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.
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brad johnson it is november the 9th of
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2020
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and there’s many issues going
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undiscussed because of
00:07
the catastrophic events with the
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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
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notice a photograph
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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
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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
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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
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also because there’s a pipeline that
02:25
goes through it which he
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he wants that too because it ends up in
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guess where turkey
02:29
and and so he has to take all this back
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and that’s why i’ve said from the very
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beginning
02:36
turkey will not give up they’re going to
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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
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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
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city called uh shushi shushi is
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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
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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
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is heading towards regular armenia to
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escape the onslaught that’s going to
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come
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so i will see how far do they go
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is part of the question and is russia
04:29
ever going to actually do anything about
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this so
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uh as i’ve said before and speculating
04:34
about all this i just couldn’t see
04:37
russia going really to
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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
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risks are too great you know they don’t
05:04
want to go
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toe-to-toe with turkey unless they have
05:07
to and they’re not at that point not
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willing to do it over armenia so
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uh the armenian war is essentially over
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at this point they’re not gonna be able
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to hold them back
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there’s no place for them to dig in
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again and it’s gonna be all fall back to
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the armenian border and see what happens
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from there
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i would be very surprised if they try to
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go past
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you know the armenian border in any way
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shape or form i mean they might shell it
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a
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few things to try and make them to back
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up a little bit so there’s no
05:34
counter-offensive something of that
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nature but much beyond that i’d be
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surprised
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uh erdogan doesn’t need regular armenia
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there’s nothing there
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and uh i would say azerbaijan is the
05:45
same thing they want this territory back
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they need it for the pipeline stuff but
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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
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face and aren’t really responding
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and armenia never had a chance to to
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stand up on their own and so this was uh
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inevitable it’s it’s
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ending up as it had to end up and uh
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basically the turkish terms are
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withdraw completely from the
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nagorno-karabaw regions
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and go back to your armenian line and
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then
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you have to sit down and negotiate well
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i gotta
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i gotta say i mean once you’ve lost the
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war you’re completely wiped out
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you know what what is there to negotiate
06:28
but those are the turkish demands i
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i guess that what they’re going to
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expect is that they capitulate
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you know on paper and say yeah we’ll
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never attack again and
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you know this whole armenian region that
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you’ve taken over long ago is
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stays in your hands so uh it’s money
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you know it’s the oil and gas money
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that’s driving this whole thing
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but it’s ending up in the logical place
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and i think it’ll go back to that border
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and
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essentially become a non-issue uh i
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don’t know that they’ll they’re going to
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negotiate any sort of treaty
06:57
i think that will not happen it hasn’t
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happened since the
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90s when the armenians declared
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independence so
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why would it happen now so i think it’ll
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they’ll just fight it back to that
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border the azerbaijanis will keep
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an active level of troops in that area
07:12
you’re going to see some suppression of
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the local population
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and nobody’s going to care that’s going
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to be the way it is because
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once the fighting stops nobody follows
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it
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so i’ll keep an eye on it but i don’t
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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
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talking about what they can expect from
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the russian allies
07:31
i mean when obama was president i think
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we learned a lot about
07:35
in crimea i think the only the only
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western nation that actually
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really said we were going to help the
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crimeans was oddly canada under harper
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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
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up to a pressure cooker that’s coming
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down the road
07:55
i would agree yeah i think there’s storm
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clouds on the horizon and we’ll see if
07:59
and this is very scary in the scheme of
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the politics united states because if
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if biden doesn’t get uh sworn in in
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january
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it’s going to be one of those things
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where he begins to you know they they
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with oba obama during that obama
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administration they talked about
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the decline of the united states and
08:17
managing that decline so we’ll go back
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into that
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in an uh you know a decline that’s
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forced
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upon the united states the problem with
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that is it creates power vacuum overseas
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power vacuum overseas is uh
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irresistible bait to any local tyrant or
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dictator or
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anybody with some ambitions it’s just
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irresistible and they’re gonna they’re
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gonna step up and start taking over
08:42
territories and fighting and
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all of this so it’s it’s one of those
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things that uh abiding presidency is
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almost certainly gonna cause
08:49
uh unrest throughout the world how big
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that war gets
08:52
in what regions you know it’s so hard to
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predict the future in these areas but
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it’s going to encourage all the
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aggressive people that are out there in
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the world to
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to go to the next level
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so
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[Music]
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[Music]
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you
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