Last week, a dictatorship—Azerbaijan—invaded the territory of an aspiring democracy—Armenia. Hundreds of Armenians were killed in a matter of hours, and Azerbaijan infiltrated deep inside Armenian territory. Although the two countries fought two years ago over the disputed region of Nagorno Karabakh—Armenian in population but within the borders of Azerbaijan—this invasion was qualitatively different. Resolving the Karabakh conflict was not the aim. Azerbaijan seeks large swaths of territory inside Armenia to create a land bridge to Turkey, thus establishing a pan-Turkic union from Europe to Central Asia, long the goal of Azerbaijan's patron, Turkey. Armenians stand in the way of this project, as they did 100 years ago, at the time of the Armenian Genocide.
Given the Western reaction to the recent invasion of another aspiring democracy—Ukraine—by a different dictatorship—Russia—you might have expected the West to rush to Armenia's support. The West's initial reaction, though, was rather different: half-hearted expressions of concern, coupled with calls for both sides, the aggressor and the victim, to stop fighting. Why?
In Compact Magazine this week, I explain that the West's indifference to Armenia results from a combination of hypocrisy, cynicism, and shortsightedness. The West's concern for democracy is highly selective, operative only where the West sees its interests at stake. Here, the West apparently has concluded that its interest lies in appeasing Azerbaijan, which can help supply gas to Europe and check Russia and Iran in the South Caucasus.
