ArmInfo. The volume of American military aid to Armenia, which is small in comparison to funds provided to Azerbaijan, is conditioned by the membership of the republic in the collective security system of the CSTO. A similar opinion was expressed to ArmInfo by analyst, MP of the Azerbaijani parliament Rasim Musabekov.
"Thus, the reasons are fairly objective, since the borders of Armenia with Iran and Turkey are protected by Russian border troops on the basis of relevant agreements. Military cooperation between Armenia and the United States is mainly limited to humanitarian areas," he noted.
To recall, in 2018-2019 the US administration has increased financial assistance to Azerbaijan to $ 101.5 million. Meanwhile, in 2016-2017 this amount was $ 3 million. In parallel, there was an increase in the budget of the border guards of Azerbaijan from $ 90 million in 2018 to $ 116 million in 2019. At the same time, financial support for Armenia from the United States amounted to $ 4.2 million in 2018, $ 2.8 million in 2019, and another $ 2.1 million is planned for 2020. These data became a pretext for political manipulations around the insufficient level of Armenian-American cooperation.
Meanwhile, according to Musabekov, Azerbaijan, like Kazakhstan, is allocated American finance in the framework of a specific CaspianGuard project. The latter is aimed at helping to improve security at the borders, preventing and countering terrorist threats, the spread of drug transportation, trafficking and other transnational threats.
According to Musabekov, the United States, who invested large funds in energy projects in the Caspian Sea, seeks to increase the capacity of Baku and Astana to ensure their security. In particular, within the framework of the project, the United States assisted Azerbaijan with the preparation of border guards, the installation of sensors and radars at the southern and northern borders, and also provided a vessel with equipment to detect radioactive or prohibited chemicals.
According to the analyst, CaspianGuard primarily aims to protect American interests in protecting important energy projects for the United States and preventing questionable cargoes from Russia to Iran and back through the territory of interest to them.
"The addressee of the American assistance is not the Ministry of Defense, but the Border Guard Service of Azerbaijan, which is determined by the goals of the American project - ensuring the security of Azerbaijan's land, air and sea borders. In this light, USA's financial aid to Azerbaijan has nothing to do with the negotiation process on Karabakh and moreover resumption of military actions in the region'', "Musabekov concluded.