From the press conference given on Monday in Yerevan, Armenia, by notorious regime-change specialist, USAID Administrator Samantha Power, with acting Asst. Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasian Affairs Yuri Kim in tow, the answer to that question is “yes.”
Power arrived in the midst of an escalating humanitarian crisis between Armenia and its neighbor Azerbaijan over the long-disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. The conflict has much history behind it which we will not review here, other than to say that Russian President Putin had personally helped mediate peace and an understanding between the two sides, which is now disintegrating. Otherwise, two points of background are in order relevant to the question of potential U.S. or NATO intervention in the region.
First: “Exploiting Armenian and Azeri tensions” was identified in the Rand Corporation’s 2019 report, “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground,”, as one of six areas ripe for United States intervention to gain geopolitical advantage against Russia. Other areas identified included “providing lethal arms to Ukraine” and “resuming support to the Syrian rebels” – both of which are now underway.
Second: Armenia had long been an ally of Russia, and has been, up until now, a member of the six-nation regional security group, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), created in 2002 by Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. The current government of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has been heavily courted in recent years by the United States and European Union, and held joint military maneuvers with NATO forces earlier this September. On Sept. 24, Pashinyan gave a national television address implying that Armenia could withdraw from the CSTO, leading to triumphalist headlines in U.S. media (Newsweek, Fox, etc.) that “Russia’s security alliance is now falling apart.”
Back to Power: Power told reporters that she had met with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and that “[we] discussed how the United States can support the Armenian people, both in the immediate term in Nagorno-Karabakh, and going forward as Armenia safeguards its sovereignty and territorial integrity, strengthens its democracy, and builds prosperity towards people.” She bragged that USAID had “nearly tripled” its assistance to Armenia over the last couple of years for “democratic reform and institutional reforms.”
