The exact same situation exists in Azerbaijan as exists in Ukraine -- Nagorno-Karaback province is internationally recognized as Azerbaijani territory, which is being illegally occupied by force by Armenian separatists. You would think, then, that the west would welcome the Azerbaijani offensive against these illegal separatists, like they welcomed Ukrainian force against the Donbass separatists. It's part of the rules-based order that territorial integrity always trumps self-determination, right?
Wrong! France denounced Azerbaijan's campaign against what they call 'terrorists', the same thing Ukraine called the people of Donbass, as "illegal and unacceptable" The U.S.A said something similar, demanding Azerbaijan stop. So what is the rules-based order? It's apparently illegal, against the rules-based order, for Azerbaijan to enforce its territorial integrity. It's also illegal for Russia to defend separatists from Ukraine when they enforce their territorial integrity. There is no common thread. Anything anyone does is illegal unless it's done by the U.S.A. If the U.S.A. occupies portions of Syria, or invades Iraq on false pretexts, or bombs Libya out of the blue, or bombs Serbia in favor of separatists seeking to destroy the territorial integrity of Serbia, that's all within the rules-based order. But if you either support self-determination or territorial integrity, and the name of your nation is not 'U.S.A.', then you will be condemned by the U.S.A. and all its allies as violating the never-spelled-out rules. Whatever you do is illegal. You can do the exact opposite of what was illegal previously and it's still illegal. Everything is illegal.
Personally I have no sympathy for Armenia. They recently betrayed Russia, a long term friend and ally, and started hosting military drills with the U.S.A. So they made their bed, they sided with pure evil against pure good. This is divine retribution for their sins.
In addition, it never made any sense for Armenia to attempt to control land that is not contiguous with any other portion of their nation. Yes, Armenians have lived there for a long time, but it is not long-term viable for a country to be completely surrounded by another, hostile country. It's physically impossible. What happens if that hostile nation decides to cease allowing trade to travel to your borders? You can't object because every nation has the right to control their borders and decide who and what they will allow to travel through their country.
You cannot insist on self-determination in an area of land that is not feasible as a nation -- with no borders with the sea or any allied nations. At least you can't make such a demand without nuclear weapons or the like to enforce your unreasonable goal. But Armenia is weaker than Azerbaijan, and recently lost a war with them, proving they are weaker beyond all doubt. So here we have a country demanding a completely unreasonable thing -- that Azerbaijan allow a portion of their own land, recognized by the entire world as their land, that does not border any other country except more of Azerbaijan, to instead belong to Armenia, by sheer moral force, because Armenia has no army that can support this demand.
I have stated time and again that the obvious solution to Nagorno-Karaback would be to trade the land the Armenians occupy in Azerbaijan with the exclave that Azerbaijan controls on the far side of Armenia. Then both nations would have contiguous borders and everyone could just peacefully move from one area to the other. Armenia rejected that sensible compromise so now it loses everything in return for nothing.
Furthermore, Armenia signed a peace treaty in 2020 recognizing Nagorno-Karaback as Azerbaijani territory and forever ceding any claim to the territory in the future. Peace treaties must mean something if there is ever to be peace. If people don't honor their treaties then the only sensible conclusion to any war would have to be the full genocide of the other party -- otherwise they'll just start the war over again a few years later. Honesty, honor, integrity are vital to coexistence. The people of Nagorno-Karaback refused to accept the fate that their own masters had signed and tried to ignore the treaty they were honor-bound to uphold. Now they're finding out.
But I can see sensible people arguing for or against the poor oppressed Armenians of Nagorno-Karaback, that doesn't really matter to me which side you take. All I ask is that you be consistent. That you explain what the rules of your reasoning are, and those rules don't contradict what you just said earlier about Ukraine. I want the rules-based-order to explain why it's okay to violate Serbia's and Azerbaijan's territorial integrity but not Ukraine's. That's all I want. And the world will never receive that explanation. Instead we're just told, "shut up!" and then suddenly we're being sanctioned or accused of rape or whatever. It's so ridiculous. How has nobody else noticed this utter, blatant hypocrisy? This completely brazen cessation of reason and logic? Why am I the only person who sees what just happened here?
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