Despite Potholes, a Relatively Smooth Road for US-Azerbaijan Military Cooperation

Military cooperation between the United States and Azerbaijan appears to be developing at a strong pace. A recent US delegation, though, expressed concerns about the country's sluggish realization of agreements with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as well as on Baku's relatively high level of military spending.

At an April 17 press conference in Baku, Maj. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt, III, a member of the US delegation led by Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Daniel Fata, confirmed those concerns. "The issue is not only that the Azerbaijani army meets NATO standards," Gen. Wyatt said. "It is necessary that [the] military equipment and military education would also meet [NATO] standards."

Azerbaijan has yet to finalize a military doctrine, one of the requirements for its NATO Individual Partnership Action Plan, a cornerstone of the alliance's cooperation with post-Soviet states.

The American mission, in Baku from April 14-17 for routine military consultations, also expressed unease with Azerbaijan's plans to increase defense spending in 2008 from $1.3 billion to $2 billion. The total gives the country the largest military budget in the South Caucasus by a wide margin -- a development that has sparked jitters in Armenia, which sees the buildup as a sign that Azerbaijan may be pondering an attempt to retake the Nagorno-Karabakh territory by force.

Commenting on the issue, Gen. Wyatt noted that while the budget increase "probably [is] connected with economic growth and increased revenues," Azerbaijan "itself should answer whether the country's defense area needs $2 billion, while there are other areas like education, healthcare, and social policy which also need" support.

Baku experts believe the government is using the increased military spending to put pressure on Armenia over the stalled Karabakh peace process. [For details, see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Some aspects of Azerbaijan's military buildup are attracting considerable interest from the US military. One such project involves Zeynalabdin Taghiyev airport -- a military facility 40 kilometers to the north of Baku -- that is being modernized as part of Azerbaijan's IPAP program. A well-informed Defense Ministry source told EurasiaNet that the Pentagon has implemented some upgrades there already, and has now expressed interest in using the airdrome for NATO operations in Afghanistan. "[P]articularly for re-fueling and the technical maintenance of aircraft," the source said.

No official comments were released about plans for the Gabala radar station -- proposed by Russia as part of a jointly operated missile defense system with the United States -- though the topic was discussed. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. American officials reportedly passed on proposals made by Russian President Vladimir Putin to US President George W. Bush during their recent meeting in Sochi.

Cooperation in other strategic locations has made faster progress. As part of a Caspian Sea surveillance program with the United States, two radar stations have been set up on the Absheron Peninsula (in the villages of Gobustan and Turkan), one on the border with Russia (Yalama village) and one in Azerbaijan's Neftchala region, near the Iranian border. A mobile radar system has also been set up by the Pentagon and NATO in the region of Xizi, roughly 80 kilometers from Baku.

According to the Defense Ministry source, the stations now have full coverage of Azerbaijan's sector of the Caspian Sea, as well as of radio-electronic signals in southern Russia and northern Iran.

The unsettled legal status of territorial claims to the Caspian Sea was another topic for discussion, the source added.

Azerbaijani officials, for their part, prefer to stick to the big picture. "[Azerbaijan's] cooperation with NATO is at its highest level," Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov told journalists on April 15. "We are already at the second stage of IPAP, which is important for us in order to implement deeper reforms and build closer ties with NATO." The second phase of Azerbaijan's IPAP program began on March 15.

Azerbaijan will receive about $21 million from NATO for reforms connected with the second stage of IPAP. The US State Department will allocate $900,000 for short-term military training and courses in US military academies. Azerbaijan will receive $3 million in US foreign military assistance in 2009.

Diplomats will join the next round of US-Azerbaijani military talks, scheduled to take place in Washington, DC, in July.

Despite the development of military ties with the US and NATO, Baku underlines that it has a go-slow approach to integration with the alliance. In a March 21 interview with the Russian news agency Interfax, President Ilham Aliyev stressed that the question of membership is not on the agenda. "The present standard of our cooperation with NATO suits us," Aliyev said. "It is hard to tell what is going to happen later, how international developments are going to unfold, what processes are going to take place in our region."

But that judgment does not appear to dilute the US commitment to military support for Azerbaijan. The assistance, said Gen. Wyatt, will go on. "[T]ransformation," he said, "is a long process."