US-based The National Interest magazine has published an article by Luke Coffey, director of The Heritage Foundation's Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies. Headlined "America Needs Strategic Partners like Azerbaijan", the article says: "Azerbaijan, a small but important country located in the South Caucasus on the Caspian Sea, deserves more attention from U.S. policymakers".

U.S.-Azerbaijani relations date back to the Paris Peace Conference after World War I, during the early and short-lived days of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. A few years after meeting with the Azerbaijani delegation at the peace conference, President Woodrow Wilson recounted the event during a speech delivered in San Francisco: "Well, one day there came in a very dignified and interesting group of gentlemen who were from Azerbaijan . . . I was talking to men who talked the same language that I did in respect of ideas, in respect of conceptions of liberty, in respect of conceptions of right and justice," the article says. "Much has changed in the world since then, but Azerbaijan remains an important partner for the United States for a number of reasons.(Azertac)