News - Seth Frantzman: Karabakh history provides an insight into the Western concept of ‘rules’ and ‘territorial integrity’

If you look at the story of Nagorno-Karabakh, you can understand the west’s “rules” based order and “territorial integrity” concepts. What they mean is that when the west decides on borders then countries can do whatever they want inside those arbitrary borders, Middle East analyst Seth Frantzman wrote in his X microblog. “For instance the Soviets arbitrarily carved up the South Caucasus, but then borders an empire draws always become set in stone. Therefore, that means even Armenians had autonomy in Nagorno-Karabakh and Soviets put them under Azerbaijan “territorial integrity”. Under that concept, they can be blockaded, bombed and expelled as “separatists”. They lose all rights under the wester concept of “rules based international law.” “The West created the ‘rules’ based order in order to justify colonialism and to create random borders. Then they said any state could do whatever it wants in its borders. So Saddam genocided Kurds, Syria denied them basic human rights as part of ‘territorial integrity’. It’s interesting. Also the term ‘separatists’ was invented by the west to describe any minority group seeking rights. A group can live in an area for a thousand years but if a Western empire or Moscow draws a new border one year, the people become ‘separatist’ just for existing. Consider for instance the conquest of the Americas. So for instance the Navajo nation, if it wanted autonomy, could be called “separatist” even though they are indigenous. The US removed the Cherokee from their lands and that’s ok under “territorial integrity” and “rules” That’s why Armenians never had any rights in Nagorno-Karabakh. The “rules” based order denies them any rights and actually provides a rule to remove them as “separatist” just for existing. They are right and many of them were abused at checkpoints by behind forced to open their car doors by soldiers while state media shoved cameras and bright lights in the face of little kids to use the kids in propaganda. Of course, they avoid media. Some media exploit them,” he wrote.