The experience of recent years, and especially the pandemic and the war, has forced many of us to reconsider many ideas and concepts. I will list some of them: universal values, democracy, liberalism, progress-conservatism, peace, reconciliation. I would not say that those words have lost their value, but it is clear that they need to be redefined.
… It has been ten years since the Arab Spring. Everything began as a fight for democracy. Were Gaddafi and Assad, and before them Saddam Hussein, dictators? According to Western standards, absolutely. But did the people of those countries gain anything from the overthrow or the attempt to overthrow those dictatorial regimes? Definitely not. Those states have collapsed, plunged into civil and regional wars, killed tens of thousands of people, displaced hundreds of thousands of refugees across the world, and created many terrorist groups. Am I allowed to think that perhaps it was not worth trying to establish democracy in those countries, especially since Iraq, Syria, and Libya did not become more democratic despite all these disasters?
In the spring of 2018, Armenia was freed of its rotten, corrupt, and barren regime. Is that a good thing? Yes, of course. But a random person came into power as a result of the revolution who is completely detached from reality, who has no idea how to govern a state or foreign policy, and who brought the country to war and a humiliating defeat. By the way, the regime did not become more viable after all that, to put it mildly. Do I now have the right to doubt the necessity of that revolution?
Now for ‘peace’ and ‘reconciliation.’ Theoretically, yes, we must do everything in order to find ways to reconcile with our neighbors. But there is a mandatory condition: your neighbors must come to terms with your existence here, on this land, and not try to displace you from that area. They did not want us to live in Van and Bitlis, and so we don’t live there. They didn’t want us to live in Nakhichevan, and they achieved that goal. They didn’t want us to live in Shushi and Hadrut, and they achieved that goal (thanks to ‘the people’s government’ and the ‘people’ who are indifferent towards that fact). Now, they are telling us to leave Syunik and Yerevan. We have two options: put up with it and stay here, or pack our suitcases and go to Krasnodar or Glendale. That decision depends on every Armenian.
Read also
But to say that our neighbors love peace and that it is possible to live with them is, in my opinion, a form of pathos. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that this pathology began to develop during the ‘people’s government’ administration.
Aram Abrahamyan
