Trick has been used for many times during the past years to solve a number of tactical issues and in most cases it has been successful. Such examples are the operation of Bush in Iraq and Sahakashvili’s policy and allegations targeted at protecting the constitutional order in South Osia. The mentioned two tricks are not so original things, but there is another leader named Aliyev who is too talented and has initiated an ideology campaign named Nabucco with quite predictable failure: build the pipeline by all means and if it fails, it is not Azerbaijan’s fault.
Certainly people in Azerbaijan understand this and Baku has at least two reasons why to play such tricks at the European arena. Azerbaijan is trying to make it sound as glorious as the music of Giuseppe Verdi, but indeed their music sounds like a sad song from old eastern markets. They want to sell what doesn’t belong to them, and they want to get as much as they can…
Don’t you believe it? It is worth paying attention to the genesis of the Nabucco. “Azerbaijan has proven that it is more than a trustable partner for implementing the undertaken requirements,” such messages are sent to western officials every day. Of course when sending such messages they don’t forget to introduce the oil basement as an important on part of the Azeri new history. It is important to find out why they are focusing on it specifically. There has not been a single day when Azerbaijan doesn’t ask whether Europe has not turned to Azerbaijan as a trustable supplier of gas as a result of the gas supply problems with Russia. They say in Baku that Europe has turned to them and it seems that they are great specialists of oredicting intentions.
Certainly they abstain from giving much more detailed information about selling what they don’t have, in the given case the figures of Nabucco, the European demand, Azeri suggestion, prices formation, pipe construction and other related issues because they perfectly know that this idea may stay just an idea on a piece of paper.
The meaning of the entire trick is the following: Europe, you can buy gas from Azerbaijan, but if it is not enough you can build a pipeline under the Caspian Sea and buy gas from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan as well. In other words they are suggesting not to buy the Caspian gas, in which the Azeri portion is too small, but they are suggesting to buy what Baku gives and together with it the rest of what they need. Certainly they never said that the other portion will be much bigger than what they are suggesting. It is also forbidden to say a single word about the fact that if the Caspian gas does not exist, Aliyev can see the vision of Nabucco only in his dreams. This is another music already, which doesn’t have anything common with their poor sounds.
This is not the biggest trick in this game. Everything is presented in a manner that Baku is going to be the central base for the Nabucco project, and the other parties should be happy that the supply routs bypassing Russia are passing through Azerbaijan. This is the second political message of Baku to the West, which shows that indirectly they are trying to stand against Russia too and want to take a piece of cake from Georgia’s portion in the region as well. Certainly this is seen and understood not only in Moscow but in European countries as well. However as the issue is not mature yet they are not trying to play the music with big instruments and abstain from expressing views. We think that they should not ignore Russia, especially when quite recently Abdullah Gull was discussing the issue of taking the “Southern Stream” to Europe in Moscow. What should the small Baku-Tbilisi-Erzerum do with this other than to focus on Nabucco in order to bring fame and wealth to Azerbaijan due to the gas transfer from Ashkhabad and Astana, on the account of Moscow and Tehran as a result of their failure to sell gas?