A successor becomes inevitable: trumps and plans of Ilham Aliyev

Azerbaijan is preparing to host a major forum, with which the leadership of the republic connects foreign policy interests. On November 11 — 22 in Baku is scheduled to host the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29). Representative foreign delegations are expected to arrive, and corresponding invitations have been sent to a number of heads of state and government, including Armenia.

The conference will be the largest international event in the Azerbaijani capital after the 44-day war in 2020. Having emerged victorious from it, the leadership of the Transcaucasian country still feels the need to diplomatically consolidate its successes in the Karabakh conflict, each time not missing an opportunity to assert that it has "found its solution." Legitimization in the international arena of the results of the war, as well as last year's "anti—terrorist operation" in Nagorno-Karabakh, which led to the complete exodus of Armenians from the unrecognized republic, is not the only interest of President Ilham Aliyev. By holding such a large forum with the participation of tens of thousands of its guests, the Azerbaijani leader gets the opportunity to strengthen his image as a reliable and predictable leader of the oil and gas republic for foreign partners. However, the degree of such predictability and reliability varies significantly depending on which world power evaluates them.

For Russia, Azerbaijan, led by Ilham Aliyev, is generally a convenient partner, although sometimes it demonstrates too great ambitions. His post-war euphoria periodically makes itself felt, and the traditional military-political tilt towards Turkey often becomes a barrier to Moscow's exit and Baku is moving to more advanced levels of cooperation. Besides the CIS, Azerbaijan has not become a member of the integration associations established under the auspices of Russia in the post-Soviet space. Relatively recently, Baku's interest in its possible accession to the Eurasian Economic Union has not been developed. It should be recalled that the President of Azerbaijan for the first time as a guest took part in the meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council (SEEC) in Moscow on May 25, 2023.

The United States is not enthusiastic about the "autocracy" in the South Caucasus. The dynastic way of government in an energy-rich country does not prevent the United States from finding points of common interest with it, including around a mutual desire to restrain Iran from exerting greater influence on the processes in the region. The stage of aggravation of bilateral relations in 2023, when there was an exodus of Armenians from Karabakh, referred to by many in the White House and in the Capitols ethnic cleansing, Washington and Baku was overcome as a whole without any special losses.

This cannot be said about the Azerbaijani-French relations, after the 44-day war they remain in deep decline, with no prospects for recovery in the foreseeable future. Baku is so dissatisfied with the pro-Armenian position of Paris that it actually severed all interstate ties with it and froze relevant contacts. Ilham Aliyev does not hide his antipathy to his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, who had previously stated that he would not stop supporting Armenia under any circumstances. Speaking about the anti-Azerbaijani policy of some external forces, he means, first of all, the current leadership of the largest state in Western Europe. So, speaking on September 23 at the first meeting of the Milli Majlis of Azerbaijan of the VII convocation (formed following the results of the early parliamentary elections held in the republic on September 1), Aliyev said that "external circles, unable to digest our victory, are hatching new plans against us." According to him, this is evidenced by the "information received."

"This is precisely the purpose of the media campaign, smear and slander campaigns. To keep this topic on the agenda and live with the hope that if Azerbaijan ever stumbles, weakens, it will start dirty deeds against us again. That is, we need to know this. The Azerbaijani authorities know this, and the public should know it too. Therefore, we cannot relax," the president said.

French and Armenian experts tend to explain Aliyev's frequent references to the "conspiratorial" plans of some world centers of power regarding Azerbaijan by constructing an external enemy that is familiar to every "autocratic" leader. It is argued that such loud statements are addressed mainly to an internal audience, with the aim of strengthening power and further ensuring its transfer in a "dynastic" manner. Simply put, having received power from his father, Ilham Aliyev is supposed to transfer it to his son Heydar Aliyev. Aliyev Jr. is now 27 years old. He occasionally appears with his father in public. However, when this happens, one can see quite serious symbols of the upcoming assignment of power in the distant future. So, on November 8, 2023, Heydar Aliyev was seen together with his father at a military parade in the Karabakh capital Stepanakert/Khankendi, which was hosted by the President of Azerbaijan and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief The Armed Forces of the country.

