By Vilen Khlgatyan

Late last week Azeri dictator, Ilham Aliyev, made it known that he was displeased with the foreign oil consortium that is led by BP for supposedly costing the Azeri regime more than $8 billion in lost revenue. 

The Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) peaked in 2010, which as the main source of Azeri income, is rightfully considered a strategic asset. It is what has allowed them to carry out their militarization over the past ten years as well as buy influence, and bribe foreign officials. 

With each passing year the desperation increases among regime members, forcing them to adopt evermore hostile positions toward Armenia, Artsakh, and Armenians in general so as to mask their failed socio-political policies. Overlaying the peak at the ACG with hostile attacks against Armenia militarily, diplomatically, and psychologically since 2010 one can see a clear correlation. Unfortunately, this trend will not only continue in the future but increase as well. 

The two most recent examples being the pardoning and promotion of the axe-murder Ramil Safarov, and the foiled attempt to have the Armenian National Security Service (NSS) send an Azeri double agent to conduct a terrorist attack in Baku. 

The brutality of authoritarian rule coupled with an over reliance on hydrocarbons to spur economic growth highlight the precarious situation the regime in Baku finds itself in currently, and reveals to outsiders the possibility that systemic stress may bring about the collapse of the regime. For Armenia this means that provocations will be on the rise and any one of them may cause an outburst which may lead to a full scale resumption of hostilities. 

Based on last month’s CSTO military exercises in Armenia, codenamed ‘Cooperation 2012’, and the Armenian Armed Forces own drills that concluded last week, the Armenian government is taking the Azeri threat very seriously. Major-General Artak Davityan’s statement that the Armenian military is quite capable of launching missiles against a ‘potential enemy’ within a range of 300 kilometers or more was no idle threat. 

The above statement may be, and if it is not, ought to be the first of a series of Armenian pronouncements made to the public, domestic and foreign, that Armenia reserves the right to preemptively attack Azerbaijan should Armenia possess credible information that a full scale Azeri assault on Armenia or Artsakh is imminent. 

This doctrine of preemption has two core aspects, the metaphysical or psychological, and the physical or actual. In this context metaphysical means the act of strategic deception so as to disrupt the enemies’ equilibrium and in the process mask one’s intentions; while the physical aspect refers to Armenia formally defining red lines which if crossed by the enemy, will entail war. An example of the latter are the threats official Baku has made over the past year or so to shot down civilian planes taking off or landing at Stepanakert Airport. Strategic deception is crucial because one succeeds by keeping one's enemy uncertain about the situation and one's intentions, and by delivering what he does not expect and has therefore not prepared for. This is a military maxim that has held true for thousands of years. 

All interested parties to the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan know that once (and if) the Armenians cross over the Artsakh-Azerbaijan line of contact it is a geographically flat path to Baku. Aliyev understands his rule would end should Armenia win, therefore he will be less likely to risk war with provocations should official Yerevan draw clear and vocal lines in the sand. 

If the scandal over Safarov’s extradition ought to have taught us anything it is that the Azeri regime only respects and reacts to force, and that the international community is unwilling to rein in Azeri aggression. 

Vilen Khlgatyan is the Vice-Chairman of Political Developments Research Center (PDRC, a non-profit organization based in Yerevan, Armenia