Arthur Vanetsyan thinks that the Armenian government continues to have secret agreements with the enemy and refers to the recent joint statement of the Foreign Ministers of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries, which clearly states this fact: the mediators’ foreign ministers referred to the November 9, 2020 statement. , The Sochi Declaration of November 26, 2021, and other agreements. “What” other agreements “are we talking about?” Arthur Vanetsyan asks.
He also notes that in Brussels, Pashinyan and Aliyev had a discussion behind closed doors, which also speaks of secret agreements, the content of which we are not familiar with. He remembers the assessment he gave at the Aliyev meeting after Brussels as “constructive”.
Arthur Vanetsyan also says ․ “The chosen time of Nikol Pashinyan’s last press conference is also worth noting. We know that day was the birthday of the President of Azerbaijan, which marked it by opening a new military unit in occupied Hadrut. What, was this also from the Aliyev-Pashinyan “joint messages” series? In other words, this is a manuscript that is typical of Pashinyan. “
Quote: “President Michel called on both Yerevan and Baku to actively engage in good faith and to work towards a de-escalation.”
Does this also include Armenia’s rights and (un)written rules of self-defence?
How far can an attacked country go in defending its territory, civilians and other civil, cultural and religious objects?
A comparison towards Criminal Law, a person may defend himself against an attacker in such a way that the attacker may be neutralized.
The defence may be proportional to the attacker’s violence.
This means that the force used in defence will be more extreme than the force used by the attacker.
In the Law of Warfare the same principle applies, because the attacked party is only concerned with one thing, namely holding the line of defence and winning the fight by neutralizing the enemy. Losing is not an option!
The Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) War that started September 27, 2020 and where Azerbaijan turned out to be the attacking aggressor with the help of another aggressor Turkey and the deployment of thousands of Syrian / Afghan and Pakistani jihadi mercenaries flown in can be seen as a clear case example, one of which we have seen many in the history of mankind. The winner decides and the loser bows.
We will not consider the Constitutional Law here, since this no longer applies when war breaks out.
The attacking parties used all permitted and prohibited means of war and tactics to win the war. Despite all convictions and international treaties, laws and regulations, everything was trampled on by the aggressors.
Going back to the example concerns Criminal Law and the right of the attacked citizen to be able to defend himself against the attacker, by all means, it can be stated that given the method of warfare by Azerbaijan (bombing civilians, civil and religious objects with unauthorized weaponry such as cluster and phosphorus weapons), the military authorities and the Defence Army on the ground of Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh could and should have defended themselves with the same brutal, radical and destructive force as their attackers.
The choice would have been legitimate within the written and unwritten law of war, because losing is not an option for the attacked party.
On balance, this means that the defending party must adopt the same and preferably even heavier methods in order to win the war, or at least not lose it. Because once again it has become apparent that all international treaties and laws and regulations have contributed nothing to ending or keeping within the reasonable frameworks of the Law of War.
Surviving a war can only be done by applying even more brutal, radical and/or extreme means than the attacking aggressor. Holding the line of defence and winning such wars requires very nasty and extreme countermeasures.
And an attack from defence is of a completely different order than from offensive aggression.