It wasn’t very long ago that we were told “our international relations have been undermined by the reckless and gaffe-prone diplomacy of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak and their damaging indifference to the rule of law”. These words, from Foreign Secretary David Lammy as he trailed his Progressive Realism doctrine, were supposedly heralding a foreign policy reset — grown-ups back in charge, an end to sloganeering. 

All this makes Lammy’s recent comments on Armenia and Azerbaijan all the more baffling (not least when they were written on a largely unread and self-indulgent Substack). In a carelessly incorrect use of words, Lammy described Azerbaijan as having “been able to liberate territory it lost in the early 1990s”, contradicting UK government policy. It took three days before any London journalists noticed, yet Lammy’s choice of words has sparked outrage and confusion among those in the Caucasus region. 

It was an unenforced error, as well as a colossal moral  one, particularly given that last week marked a year since the assault against Nagorno-Karabakh. Having been starved by the Azeri blockade for nine months, over 100,000 Karabakh Armenians were ethnically cleansed from their homes. It is hard to pick out the most grim symbolism: the ghost town of Stepanakert or the streets renamed after the architects of the 1915 Armenian genocide that Azeris continue to deny, or the destruction of ancient markers of Armenian civilisation. 

There is, of course, a danger in overinterpreting a diplomatic gaffe like this, though the choice of words remains live on Lammy’s Substack. Yet one has to question the intelligence of a politician, or his adviser, who can decry both Russian imperialism, and the imperialism their own ancestors suffered from, and then go on to laud one of the region’s most imperialistic powers, which has triggered a red flag for genocide warning from the Lemkin Institute. 

Lammy’s writing made the case that Putin’s revanchist actions in Ukraine are having the opposite effect from intended, burgeoning national identity across the region, and globally  moving states and their peoples away from, not towards, Russia. He is right about Ukraine. What was at times a fractured and shakily defined national identity has swelled as Kyiv attempts to repel Putin’s invasion. But little else is accurate. Georgia looks set to repudiate EU hopes with a move closer yet to Russia in upcoming elections. 

Yes, as Lammy states, only a few fragile regimes — Belarus, North Korea, and Iran — openly ally with Moscow. Yet others, such as India, or the Gulf States, continue to grow their trade ties with Russia, setting up parallel systems outside of Western control, taking advantage of cheaper oil or new capital inflows that once found their homes in London or Geneva. Many, such as Azerbaijan, continue to play both sides, courting both Putin and flailing Western attempts to sign Russia’s neighbours up to sanctions regimes.

The ultimate irony in throwing Armenia under the bus is that, in contrast to Azerbaijan, in recent years it is Armenia that has moved away from Russia and towards the West. Just last week, Armenia reported a failed Russian-backed coup attempt, and the Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan stated in February that its membership of Russia’s Collective Security Treaty Organisation was under review. The fledgling democracy is no doubt aware both that Putin will not protect them against Azeri irredentism, and that the normalisation of revanchist regional ambitions is a potentially fatal premonition for the country. 

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan continues on its path of internal repression, with journalists and activists being arrested on spurious charges. It is taking the West for a ride whilst undermining attempts to defeat Putin — working quietly to allow Russia to evade Western sanctions, whilst also openly cosying up to Moscow. It speaks volumes about the hijacking of climate change rhetoric that Azerbaijan has taken on hosting COP29, abandoning the pledge to transition away from fossil fuels, and using it to cement its standing in international politics, all driven by European energy dependence.

In his NATO farewell speech, Jens Stoltenberg, the outgoing Secretary General highlighted the volte-face among NATO members: “many Allies believed that buying gas from Russia was purely a commercial matter. That was wrong. Russia used gas as a weapon to try to coerce us … We must not trade short-term economic interests for long-term security needs”.

What this latest gaffe tells us is that beyond the “grown-ups back in charge” rhetoric … very little has changed

Lammy and Western partners are repeating that same mistake here, embedding an alliance with an autocratic and unreliable petro-dictator to fill a short-term economic need. When the next Azeri invasion of Armenia takes place — and it will — Britain will find itself stood on the sidelines watching yet another instance of ethnic cleansing, unable to respond.

The most cutting critique of Progressive Realism was that it “fails to divine a practical course forward for British foreign policy”. What this latest gaffe tells us is that beyond the “grown-ups back in charge” rhetoric, beyond telling us that there has been a reset, and beyond the Progressive Realism sloganeering, very little has changed.