EARLIER this year Vasily Atajanyan, the acting foreign minister of Nagorno-Karabakh , told me that his "country" would recognise Kosovo if the former Yugoslav province reciprocated . I conveyed this message to Enver Hoxhaj , Kosovo's foreign minister. He declined to take up his counterpart's offer, but thought long and hard about how to do so politely.

This little episode speaks volumes for realpolitik in international relations, especially when it comes to small countries.

In Soviet times Nagorno-Karabakh was a mostly Armenian-populated autonomous region in Azerbaijan. In Yugoslav times Kosovo was a mostly Albanian-populated autonomous province of Serbia.

Armenians fought a war against the Azeris in the early 1990s, and the Kosovo Albanians against the Serbs in 1998-99. Nagorno-Karabakh declared independence in 1991. Serbia's administration and security forces were expelled from Kosovo by NATO in 1999. The region was then run by the United Nations. It declared independence in 2008.

On the face of it there are plenty of similarities between Soviet breakaway statelets like Nagorno-Karabakh and Kosovo. But there are also many differences. No countries have recognised Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent state, but more than 80 have recognised Kosovo. Western countries emphasise that they believe that the Kosovo case is not a precedent for others.

In Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, this argument cuts no ice. Indeed, some have a clear case of "recognition envy". Marcel Petrosian, a foreign-ministry official, says that Nagorno-Karabakh has “stronger arguments” for independence than Kosovo does.

European and other countries that recognise Kosovo are, he says, practising “double standards.” Mr Atajanyan echoes this. “We see Kosovo as a precedent,” he says. “It is a vivid example of how conflicts like ours can be solved.”

The two conflicts see Armenians and Kosovars arguing in favour of a people's right to self-determination, and Serbia and Azerbaijan defending the the right of a state to defend its territorial integrity.

There are inconsistencies everywhere you look. Russia, an ally of Serbia, does not acknowledge the independence of Kosovo. But, unlike any Western countries, it recognised the breakaway states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia following its war with Georgia in 2008. Serbia might like to make common cause with Georgia but does not wish to irritate Russia. Likewise Georgia won't work with Serbia because of the potential damage to relations with the United States.

Likewise, the Armenians have been forced to fashion shrewd arguments for not recognising Kosovo's independence in order not to antagonise their Russian patrons. Armenia has not in fact recognised Nagorno-Karabakh, as it reminds American diplomats when they come calling asking for it to recognise Kosovo.



Serbia and Armenia may be on different sides when it comes to territorial integrity. But they have much in common, too. Both are ageing nations with falling populations. Both talk of their respective enemies in the same terms, fearing the respective facts that both Kosovo Albanians and Azeris are young and Muslim, and dominate areas which they consider theirs by historic right.

Hayk Khanumyan, an Armenian journalist and civil-society activist, employs a novel argument. Kosovo, he says, is an “historic region of Serbia” that Albanians have taken. (Albanians, needless to say, would disagree with this analysis.) But the real comparison is between Kosovo and Nakichevan, a large Azeri exclave separated from Azerbaijan proper by Armenian territory.

Nakichevan, says Mr Khanumyan, was once Armenian. It was lost to the Azeris as Kosovo was lost to Albanians. Nagorno-Karabakh, by contrast, has not been lost and must be defended.

Back to Mr Hoxhaj. His message to Mr Atajanyan is thatKosovo can only have formal relations with members of the UN, even though Kosovo itself has not yet joined. "We understand the aspirations of others but we have to be careful," he adds. "We can't shape the destiny of other small nations but we have to protect what we have and sometimes doing nothing is better than making a mistake."

In other words, just as the Armenians sympathise with the Kosovars but don't want to annoy the Russians, the Kosovars don't want to irk their Western backers. Such are the basics of diplomacy in the twilight zone of international relations, in which small states and nations must manoeuvre to secure their best interests.

(Picture credit: Tim Judah)

