“Our army is combat-ready, it is at a high level of readiness to prevent possible aggression,” Davit Jamalyan, a military expert, assured during a conversation with www.aravot.am. Then he added: “If it hadn’t been ready, aggression would have become a reality long ago.”
We inquired whether the anxiety in the society about the threat of a possible war was justified. The expert replied: “The ceasefire implies that there is a potential threat of war. Under the conditions of a ceasefire, that threat is always there, and it is hard to predict it. In this sense, the anxiety is normal to a certain extent. However, one should take into account that not only we, but also Azerbaijan lives under the conditions of a ceasefire. The same anxiety, threat of war, avoiding war is characteristic of them too. And we should not be under a delusion that in Azerbaijan or among Transcaucasian Turks, the whole society, as one man, dreams of only one thing – when a war will begin. One shouldn’t be under the impression of the empty Azerbaijani propaganda.”
Talking further about the sentiments in the Azerbaijani society, our interlocutor noted: “The Azerbaijani society itself is less ready for war, since sufferings of an aggressive war are more than the probable sufferings of the defending party. I repeat the Azerbaijani society is more anxious about those things, since they are not ready for war. An ordinary citizen hates the Armenians, but that hatred doesn’t mean readiness to fight in the army.”
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In response to our question whether the messy political situation inside the Republic of Armenia didn’t endanger the external security, the military expert said: “We should understand, I mean some participants in politics, we don’t have the right to behave in a way that will cause our combat readiness to suffer, and that will allow the enemy to seize the opportunity and get down to business. We understand it is a pre-election period, one just has to adopt a statesman’s policy, since as Churchill once said, ‘A politician thinks of the next election and a statesman thinks of the next generation.’”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
