For a person with one eye on a Nobel Peace Prize Trump appears awfully eager on dropping bombs – however typically he is spot on.
Donald Trump within the White Home (Picture: Getty)
Love him or detest him, you’ll be able to’t accuse President Donald Trump of being a stickler for the reality.
However maybe the US chief’s most blatant fantasy has been to dub himself the “President of Peace”. His White Home and State Division usually subject communications trumpeting all of the wars he claims to have ended. These embrace – amongst many others – Thailand and Cambodia (nonetheless raging), DRC and Rwanda (ongoing) and Israel and Iran (Trump dragged his personal nation and your complete Gulf into that one and he seems to have negotiated the world’s first “ceasefire” the place each events are allowed to proceed attacking one another).
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That stated, even a damaged clock tells the appropriate time twice a day. Whereas it may not warrant the Nobel Peace Prize the decidedly conflict mongering president covets, one peace settlement he can declare at the very least some credit score for is between the previous Soviet bloc nations of Azerbaijan and Armenia. In that uncommon occasion, a fragile peace truly appears to be holding.
The 2 neighbouring nations within the South Caucasus had been locked in a frozen battle for the reason that collapse of the Soviet Union, throughout a bit of land internationally recognised as Azerbaijan’s however illegally occupied, militarily, by ethnic Armenians.
Following a lightning offensive in 2023, during which Azerbaijan gained again its territory, a tortuous peace course of started. Whereas not, as he claims, answerable for the precise peace course of (that was already in movement) Trump has undeniably acted as a catalyst, internet hosting each side on the White Home to signal a peace settlement and setting in movement plans to construct a transport hall that will join the remoted however energy-rich area to Europe and past.
With typical Trumpian modesty it’s to be known as the “Trump Route for Worldwide Peace and Prosperity”.
That is no small achievement. Azerbaijan and Armenia have been at one another’s throats for the higher a part of three a long time, and an enduring peace between the 2 could be a boon for everybody.
It could be good for Armenia, hitherto remoted from the remainder of the world and fully dependent for its safety and economic system on Russia. It could be good for Azerbaijan, a longstanding ally of Britain and the West (and really eager to step up as our alternate power provider to Russia). And it could be good for the remainder of the world – particularly Europe and Britain – opening up new transport and power routes that bypass each Russia and Iran at a time when such routes are sorely missing and when, because of Ed Miliband’s inexperienced power obsession, our power safety is at an all-time low.
Just one occasion objects, predictably, to peace within the South Caucasus: Russia.
Putin’s vice like grip over Armenia and the opposite small nations in his yard has been a supply of his energy and affect. However now these nations, sick of his threats, war-mongering and unkept guarantees – and cognisant of the horrors nonetheless being perpetrated on former Soviet state Ukraine – are beginning to break away.
Azerbaijan, already a Western ally, is asserting itself because the dominant regional energy. Armenia, beforehand a Russian vassal state, is publicly turning its again on the Kremlin and actively deepening ties with the European Union. Even Georgia, led by the pro-Kremlin Georgian Dream occasion, is abstaining from restoring diplomatic ties with Russia. All that is made attainable by a extra peaceable and extra secure South Caucasus.
So, and it is a sentence you don’t hear a lot, properly achieved The Donald.
It hardly wants saying this Western-facing, Europe-embracing, zeitgeist is one thing Britain – and all these in favour of Western freedom and democracy – needs to be encouraging, not hindering. A weakened Russia and a stronger, freer, extra secure South Caucasus is clearly in our nationwide power and safety pursuits.
And but main Azerbaijan voices are involved some British parliamentarians are doing the work of Kremlin propagandists.
Final month, UK parliamentarians held an “inquiry” into the alleged destruction by Azerbaijan of Armenian cultural heritage within the lands gained again by Azerbaijan of their latest conflict. I put “inquiry” in citation marks, as a result of in actuality it was not an inquiry in any respect. It was totally one sided, with all these requested to present proof advocates for Armenian and Russian pursuits and never one Azerbaijani concerned. In different phrases, it had no procedural validity and runs totally towards UK authorities coverage.
Those that had been known as to present proof included Luis Moreno Ocampo, a former Chief Prosecutor of the Worldwide Felony Court docket, who was lately within the Azerbaijan media after being covertly recorded allegedly discussing receiving funding from “wealthy” Russian Armenians.
Today Ocampo has a profitable line in consultancy and advocacy for rich shoppers which, in accordance with revered German investigative publication Der Spiegel, have included a Libyan billionaire linked to the previous Gaddafi regime and certainly the previous Russia-backed chief of “Artsakh” – the identify given by the Armenian occupiers of the Azerbaijani lands that had been the supply of the Azerbaijan-Armenia battle. It was in that latter gig Ocampo was commissioned by the then illegitimate chief of “Artsakh” to writer a report accusing Azerbaijan of genocide – a report that has since been discredited by British attorneys and genocide consultants as “basically flawed” and “fail[ing] to undertake a rational and balanced evaluation of the accessible proof; it’s extra involved with accusing a person by identify, maybe for the sake of looking for headlines.”
Many professional-Azerbaijan commentators have claimed “looking for headlines” appears to be the principle objective of this curious British-led inquiry which comes not lengthy earlier than Armenia goes to the polls to elect their prime minister subsequent month. Within the working is incumbent prime minister Nikol Pashinyan, who seeks peace with Azerbaijan, freedom from Russia and nearer ties to the West. He’s up towards three pro-Russia opposition events, who oppose any perceived concession to Azerbaijan on ideological grounds and want to carry Armenia again into the folds of the Kremlin. To them, this British “inquiry” is a present.
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