By Jason Vaughn, Eurasia Contributor
Contrary to its rhetoric, the Bush Administration has accomplished its share of realpolitik in the past eight years and more so in its final year. Bush oftentimes-stated rhetoric has been to oppose, remove, and shun dictators and to promote democracy worldwide, from Castro to the Taliban, Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, and Iran. However, this policy has been tossed out on a number of occasions in favor of the immediacy of the situation, and in the past few weeks the Administration looks like it has done it again.
Bush himself has not always been a good judge of character. Bush has said about then Russian President Putin in 2001: “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.”
Early this month, Vice President Dick Cheney completed a high-level visit to Azerbaijan, home of an authoritarian, Ilham Aliyev, who is also the son of Azerbaijan’s previous dictator, Heydar Aliyev. Cheney made this visit in order to shore up support against Russia after Russia’s adventure against Georgia in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Much like Bush with Putin, Cheney shook hands with Aliyev and had, amongst other things, a joint press conference and the like.
One could see U.S. democratic rhetoric disappearing during these events, for Aliyev’s policies in human rights and the media make the policies of Russia’s Vladimir Putin look rather normal by comparison.
Aliyev’s harsh treatment of his own people is well documented. Human Rights Watch has documented Azerbaijan’s poor human rights record and its history of imprisoning journalists and members of the public for political crimes. Newspapers have been closed down and elections have been rigged. Torture by the police as well as bad treatment of detainees is often cited.
Further documentation of human rights abuse can be found from Amnesty International; an organization that has found journalists to be routinely beaten, and in some cases (as with Elmar Huseynov in 2005), murdered. The international Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) corroborates many of these accounts.
In data and testimony given to the U.S. Congress by Jennifer Windsor of Freedom House in 2007, Azerbaijan received the second lowest ratings possible in ‘Political Rights (6 out of 7 with 7 being the worse)’ and ‘Civil Liberties (5 out of 7).’ Their ratings in ‘Press Freedom’ were equally bad. These indicators of internal repression were second only to countries like Cuba in some categories. Officially rated as a Not Free (NF) country, extensive ratings published recently by Freedom House in their ‘Freedom of the World’ data reinforce the previous report on Azerbaijan.
Does this stop, or slow down, Cheney from shaking hands with the leader of the responsible party, President Aliyev? Most certainly it does not. Russia must be opposed, because it is in the immediate interests of the United States.
Some factors might sway supporters. Azerbaijan’s oil, of which it possesses deep reserves as well as the crossing of a number of pipelines, has lessened criticism of it (much like Russia). Also, this was far from the first official discussion between Azerbaijan and the U.S. (Aliyev has visited Washington before and Azerbaijan is a member of all the relevant international organizations, including the NATO ‘Partnership for Peace.’) Various U.S.-Azeri agreements have been signed, upholding Azerbaijan’s sovereignty, and so on.
However, this was the first time that America so obviously went looking for Azeri support in such a fashion. Whether this meeting worked or not is another story; from many reports, Cheney got a rather cool reception in Baku—the Azerbaijani capital.
But, let us look for a second at the environment suggested by such a political visit to Azerbaijan. In many ways, such thought represents a throwback to the Great Power ideal, when empires opposed each other so obviously; they could invade their respective areas and “put down the natives,” as it were.
Following the time of Napoleon up until the end of the Cold War, Great Powers had their realms of influence, and it was war if these ‘spheres of influence’ (to use the Cold War term) were breached. Not that Azerbaijan is necessarily an enemy of Russia, far from it in fact, but “the enemy of our enemy is our friend.” as the old saying goes. Azerbaijan, even given its blatantly inhumane track record, is still a friend of the United States. In “Great Power” language, the U.S. administration fears that Azerbaijan could side with Russia, as it were.
Russia has been criticized on this point. One of the arguments promoted heavily since the Russian invasion of Georgia is that Russia is operating “in the past” according to those supposedly “long eliminated 20th and 19th Century ideals;” these are “Great Power” ambitions in militarily supporting South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Relative to this, as evidenced by this meeting with Aliyev, is the United States doing any less? Either we are operating on new principles, or we are not. There can be no equivocating point here if it is a “new” world. If we are living in a new century with new rules, as many (including Condoleezza Rice) have claimed, in essence the United States is shaking hands with one authoritarian to oppose another. In regard to the Georgian conflict, the more things change, the more things stay the same. The simple fact is that Aliyev’s Azerbaijan is next door to Russia and to Georgia; and it is smaller, weaker, full of oil and much less able to oppose outside influence.
The United States is befriending Azerbaijan with (almost) the highest-level visit at the moment in order to counter Russian moves in the region. Can the Russian counter-point then be argued: that there is a growing circle around Russia looking to cut off its interests?
In such a context, maybe the Great Power era has not died. To drop the façade in this landscape, the overriding theory would be: never mind the democracy, let’s follow our interests and get on with the “Great Game.”
