On April 23rd,
2018, the eve of the 103rd anniversary of Armenian
Remembrance Day, Armenia’s president recently turned Prime Minister Serzh
Sargsyan resigned from his newly created post
after over a decade in control leading the Yerevan government. His Republican
Party still holds 96 of the 105 parliamentary seats in the Republic. Just two
Mondays prior to Serzh Sargsyan’s surprise resignation, another purportedly
unrelated Sargsyan named Armen was quietly sworn into office as the new
Armenian figurehead president in literal “same as the old
boss” irony, in surname if not more.
Western media coverage of the massive Armenian protests
prior to the prime minister’s historic announcement was virtually nonexistent.
But chomping at the bit to broadcast another potentially successful “color
revolution” has all the big boys lined up happily reporting recent events from
the capital Yerevan. Hundreds of Armenian soldiers went AWOL to join the 100,000 demonstrators in solidarity in
the central square. When opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan and a few of his
supporters were arrested and taken into custody, the crowds reacting through
social media swelled into the streets
Upwards of 20% of the country’s population for two
straight weeks took daily to the streets in spontaneous youthful protest
against Sargsyan’s transparent power play to retain political control as prime
minister in this tiny impoverished landlocked Christian nation. Because his two
presidential terms expired, Sargsyan is said to have manipulated constitutional
amendments calling for a new office of prime minister as a ploy to stay in
power. Originally from Nagorno-Karabakh, the long disputed Armenian
enclave that’s had Armenia and Azerbaijan coming to loggerheads for nearly a
century, in 2008 Serzh Sargsyan was first elected Armenia’s president.
Sandwiched
between two hostile Muslim neighbors – Turkey to the west and Azerbaijan to the
east, Armenia remains in precarious conflict at its eastern border vying with
Azerbaijan over the disputed “breakaway” region of Nagorno-Karabakh that since
ancient times has always been populated by an overwhelming Armenian majority.
In 1921 a young Georgian soon
to be bloodthirsty dictator Josef Stalin intentionally set up the endless
“divide and rule” dispute pitting the two Soviet outer
states Azerbaijan and Armenia against each other fighting indefinitely over the
contested territory. This fate was cast shortly after one third of all
Armenians on the planet – 1.5 million – were slaughtered by the
Ottoman Turks during World War I. The Netherlands’ February vote brought the
latest count up to 23 nations officially recognizing last century’s first
genocide that Turkey still denies.
Near daily skirmishes occur
between Armenians in defense of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding Azeri troops
ever since the bloody war from 1988-1994 killed up to 30,000 Azeris and
6,000 Armenians with over a million people displaced. It was two years ago
when, with Washington’s complicit blessing, Azerbaijan launched an April Fool’s
Day surprise invasion in what turned out to be an
unsuccessful military offensive into the embattled Armenian enclave killing
over 200 soldiers and civilians. After a near
week of open warfare and Azeris committing atrocities, Putin brokered a truce with each
side engaging in daily exchange of gunfire leaving the conflict unresolved and
still festering. Right up till today this region’s political unrest and violent
instability have remained a global hotspot to potentially igniting World War III. And US Empire has taken full
advantage attempting to embarrass Putin in his own backyard.
Armenia’s latest culmination
of peaceful demonstrations this last week resulted in 42-year old opposition leader Nikol
Pashinyan’s so called “velvet revolution,” seemingly a bloodless
victory for citizen democracy. The interim Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan, who
is a former prime minister and mayor of Yerevan as well as close ally of
Sargsyan, broke off negotiations last week with Pashinyan calling it “a show.”
Meanwhile, Pashinyan stated that he is armed with the “mandate of the people,” and optimistic that
the Constitution calling for the parliamentary vote within a week, will make
him the next prime minister. However, within the last few hours the
ruling Republican Party apparently has reneged
on its May 1st promise to nominate a replacement candidate, refusing to
do so citing “in the interests of the people.” Instead it will wait till all
the candidates are nominated by April 30th, and
then select which candidate to back.
At first glance, it appears
as though civil society and democracy have triumphantly prevailed in Armenia
over despotic cronyism and corruption. Yet a deeper analysis might characterize
recent events as a geopolitical infowar being covertly fought on the
global chessboard between both Western and Eastern forces. Of course the East
is led by Putin’s Russia that has historically viewed Armenia as its close
backdoor ally in the South Caucasus with two Russian military bases located inside Armenia and
an S-300 missile defense system deployed in
case NATO member Turkey threatens the Armenian-Russian defense pact. The West
is represented by the opposing US Empire-EU-NATO bloc, always eager to steal
Armenia (and every nation bordering Russia) away from the Moscow fold, much
like it manipulated the 2014 Ukrainian coup and the former Soviet Iron
Curtain now all NATO vassals with missiles aimed directly at Moscow.
