The “former ones,” the Russians, the fifth column, the 11,000 “deserters”—and now also Joe Biden’s administration—are all to blame for our misfortunes. This is how one can interpret Nikol Pashinyan’s “reprimand” to former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James O’Brien. The Prime Minister’s response to the diplomat was in the typical CP style: “what if you…” At least he didn’t bring up O’Brien’s aunt.
Thus, the manner of shooting off and flipping things around, characteristic of social media debates, is now being used in international relations at the highest level. Of course, we may recall that Armenia was “vulnerable” even during Trump’s first term, since it was then that Azerbaijan attacked Artsakh. But it would hardly be logical to blame the Trump administration for that.
Let us also recall that on January 14, 2025—six days before Trump’s inauguration—Armenian Foreign Minister Mirzoyan and U.S. Secretary of State Blinken (O’Brien’s immediate superior) signed a document on strategic cooperation. Such agreements are not prepared in a day; they are the result of months of joint work. If the Biden administration—and Blinken’s team in particular—were supposedly “working so poorly,” how was a document prepared and signed that the Armenian authorities and their propagandists had been proudly boasting about for weeks?
Not to mention that before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the propagandists of Armenia’s authorities warned us of the “terrible consequences” of Trump’s victory. And yet now it turns out that “peace has been established” through the mediation of the very same current U.S. president. For the record, the points of the supposedly “good, sweet, and wonderful from all sides” agreement initialed on August 6 were developed with the active participation of the very “bad worker” James O’Brien—who now, notably, criticizes not the Armenia-Azerbaijan agreement, but the Armenia-U.S. document.
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But the main point our rulers should understand is this: unlike Armenia and most post-Soviet states, the United States has a functioning mechanism for the peaceful transfer of power. Administrations in that country change regularly, yet the main lines of foreign policy remain consistent. The “previous” administration will sooner or later become the “next,” and state-institutional memory will always be preserved.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
