Today, February 7, the absolute majority of Azerbaijani citizens will make their choice in favor of Ilham Aliyev, support his candidacy for the post of president of the country and thereby confirm their confidence in the course and strategy of the head of state.
What factors determine such a unanimous choice of the Azerbaijani people?
The Force of the Impact on Azerbaijan
If we summarize the numerous publications and studies devoted to the activities of the head of state, their general meaning is clear – as a national leader, Ilham Aliyev fully justified the trust of his people, which he never deceived in any small or large way, invariably telling them the truth, no matter how bitter or unpopular it was.
Compared to modern political leaders, who are increasingly acting as resourceful showrunners who are not interested in anything other than their personal political rating, Ilham Aliyev is strikingly different in his directness, toughness, and ability to state the facts and his analytical approach to solving emerging problems.
Such things don’t go unnoticed by the people. The trust ensues from that.
Trust in Ilham Aliyev is also associated with a combination of two important factors – the national challenge, in response to which independent Azerbaijan restored the borders of its national home, and the attitude to the concept of “sovereignty”, which every Azerbaijani absorbed with mother’s milk.
Although in comparison with its neighbors in Eurasia, Azerbaijan is a relatively small state, in the South Caucasus region it has undeniable advantages both in terms of territory and population. The problem was that over the course of thirty post-Soviet years these advantages were not realized either militarily or geopolitically.
The force of the blow dealt to Azerbaijan during the collapse of the USSR and the war with Armenia can be compared with a nuclear bombing, the consequences of which were the collapse of economic and cooperative ties, the death of the industrial sector, and finally, depopulation, in which millions of Azerbaijanis either left the country or became refugees within own state. Only the oil and gas component was preserved, and even then only partially – production in Azerbaijani fields required powerful investments, which in those decades could only be obtained on foreign markets.
For any state, any political leader, to get out of such a socio-economic hole, to diversify the economy and create a strong, prosperous state on the basis of natural and geographical advantages is a most difficult task that requires many years of concentrated efforts of the entire state apparatus of power and local leaders – from the heads of districts and heads of departments to ministers and heads of state committees.
But this is exactly what the head of state did during his years in power. And this is precisely where the overwhelming majority of Azerbaijanis see the historical merit of Ilham Aliyev.
However, it would be completely wrong to talk about the leadership qualities of the current president of Azerbaijan solely in terms of economic growth. The question is how the main goals are achieved – the creation of a sovereign space, the implementation of national security tasks. And this is actually the most important thing. For the development of the socio-economic space, the growth of private prosperity – all these are tasks dependent on the basic foundation of the general security and sovereignty of the country.
In this regard, I propose to compare 8.3 percent of Armenia’s GDP with 2.6 percent in Azerbaijan.
Armenia suffered a complete collapse in the national-ideological sphere, suffered a heavy defeat in the 44-day war, practically replaced its main foreign policy sovereign and donor… But it has more than eight percent GDP growth due to the largest external debt among the CIS countries, multimillion-dollar assistance from international infrastructure banks and private assistance from abroad at the level of individual citizens who send hundreds of dollars to the budget of Armenian families…
Do we want to be like in Armenia?
The question is rhetorical.
Or let’s take Georgia, which is friendly to us. In 2023, GDP growth in this country was about seven percent. It would seem, what is not a reason to be happy for your neighbors? But what has changed for Georgians over the years in terms of state building? Perhaps the past years have added wisdom to the Georgian leadership. But has Georgia become stronger as a state that has finally managed to resolve the problem of its sovereignty? Was it able to create a stable government apparatus capable of implementing long-term strategies in macroeconomics?
No one denies the existence of the principles of “competitive democracy” in Georgia, which are noted by EU officials. As well as the fact that these principles may well turn out to be monopolized and controlled by one force.
Today, of all three states of the South Caucasus, only Azerbaijan is ready and able to provide external security guarantees to its neighbors.
Nobody denies: it is possible to have a strong state and at the same time an effectively functioning system of democratic pluralism. But only after decades of economic prosperity and high strategic culture, which are the support of the chosen order of things.
If, by the will of historical fate, the state was sent into a deep knockdown, then there is only one way to get out of it – without changing the strategic course every five years, without allowing external players to manage their internal political processes, without allowing them to lead active social groups, finance street protests and conduct other experiments for the benefit of “democratic change.”
Azerbaijan has abandoned this path. And, as history has shown, he made the absolutely right decision.
The Mystery of the Phenomenal Leap
It should be taken into account that, unlike such old historical leaders of Europe as, for example, Austria, Azerbaijan lives and develops under conditions of fundamentally different political and ideological paradigms. All imperial and territorial problems of Austria, coupled with its enemies and competitors, remained deep in the last century. And now this successor to the great Austria-Hungary can accumulate financial resources as conditional historical interest, concentrate on fine culture, international tourism, municipal problems…
Azerbaijan exists on another planet, in different strategic and geographical conditions, in a very complex environment from the south, north, and west – critical for maintaining the stability of any country. And if, in addition, it is necessary to solve the problem of restoring sovereignty, then even theoretically it is difficult to imagine how this is even possible.
And yet, Ilham Aliyev managed to set up the mechanism of the state system in such a way that during the twenty years of his presidency, Azerbaijan was able to make a truly phenomenal leap towards creating an independent, strong and prosperous state.
In a situation where humanity is preparing for a new world war (more precisely, de facto living in the conditions of a new global military-political conflict), we have to admit that the potential of liberal-democratic globalist capitalism has completely exhausted itself. Not in terms of the amount of funds and investment opportunities, but as a model of global governance that no longer works.
And although some of the key technologies are still concentrated in the leading companies of the West, there is an unprecedentedly rapid historical redistribution of power from the Euro-Atlantic group in favor of the rising world majority of the global South and East.
It should be added to this that technological replicas are becoming more popular and effective than the original products of advanced technology carriers. This applies to both the military-industrial complex, motor transport and telecommunications.
Unlike 1990-2000, now there is no longer a need to look for oneself in the global division of labor. It is enough to bet on your own national production, borrowing technological lines at the first stage, in order to ultimately win. In particular, this path was chosen both for the Azerbaijani military-industrial complex and for the complex of production in the non-resource economy.
The new world will be inherited by the strong
About one billion dollars, which is planned to be invested in 2024 in the military-industrial complex and defense spending, which, according to SIPRI, amounts to 5.3 percent of Azerbaijan’s GDP, is only a small need given what is happening.
Note that starting in 2021, global defense spending has crossed the $2 trillion mark. The shift of tectonic plates, the rapid rise of new countries and continents, and the “unfreezing” of long-standing conflicts that were previously suppressed by the system of structured confrontation of the Cold War have already led to a series of acute armed clashes, the number of which will increase.
All this will continue to happen at least until the end of the 2020s, and maybe longer, until a new system of global checks, balances and mutual control is formed. The Republic of Azerbaijan can only pass through the thorns and trials of this global path with dignity and confidence only with Ilham Aliyev.
In times of crisis—and this is exactly what the next decade looks like—leaders are not changed.
During periods of a sharp aggravation of international tension, when everyone is waiting for a catch, and the level of trust between the leaders of nations has essentially stopped at zero, political figures whose integrity, honesty and loyalty to their word, which is commonly called “strategic culture”, are extremely in demand not causing any doubt in the world community.
It is these features, organically growing from the culture, traditions and experience of the Azerbaijani nation, that fully correspond to its leader Ilham Aliyev, who, no doubt, will lead his country to new successes and achievements.
This article was originally published on Haqqin.az on February 7, 2024.
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