Joe Biden Throws Climate, Peace, Democracy under the Bus in Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan continues to put finishing touches on Baku ahead of the COP29 international climate conference. Host governments treat the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference much like they treat the Olympic Games or FIFA World Cup: Not only do they rake in tourist dollars as delegates and visitors pack hotels and five-star restaurants, but they also rebrand themselves for the international audience.

The United Arab Emirates, the 2023 host, could not easily highlight its environmentalism given that it is the world’s eighth largest producer of oil and tenth largest gas producer and so it instead both projected itself as laying on the fault lines of climate change and tried to highlight its own contributions.

The United Arab Emirates is not the only monarchy or petro-state to host the climate conference. Qatar did in 2012 and Indonesia, another OPEC member, co-hosted in 2007. Azerbaijan’s selection was particularly pernicious, though.

On its face, Azerbaijan is a ridiculous choice. Azerbaijan cannot pitch itself as a potential climate victim; its chief environmental concern is not climate but its own pollution and the ability of those connected to the ruling Aliyev family to stand above the law.

It is among the world’s most authoritarian states and, according to Freedom House ranking, the least free country by far to host the United Nations Climate Change Conference. The Aliyev regime ranks just above the Taliban’s Afghanistan in total score, but Freedom House assesses Afghans have greater political rights under the Taliban than Azerbaijanis have under Aliyev. Freedom House also ranks Nagorno-Karabakh that Azerbaijan conquered just over a year ago and today administers, as the world’s least free place, worse than North Korea, Eritrea, or Tibet under Chinese rule. That many human rights voices that criticized speech restricts in Dubai or migrant labor practices in Doha are silent does not exculpate Baku; it only incriminates the selectively silent.

Awarding the Aliyevs hosting rights also whitewashes the country’s kleptocracy. Many previous hosts have corruption problems, but not to the degree of Azerbaijan. Not only is freedom in decline in Azerbaijan, but it is among the world’s most corrupt states. Transparency International considers Azerbaijan far more corrupt than the United Arab Emirates or Qatar, for example, and even worse than Russia, Lebanon and Iran. Aliyev’s two daughters reportedly control a business empire worth more than $13 billion.

Azerbaijan’s opportunity to host was due to the rotation system the United Nations implemented after the climate conference grew in size and prestige, but it was not the only candidate. Armenia, a country whose brand is environmentalism, also sought to host. Azerbaijan used Armenian hostages it seized as a bargaining chip, telling intermediaries it would release them only if Armenia dropped its bid. The State Department, anxious to broker peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan, urged Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to comply. He dropped the bid, but Azerbaijan continued to hold Armenian prisoners and occupy more than 200 square kilometers of land the international community recognizes as Armenia proper. Following last year’s ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh’s millennia-old indigenous Armenian community, Azerbaijan has also systematically begun to destroy Armenian heritage across the region. Worse, it leads tours of foreign dignitaries—including Washington think-tankers and the U.S. ambassador in Baku—to Disneyland-like sanitized versions of ancient settlements in its place. Such tours will increase in frequency as Baku seeks to normalize ethnic cleansing. For the White House to bless Azerbaijan for hosting COP29 today would be akin to allowing Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to host an international forum while still occupying Kuwait or the State Department allowing its ambassador in Moscow to take a Kremlin-run propaganda tour of Crimea.

Biden further errs by appointing John Podesta to lead the American delegation. Podesta replaced John Kerry as Biden’s climate envoy, but parts of his resume raises eyebrows. He gained prominence as Bill Clinton’s chief-of-staff. After Clinton left office, he and his brother Tony co-founded Podesta Associates, Inc. (now the Podesta Group), which counts BP as among its top clients. BP is perhaps Azerbaijan’s top Western partner and appears to lobby the United Kingdom if not other Western governments to ignore President Ilham Aliyev’s increasingly erratic behavior.

That Podesta and the Biden administration more broadly today praise the Azerbaijani regime is deeply problematic. “The U.S. values Azerbaijan’s leadership. President Ilham Aliyev has appointed a strong [environmental] team… We have aligned our priorities since Azerbaijan agreed to host COP29 just under a year ago,” Podesta reportedly said. If those priorities include stabbing dissidents in France, destroying churches, imprisoning Armenians on fabricated charges, and threatening the existence of their neighbor, then values are aligned.

It is time for Joe Biden to follow King Charles III’s decision to pass on COP29 in Baku. Just as when the United States boycotted the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, because it had become an orgy of antisemitism, sometimes absence makes a more powerful statement than attendance. It is time to keep Podesta home and signal to one of the world’s most oppressive states that they cannot use the environment and caviar diplomacy to escape their record and actions.