“Here, it’s worth mentioning that a prince should never make an alliance with a more powerful ruler than himself simply for the purpose of attacking another unless necessity compels him… If your ally conquers, you are in his debt, and princes should avoid as much as possible being in debt to anyone,” wrote Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli 500 years ago.
The four-day Karabakh war revealed the entire bareness of Armenia’s past years’ politics. When there was no need, at least this need was definitely not compelling, Armenia’s authorities was handing over and donating all its strategic assets to Russia. But we were mostly silent. Armenia’s “rulers” were handing over the country’s opportunities to Russia, even when the necessity required otherwise. The necessity, indeed, was not requiring to handover the monopoly to “Gazprom” and “Rosneft”, to extend the term of the Russian base until the mid of the 21st century, if you have at least a trace of state thinking and have opened the school textbook of history at least once, or at least your instinct does not betray you … After handing over all of this, the necessity suddenly compelled. And forced us to surrender a captive to this “ruler”. Summarizing the balance of a quarter century of the Independence of Armenia, we see that the result of the activities of the country “rulers” is comparable with the disaster. The “progress” seems could be extensively just as for example the children could not grow up and we get older, and do not look for anyone’s heroic deed or merit here. Everyone in Armenia has done something, even unsystematic and without idea …
Yes, today, we have no friends, by and large. And it’s a very important lesson that we should reap from the four-day war. However, the conclusions as to why it happened so are more important.
The lack of state thinking, the lack of even the desire to obtain this thinking drive through dictated a “short” but at the same time an irresponsible stance, “Let us hold from Russia’s tail, we will have something too.” During the past 25 years, we witnessed the most servile and menial manifestations of this defective anti-state thinking, both in domestic and foreign policy, and “enjoyed” it fully. Of course, it is very easy to blame everything on “caviar” intrigues of the neighboring state, the presence of oil, the Russian imperial deceit, and other factors. These factors certainly exist but what our task was. Confronting and neutralizing these factors, or thereby justifying our diplomatic infertilities? Who prevents us to be guided by our national interests rather than other state’s interests in contrary to our interests? And did you not know, gentlemen, that this balance will one day be outlined by its whole disgrace by showing the entire bareness of your politics.
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Yes, like the collapse of the USSR, the Karabakh war also divided the life of our generation into two parts: before it and after it, the four-day war has already begun to make the same watershed role. Those who are alive today have a big and outstanding debt to the dozens of soldiers who gave their life to defend our security and dignity in these four days. This debt can be paid off not by patriotic speeches, trampling or burning the enemy’s state flag (which is also a manifestation of serious lack of state thinking) but by building a civilized, free and prosperous country. And this requires cleaning up the “construction site” from the garbage: political, social, moral …
The Artsakh Armenians have created the second Armenian State, which is unrecognized but is coeval with the Republic of Armenia. The life was arranged in a way that the Greeks and Albanians, we also, have two states whether we like it or not, realize it or not.
We must call our inner enemy by their names. It is the corruption, larceny, “rollback”, budget waste, a police apparatus degrading the citizen’s dignity, a judicial system overriding the justice of the citizen’s faith, “fabricating” investigator-prosecutorial apparatus and so on, everything that expels the Armenians to become Diaspora.
In addition, the state and the society must get rid of the “obligations” imposed on them that allegedly we have assumed over our “ally” and only spoil our relations with key states and isolating from neighboring Georgia and Iran.
Also, for God’s sake, free Edward Nalbandian of the heavy burden of diplomacy. This diplomacy was ingloriously shot down by the very first shot of this four-day war, which was released from the weapon delivered to the enemy by our “ally.”
Ruben MEHRABYAN
