Azerbaijan.US
Speaking on the News of the Caucasus channel, political commentator Vladimir Kopchak said the key message of President Ilham Aliyev’s recent interview is straightforward: in the current international environment, states survive not through abstract guarantees, but through their own capacity to defend themselves.
According to Kopchak, the era of relying solely on collective security mechanisms and external assurances has effectively come to an end. Without real military and institutional strength, alliances and formal commitments remain largely declarative and fail to provide genuine security.
He stressed that attempts to draw direct parallels between Azerbaijan and other international cases – from Venezuela to Ukraine – are fundamentally flawed. What matters, Kopchak argued, is not the existence of precedents, but whether a state possesses the resilience and capability to respond to threats.
Kopchak also pointed to the South Caucasus as a region where geopolitical competition is intensifying. In this context, strengthening defense capabilities should not be viewed as preparation for conflict, but rather as a means of preventing instability, external pressure, and chaos.
Summing up, the analyst said Azerbaijan is pursuing a long-term strategy based on realism rather than expectations of protection from others. In a world where international law is increasingly overshadowed by power politics, he argued, this approach is becoming decisive.