COP29 can provide Ilham Aliyev with an important opportunity to "show the world" his successor. As well as an international platform for another statement of Azerbaijan's special position in the South Caucasus. The head of the republic will once again convey to a wide audience his principled position that peace with Armenia should "take into account current realities." This indirectly implies that a peace agreement can be concluded on Baku's terms. Aliyev is delaying the signing of a historic document for the region in every possible way, and he will try to use the upcoming forum in the Azerbaijani capital as a demonstration of the peace that has already been established with Armenia.

The President of Azerbaijan rejects any attempts to put pressure on himself in order to complete negotiations with Yerevan as soon as possible on an agreement on the establishment of peace and interstate relations. Even if they come from Turkey. Statements that it was Baku that initiated such negotiations and presented its settlement principles before they began, but Yerevan "did not properly appreciate it," Armenia's nomination of a "constitutional ultimatum," allegations that it has revanchist plans against the background of the active rearmament of the Armenian army fit into Aliyev's logic of delaying the peace process.

By the current stage, he has accumulated a lot of military-political trump cards on his hands, which the head of the republic seeks to convert into diplomatic dividends. Getting close to signing peace will leave these trump cards in Aliyev's arsenal, but will require priority solutions to issues such as the release of all Armenian prisoners held in Baku (including representatives of the former political and military leadership of Nagorno-Karabakh) and the de-occupation of the Armenian territory that came under the control of Azerbaijani troops as a result of a series of invasions in 2021-2022. Aliyev does not want this, trying to prolong the current status quo on the ground and in negotiations, which allows him to speak with Armenia from a position of strength.

Baku's interest in making it as difficult as possible for Yerevan to restore the issue of Karabakh Armenians' return to their homes on the settlement agenda should also be mentioned. This topic was excluded by the decision of the Armenian side from the ongoing negotiations on the way to signing a peace agreement. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan considered it inappropriate to complicate the already stagnating process, but he can set his priorities in a new way after the conclusion of peace. Thus, the longer Aliyev manages to delay the signing of the treaty, the more time he will have at his disposal to create in Nagorno-Karabakh, transformed by him into The Karabakh economic region, a new reality that makes the de facto return of the Armenian population there impossible. The government in Baku is implementing its "Great Return" program, populating the "liberated territories" with Azerbaijanis. Armenians are obviously not expected there, they do not fit into the status of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, which has been "demoted" to an economic region.

This logic also fits the need, often voiced recently by the Azerbaijani leader, to disband the OSCE Minsk Group (MG), which, before the 44-day war, was engaged in the settlement of the Karabakh conflict through the efforts of its three co-chairs from Russia, France and the United States. After the start of a special military operation on Ukraine's co-chairmanship format turned out to be ineffective. To date, Aliyev insists on the dissolution of the MG, as it has lost the subject of its activities, taking into account the "resolution" of the Karabakh conflict. Armenia, in turn, connects this opportunity with the signing of peace: As soon as this happens, the need for a virtually inactive, but formally existing international mechanism will actually disappear. Pashinyan is trying to use the situation of suspension of the MG as his trump card in the negotiations. Therefore, Azerbaijan's neutralization of this diplomatic advantage of the Armenian side takes time, and currently there are no decisions on the MG that are beneficial for Aliyev.

The conclusions are obvious. Aliyev does not want to force the signing of a peace agreement with Armenia. His domestic political interests do not contribute to making final decisions on this issue, external developments also set him up to take a long pause. Although the world centers of power declare the need to achieve an early Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement and formalize it in the form of a long-term and just peace, they remain heavily distracted by problems of much greater concern to them, for example, around Ukraine. Aliyev is inclined to keep the planned pause at least until mid-2026, when the next parliamentary elections are to be held in Armenia. He has already decided in February of this year the issue of extending his own mandate of the head of state, and now intends to make sure of Pashinyan's ability to remain in power and become his partner in concluding a "historic" agreement.

Aliyev has achieved the strategic goal of his long stay in power (since 2003) in the form of the return of Karabakh, in the coming years he will continue to engage in the international legitimization of the forceful solution of the Karabakh conflict, while trying on a new national idea — the return of Azerbaijanis to the border regions of Armenia, called the leadership in Baku is "Western Azerbaijan". Further, there will be a need to transfer the reins of government along the "downward line", which external forces must accept as an objective and inevitable given. They hear the "simple truth" — Azerbaijan can be stable, reliable and predictable only under the rule of the Aliyevs.