energy resources, pipeline investments in Azerbaijan, and a strategic partnership with Armenia."
When asked about the nature of the role of the Armenian diaspora in the peace process, Ambassador Cavanaugh described the political views of the diaspora as diverse. In general, he argued, the Armenian leaders are ahead of the diaspora in their level of compromise and realism. However, many in the diaspora recognize that peace is good for Armenia, and thus support it, despite the implied concessions. The Ambassador added that the Armenian diaspora in the U.S. has made the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict a high profile issue, so that it receives attention at the highest levels, which is a fully positive development.
In response to criticism of the private nature of the peace talks, Ambassador Cavanaugh argued that progress has been made because of the private nature of the talks, not in spite of it. Both Presidents "look over their shoulders" at the Middle East, and notice that as elements of Arafat and Barak's discussions became public, they were ripped apart, even though the proposal on the whole could have been acceptable to everybody. In his view, the private factor for Azerbaijan and Armenia bodes well for the future: it will be positive if leaders will be able to present peace as a whole package that can be a reality "tomorrow," versus proceeding in steps, which might encourage radicalism in the domestic political scene. Both Presidents, he remarked, have already taken steps signaling to the people to be ready for peace.
Ambassador Cavanaugh concluded with a few words about the Bush Administration's involvement in the search for peace. It is significant, said Cavanaugh, that President Bush was talking about Nagorno-Karabagh (with President Chirac) on the tenth day of his administration, and that there were peace talks in the U.S. in the tenth week. He noted, with optimism, "You have a high, high level of engagement here that I think people would not have expected. But it is reflective of the preparedness of the United States and this administration to assist and facilitate peace processes when the leaders are really working to move them forward. And, it is reflective of our belief that there is a genuine chance here, now, to move this forward."