Just five days before Azerbaijani forces invaded Nagorno-Karabakh and drove away its population of 120,000 indigenous Armenians, acting Assistant Secretary of State Yuri Kim told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “We will not tolerate any attack on the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.”
That Azerbaijan has paid no real price for its ethnic cleansing is directly due to Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s spinelessness and U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power’s ambition. Neither will label Azerbaijan’s actions as ethnic cleansing, preferring instead weasel words such as “depopulation,” often used in the passive voice to avoid any mention of responsibility. Blinken even refuses to modify “depopulation” with the adjective “forcible.” Power, who has spent the last month of her tenure on a speaking tour and giving revisionist exit interviews to burnish her image, likewise will not acknowledge the ethnic cleansing that marked her term; to do so would undermine her brand and undercut her lifelong desire to be secretary of state.