These geopolitical dynamics
are uniquely further complicated by the fact that the Armenian nation is
indelibly connected to its international diaspora whose
numbers exceed the population inside Armenia. With an estimated 2.2 million Armenians living in nearby
Russia and another 1.5 in North America alone, they together vastly outnumber
the 2.9 million Armenians living in Armenia. The total size of Armenian
diaspora is about 8 million. Thus the close-knit diaspora’s
direct ties to Armenia contribute much needed financial support as well as
exert considerable political influence over Armenians’ ancient homeland that
credits itself as history’s first Christian nation state back in 301 AD.
The long impoverished people
of Armenia have struggled in economic despair starting with the devastating
1988 earthquake that virtually wiped out
Armenia’s second largest city Leninakan with 290,000 residents in the
northwestern part of the country. Shortly afterwards the dissolving Soviet
Empire in 1991 granted Armenia its long awaited independence but without
Moscow’s subsidized assistance, the post-earthquake reconstruction grinded to a
halt.
Subsequently the fledgling
republic’s economy faltered, resulting in a brain drain where a sizeable
portion of educated citizenry left the country with many never returning. For a
poor nation Armenia possesses a relatively well-educated populace of human
capital. But in the last quarter century, Armenia’s chronically depressed
economy has compelled25% of its population to seek greater
employment opportunity elsewhere, relocating and residing outside their
homeland, mainly in Russia, Europe and North America. Armenia depends on
the half billion dollars sent home each year
by its citizens working in foreign countries. Meanwhile, the national
unemployment rate stands at a hefty 16% and the poverty rate has hovered
near 30% for a decade, indicating Armenians
subsist barely on less than $3.20 a day.
Currently there are two
diaspora factions locked in a geopolitics power struggle taking place inside
Armenia within the framework of the larger West versus East cold war that’s
been heating up despite Trump’s broken campaign promise to partner with Putin. But the Donald’s only demonstrated that
he’s a compromised, controlled puppet of the neocon Zionist ruling elite just like all
his predecessors. At the intercontinental crossroads of Europe and Asia lies
Armenia where a prominent Western contingent of Armenian American oligarchs
primarily from California are in a faceoff against
Eastern expatriated Armenian oligarchs headquartered mostly in Moscow and
vicinity.
After several weeks of
nonviolent protest, today’s state of political flux and uncertainty in Armenia
while awaiting the parliament’s all-important vote scheduled on May Day Tuesday
to elect the next prime minister, former-journalist Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil
Contract party holds a meager 9 members or 8% of the Yerevan government. But with
Sargsyan now deposed and overwhelming populist support from the nation’s
younger generations actively demanding economic change and democratic reform,
the baton of power now hangs in the balance.
The West’s mainstream media
is portraying the ousted Serzh Sargsyan as representing Armenia’s historically
corrupt, ruling oligarchic elite that maintains close
alliance with Putin, while the bearded camouflage-shirted revolutionary Nikol Pashinyan
symbolizes the new populist, David vs. Goliath, good guy democracy warrior. The
bigger, behind the scenes picture indicates that the new kid in town is simply
the West’s exploitable poster boy heralding a monumental covert power surge to
recreate another humiliating US Empire victory over Putin much like the Ukraine
debacle. And the most likely outcome is a “same as the old boss” scenario with
Eastern favored oligarchs replaced by Western ones smelling unprecedented
golden opportunity to seize power under the pretext of another
“democratic color revolution.”
If this West vs. East story
unfolds as described, a very disenchanted Armenian population will have their
current idealistic fervor shattered as soon as Putin begins calling for payment
on Armenia’s outstanding debt loans and decides to withhold arms from Armenia
as oil rich Azerbaijan’s acquisition of Russian made state of the art weaponry
threatens a weakened, overpowered Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia. Pashanyan knows
Armenia cannot survive without Putin’s support both militarily and economically.
For now the Kremlin is simply watching with great interest but not about to
intervene. But with US Empire sharks financing the popular opposition leader’s
sudden meteoric rise, and their feeding frenzy’s buying power taking hold in
Armenia, they’re counting on Putin pulling the plug on his old misbegotten
ally. Or if Putin commits to confronting Western tentacles grappling for
control over his ally still very much dependent on Russia, risk of a larger war
between the West and East could break out.
Meanwhile, predatory Western
interests are eagerly working to separate and undermine Armenia from its
current binding membership in the Russian led military
Collective Security Treaty Organization and Eurasian Economic Union, while
dangling its EU carrot stick after last year enticing Armenia to sign a revised
Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership with the European Union. But just as the EU promise
failed to save Ukraine from its disastrously bloody
quagmire, Armenia may not fare much better if it allows itself to be unwittingly
courted, swallowed up, bought and brought to the point of no return.
Joachim
Hagopian [send
him mail] is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He
has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It
examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national
security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in
Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health
field for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on his
writing, becoming an alternative media journalist. His blog site is at http://empireexposed.blogspot.com.
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