The prime minister of Armenia, Tigran Sarkisyan, stated in an interview to RBK that the geopolitical interests of Russia and Armenia coincide with each other.
In recent times Tigran Sarkisyan has frequently been giving interviews to the Russian mass media. The aim of it is to show what value Tigran Sarkisyan has in Russia ahead of the parliamentary elections. Russia is a landmark for the authorities of Armenia: if Moscow supports you, you are strong.
At the same time, Sarkisyan might feel the necessity of Russia’s support and communicates with Russian publications for providing the Kremlin’s support in the post-election period, as he cannot rely on the West only. Anyway, it is obvious that the prime minister is working in the Russian direction, and there are certain reasons for this.
The problem is not about internal political intrigues. The point is in the signals which are sent to Russia by the top echelon of Armenian power.
In the election period, Armenia has to develop serious discourses, and the main of them is geopolitics, as serious global processes put Armenia at the front of significant challenges and demand an adequate position, as well as the social background to this position. From this point of view, the statements that the geopolitical interests of Armenia and Russia are similar mean that two different things are being confused.
First of all, Premier Sarkisyan confuses Armenia and the authorities. The geopolitical interests of Armenia,as a state and Russia are not equal, especially in the last four years. However, in 2008 the authorities of Armenia tried to adapt to these interests and made several crucial mistakes in the process of the Karabakh settlement and Armenian-Turkish relations.
Armenia yielded to the games of Russia and the Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem and was involved in the “football process.” It started in Moscow, when President Serge Sargsyan spoke about the initiative of “football” diplomacy by inviting Turkish President Gul to Yerevan.
A few days later it appeared that Sargsyan also proposed a special role in settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to Gul. These undesirable events could be stopped only by the geopolitical interests of the West, which dead-locked the process. If it didn’t happen, Armenia would find itself between the interests of Russia and Russian obligations to the Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem that would enable Turkey to interfere with the negotiations on Karabakh and change the status quo.
By involving Turkey in the regional processes, Russia is trying to provide a prospect for individual decisions, hoping that Turkey would help to remove the USA and that later Russia would remove Turkey itself. In this issue Russia considers Armenia as an instrument and resource for the initial attraction of Turkey and a further obstacle against Ankara.
These are the geopolitical interests of Russia. Do they coincide with Armenian interests? In a wider geopolitical context it is obvious that Russia is playing a destructive role in the region.
A modernization policy is alien to the regional policy of Russia, while modernization is of high importance to Armenia. But without a global context the prospect of Armenia’s modernization is a myth.
This means that Armenia and Russia cannot have the same geopolitical interests, if their strategic targets are the opposite of each other's. The question is: why doesn’t Armenia follow the path of real modernization? What is an obstacle – Russia or the absence of political will?
Zhamanak
