Is this conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan a proxy war between Russia and Turkey? Why didn’t Putin help Armenia before it was/is too late? Brad Johnson brings analysis from his unique perspective after 25 years as a CIA Chief of Station and Senior Operative. Now retired, Brad devotes his time to his non-profit Americans for Intelligence Reform. We bring you in-depth global and domestic news from a conservative perspective. By subscribing and sharing our social media, you get outlets such as ours be heard.
https://youtu.be/6Pp7_h–etw
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brad johnson it is november the 9th of
00:02
2020
00:03
and there’s many issues going
00:05
undiscussed because of
00:07
the catastrophic events with the
00:09
american election
00:10
um one of them is what’s taking place
00:13
the war between
00:14
azerbaijan and armenia and i happened to
00:17
notice a photograph
00:19
the other day was yesterday i think it
00:20
was actually it was either erdogan and
00:22
his wife or it was the azerbaijan
00:25
president leader and his wife that were
00:28
getting a nice romantic photograph taken
00:30
in occupied armenian territory i presume
00:33
this means the war is not going well for
00:35
armenia can you give us an update
00:38
yeah absolutely and it’s just more or
00:39
less playing out pretty much precisely
00:42
as we’ve been
00:42
talking about for some time armenia well
00:45
the it’s
00:46
the nagorno-karabakh region it’s
00:48
actually three
00:49
uh zones that are generically called
00:52
nagorno-karabakh
00:54
uh for worldwide reporting purposes you
00:57
know as we all talk about it
00:59
uh and that was under stalin
01:02
was transferred away from armenia to
01:06
azerbaijan so it was a soviet union
01:09
thing and if anyone history of the
01:11
follows the history of
01:12
stalin he loved to like shift around
01:14
different ethnic groups he would shift
01:16
people he would shift territory he would
01:18
do
01:18
all sorts of things and following the
01:21
collapse of the soviet union
01:23
these areas have been something that’s
01:24
been fought over and it’s created a lot
01:27
of problems i mean this is part of what
01:28
we saw in the former
01:29
yugoslavia and in the trans-sinister
01:32
region of moldova and
01:34
uh you know in ukraine it’s kind of
01:36
based on some of that stuff on
01:37
uh this is the same stuff kind of
01:40
carrying out it with those
01:41
those policies coming home to roost if
01:43
you will so
01:45
uh army or azerbaijan considers it
01:47
azerbaijani
01:48
territory when they declared an
01:50
independence that they didn’t recognize
01:52
it internationally it hasn’t been
01:54
recognized
01:55
but and while it was independent it was
01:57
essentially part of armenia from that
01:58
point forward
01:59
so azerbaijan has more of everything
02:02
bigger military
02:03
uh they’ve got natural oil and gas they
02:05
always had money
02:07
now since uh erdogan pres turkish
02:09
president erdogan has become far more
02:11
belligerent and
02:12
trying to expand his empire he’s
02:14
essentially made a fiefdom
02:16
out of azerbaijan because he also wants
02:18
the oil and gas so he’s making a good
02:20
deal for them
02:21
part of that is to take back this region
02:23
also because there’s a pipeline that
02:25
goes through it which he
02:26
he wants that too because it ends up in
02:28
guess where turkey
02:29
and and so he has to take all this back
02:33
and that’s why i’ve said from the very
02:35
beginning
02:36
turkey will not give up they’re going to
02:38
go and keep raising the ante and raising
02:40
the ante and raising the ante
02:41
until they win and that’s what we’ve
02:43
seen now what they’ve done is they’ve
02:44
broken through
02:45
all the initial borders and uh they’re
02:48
at this
02:49
city called uh shushi shushi is
02:53
basically the the stepanakert is the
02:55
main town
02:56
capital of the nagorno-karabakh region
02:59
and this is
03:00
on its way in it’s a hilltop town
03:02
overlooking the road
03:04
that goes into stepanakert and once
03:07
those two things are have been taken up
03:10
it’s
03:10
it’s over there’s really nothing left a
03:12
few little rural villages
03:14
and that’s about it so this is something
03:17
i’ve been saying for a long time unless
03:19
russia was willing to bring troops and
03:22
and equipment to bear on this little
03:25
armenian
03:26
just never had a chance just never had a
03:28
chance so
03:29
uh this is this is playing forward as we
03:32
expected it to do
03:33
what will these troops the azerbaijani
03:35
troops supplemented by
03:37
uh different types of you know syrian
03:40
troops and so on that
03:41
that turkey’s been bringing in what are
03:43
they going to do then to
03:45
take it you know as they come in and
03:47
capture these areas
03:48
we don’t know but i would expect a
03:50
certain level of atrocities to take
03:52
place i doubt it would be
03:53
some perfectly smooth thing where these
03:54
villages are not uh
03:58
blamed essentially for their breakaway
04:00
they’re all
04:01
ethnic armenians and speak the armenian
04:03
language and all that
04:04
even though it was part of azerbaijan so
04:07
they will be blamed i would
04:09
expect at the very minimum these people
04:11
to all be moved out
04:13
according to all the reporting stepona
04:14
card is like a just a highway everybody
04:17
who can load up and head out
04:18
is heading towards regular armenia to
04:20
escape the onslaught that’s going to
04:22
come
04:23
so i will see how far do they go
04:26
is part of the question and is russia
04:29
ever going to actually do anything about
