American expert: PACE decision - unprovoked act of hostility by West against Azerbaijan

The decision of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is the latest unprovoked act of hostility by the West against Azerbaijan since September’s successful one-day anti-terrorist operation liberated the rest of the country, Andrew Korybko, an American political scientist and Ph.D. in political science, who lives in Moscow, told Report.

According to him, the powerful Armenian diaspora lobby subsequently leveraged all its agents of influence to mislead Western policymakers into pivoting towards Armenia at Azerbaijan’s expense: "Since then, hostile and provoked statements are becoming routine."

He stressed that the sequence of events that’s unfolded since September shows that the West is indeed pivoting towards Armenia at Azerbaijan’s expense exactly as the first’s powerful diaspora lobby wants them to.

"This newfound policy is thus expected to continue accelerating and will likely take many more hostile forms in the coming future such as other forthcoming efforts to delegitimize the country along the lines of PACE’s latest one. So, Baku should therefore brace itself for a period of protracted distrust with the West," he said.

He thinks that amidst these difficult international conditions within which the country was forced against its will, the best way forward is to comprehensively expand relations with non-Western countries:

"Exploring membership or at least some sort of partner relationship with BRICS would be well advised since Azerbaijan could utilize this framework to take full advantage of its geostrategic position at the crossroads of the Middle Corridor and North-South Transport Corridor megaprojects. In practice, this could take the form of more closely coordinating related bureaucratic, economic, financial, logistical, and other relevant policies for optimizing these complementary Eurasian connectivity corridors. Exploring membership in this association would advance its objective national interests and should be seriously considered by policymakers."