Russia, the only real help for Armenia, has failed to step in to save her. Will Putin let Erdogan get away with this? Brad Johnson, CIA Station Chief (Ret.) gives his analysis and predictions on the latest Turkish aggression.
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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
00:06
because of the catastrophic events with
00:09
the 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 happen to
00:17
notice a photograph
00:19
the other days yesterday i think it was
00:21
actually was either erdogan and his wife
00:23
or it was the azerbaijan
00:25
president leader and his wife that were
00:28
getting a nice romantic photograph taken
00:31
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-karabaw region it’s actually
00:49
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
01:03
was transferred away from armenia to
01:06
azerbaijan so it was a soviet union
01:09
thing and if anyone
01:10
history follows the history of stalin he
01:13
loved to like shift around different
01:15
ethnic groups he would shift people he
01:16
would shift territory he would 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 transnista region
01:32
of moldova
01:33
and uh you know in ukraine it’s kind of
01:36
based on some of that stuff on
01:38
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
01:48
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
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
02:12
and trying to expand his empire he’s
02:14
essentially
02:15
made a fiefdom out of azerbaijan because
02:17
he also wants the oil and gas
02:19
so he’s making a good deal for them part
02:21
of that is to take back this region
02:23
also because there’s a pipeline that
02:25
goes through it which he he wants that
02:27
too because it ends up in
02:28
guess where turkey and so
02:32
he has to take all this back and that’s
02:34
why i’ve said from the very beginning
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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 they’re at
02:48
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-karabaw region
02:59
and this
02:59
is on its way in it’s a hilltop town
03:02
overlooking the road that goes into
03:05
stepanakirk
03:06
and once those two things are have been
03:08
taken
03:09
up it’s it’s over there’s really nothing
03:12
left a 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
03:20
was willing to bring troops and and
03:23
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
03:55
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
04:05
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
04:14
steponikart is like a just a highway
04:16
everybody who can load up and head out
04:18
is heading towards regular armenia
04:20
to escape the onslaught that’s going to
04:22
come so
04:23
i will see how far do they go
04:26
is part of the question and is russia
04:30
ever going to actually do anything about
04:31
this
04:31
so uh as i’ve said before and
04:34
speculating about all this i just
04:35
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
04:50
and so uh interesting to see you know if
04:54
you’re an ally of russia what you can
04:55
expect
04:56
as far as backing they’re going to be
04:57
willing to play some lip service and
04:59
provide some material and things like
05:00
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 and not
05:09
willing to do it over armenia so
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uh the armenian war is essentially over
05:13
at this point they’re not going to be
05:14
able to hold them back
05:15
there’s no place for them to dig in
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again and it’s going to be all fall back
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to
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the armenian border and see what happens
05:22
from there i would be very
05:24
surprised if they try to go past you
05:26
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
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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
06:01
stand up on their own and so this was uh
06:03
inevitable it’s it’s
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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
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then
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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
06:24
you’re completely wiped out you know
06:26
what what is there to negotiate but
06:28
those are the turkish demands i
06:30
i guess that the what they’re going to
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expect is that they capitulate
06:34
you know on paper and say yeah we’ll
06:36
never attack again
06:37
and you know this whole armenian region
06:39
that 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
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that’s driving this whole thing
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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 i don’t
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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 why would it happen now
07:05
so i think it’ll they’ll just fight it
07:07
back to that border the azerbaijanis
07:09
will keep
07:10
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 so i’ll keep an eye on it but
07:23
i don’t think it’s going to go beyond
07:24
that i think it’s done deal and it’s
07:26
over
07:27
you know i got to say when you’re
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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 and equipment
07:46
but nothing ever panned 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
08:04
if biden doesn’t get uh sworn in in
08:06
january
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it’s going to be one of those things
08:08
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
08:36
or 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
08:51
that work 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
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the world to
09:00
to go to the next level
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[Music]
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so
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[Music]
09:37
[Music]
09:42
you
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