04:31
this so
04:32
uh as i’ve said before and speculating
04:34
about all this i just couldn’t see
04:37
russia going really to
04:40
war over armenia which armenia is part
04:43
of their
04:44
essentially their nato equivalent uh the
04:48
russian nato equivalent
04:49
and so uh interesting to see you know if
04:54
you’re an ally of russia what you can
04:55
expect as far as backing
04:57
they’re going to be willing to play some
04:58
lip service and provide some material
05:00
and things like that but
05:01
not go much beyond that because the
05:03
risks are too great you know they don’t
05:04
want to go
05:05
toe-to-toe with turkey unless they have
05:07
to and they’re not at that point not
05:09
willing to do it over armenia so
05:11
uh the armenian war is essentially over
05:13
at this point they’re not gonna be able
05:14
to hold them back
05:15
there’s no place for them to dig in
05:17
again and it’s gonna be all fall back to
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the armenian border and see what happens
05:22
from there
05:22
i would be very surprised if they try to
05:25
go past
05:26
you know the armenian border in any way
05:28
shape or form i mean they might shell it
05:30
a
05:30
few things to try and make them to back
05:32
up a little bit so there’s no
05:34
counter-offensive something of that
05:35
nature but much beyond that i’d be
05:37
surprised
05:38
uh erdogan doesn’t need regular armenia
05:41
there’s nothing there
05:42
and uh i would say azerbaijan is the
05:45
same thing they want this territory back
05:48
they need it for the pipeline stuff but
05:49
they don’t need anything
05:51
in armenia so russian in some ways has
05:53
been
05:54
you know had some sand kicked in their
05:56
face and aren’t really responding
05:57
and armenia never had a chance to to
06:00
stand up on their own and so this was uh
06:03
inevitable it’s it’s
06:04
ending up as it had to end up and uh
06:07
basically the turkish terms are
06:11
withdraw completely from the
06:13
nagorno-karabaw regions
06:15
and go back to your armenian line and
06:17
then
06:18
you have to sit down and negotiate well
06:20
i gotta
06:21
i gotta say i mean once you’ve lost the
06:24
war you’re completely wiped out
06:26
you know what what is there to negotiate
06:28
but those are the turkish demands i
06:30
i guess that what they’re going to
06:32
expect is that they capitulate
06:34
you know on paper and say yeah we’ll
06:36
never attack again and
06:37
you know this whole armenian region that
06:39
you’ve taken over long ago is
06:41
stays in your hands so uh it’s money
06:45
you know it’s the oil and gas money
06:46
that’s driving this whole thing
06:48
but it’s ending up in the logical place
06:49
and i think it’ll go back to that border
06:51
and
06:52
essentially become a non-issue uh i
06:54
don’t know that they’ll they’re going to
06:56
negotiate any sort of treaty
06:57
i think that will not happen it hasn’t
06:59
happened since the
07:01
90s when the armenians declared
07:02
independence so
07:04
why would it happen now so i think it’ll
07:06
they’ll just fight it back to that
07:07
border the azerbaijanis will keep
07:09
an active level of troops in that area
07:12
you’re going to see some suppression of
07:13
the local population
07:15
and nobody’s going to care that’s going
07:17
to be the way it is because
07:18
once the fighting stops nobody follows
07:21
it
07:21
so i’ll keep an eye on it but i don’t
07:24
think it’s going to go beyond that i
07:25
think it’s done deal and it’s over
07:27
you know i got to say when you’re
07:28
talking about what they can expect from
07:30
the russian allies
07:31
i mean when obama was president i think
07:34
we learned a lot about
07:35
in crimea i think the only the only
07:38
western nation that actually
07:39
really said we were going to help the
07:41
crimeans was oddly canada under harper
07:44
and i think we sent men in equipment but
07:47
nothing ever planned out
07:48
so boy all this feels like it’s adding
07:52
up to a pressure cooker that’s coming
07:53
down the road
07:55
i would agree yeah i think there’s storm
07:57
clouds on the horizon and we’ll see if
07:59
and this is very scary in the scheme of
08:01
the politics united states because if
08:03
if biden doesn’t get uh sworn in in
08:06
january
08:07
it’s going to be one of those things
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where he begins to you know they they
08:10
with oba obama during that obama
08:13
administration they talked about
08:14
the decline of the united states and
08:17
managing that decline so we’ll go back
08:19
into that
08:20
in an uh you know a decline that’s
08:23
forced
08:24
upon the united states the problem with
08:25
that is it creates power vacuum overseas
08:28
power vacuum overseas is uh
08:31
irresistible bait to any local tyrant or
08:35
dictator or
08:36
anybody with some ambitions it’s just
08:38
irresistible and they’re gonna they’re
08:40
gonna step up and start taking over
08:42
territories and fighting and
08:43
all of this so it’s it’s one of those
08:45
things that uh abiding presidency is
08:47
almost certainly gonna cause
08:49
uh unrest throughout the world how big
08:50
that war gets
08:52
in what regions you know it’s so hard to
08:54
predict the future in these areas but
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it’s going to encourage all the
08:57
aggressive people that are out there in
08:58
the world to
09:00
to go to the next level
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so
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[Music]
09:37
[Music]
09:42
you
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