On Europe's edge: Armenia in the twenty-first century

Citation

Miller, D. (1998), "On Europe's edge: Armenia in the twenty-first century", European Business Review, Vol. 98 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.1998.05498fab.007

On Europe's edge: Armenia in the twenty-first century

On Europe's edge: Armenia in the twenty-first century

David Miller

The former Armenian states (Greater and Lesser Armenia, the Kingdom of Cilicia) lay between Asia Minor and the Near East, bounded by the Black Sea, the Caspian and the Mediterranean. In the course of the last millennium and a half, these and other, smaller Armenian territories were reduced through invasion, destruction and relocation of their populations to about one tenth of their original area. The present unitary Armenian state represents less than one half of Greater Armenia and has no outlet to the sea. This is the eastern part which corresponds roughly to Russian Armenia of the nineteenth century (itself reduced in the twentieth, following sovietization). Of western, Turkish Armenia there remains little trace.

Nearly twice as many Armenians live outside the modern Republic as within it. Some four million live in the Russian Federation and the USA, a further million or so in the other countries of Europe, the near and Middle East and South America, leaving about three million within the Republic itself. Invariably successful, Armenians abroad have developed their own way of life, largely uninfluenced by events in the "motherland" (though mindful of the fate of many of those who were encouraged by Stalin to join the Armenian Soviet Republic in 1948). For Armenians in the western diaspora, today's Republic remains an alien state, the successor to Soviet Russia, linguistically and culturally different from the traditions of their antecedents who fled or were driven from the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many of those who make the pilgrimage to Holy Etchmiadzin, the see of the Catholicos of All Armenians, owe their first allegiance to the Catholicos of Cilicia, whose seat is at Antelias in Lebanon. The continuing split in the Armenian Apostolic Church mirrors deep political divisions within the Armenian disapora.

The economic condition of independent Armenia, though no worse than that in the neighbouring former Soviet republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan (and in some respects better, notably in energy supplies. This is largely due to the recommissioning in November 1995 of the number one reactor at Metsamor nuclear power plant which now provides about 50 per cent of Armenia's energy supplies) is another powerful disincentive to would-be settlers and investors. In the three years prior to independence, Armenia went from being a productive and prosperous outpost of the Soviet Union[1], through the trauma of earthquake, war and economic amputation, to becoming a dependency of the IMF living largely on long-term credits and short-term handouts. Abnormal relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan, with whom land borders are still closed because of the unresolved war over Nagorny Karabakh, mean that Armenia is largely bypassed by east-west trade and pipeline routes in the region, while arms-length relations with Georgia mean that Armenia is unable to profit from the developing north-south axis between Russia and Iran (Armenia has no functioning rail connections with any of its neighbours).

Despite these crippling disadvantages, the country remains stable, more democratically governed and less corrupt than other states in the region, and is, it seems, irreversibly market-oriented. Its human rights record, though far from spotless, is well in advance of its neighbours in practice as well as intent. The press, while not economically independent, provides a wide range of critical comment on internal and foreign political matters, but observes a number of no-go areas, mainly relations with the regional powers, Russia, Turkey and Iran. On the other hand, many of Armenia's state structures are still rooted in its colonial past ­ it has no independent judiciary and the foreign investor faces a mountain of legal uncertainties. The economy is not criminalised to the extent that it is in Russia, but the vested interests of state clans (notably the defence and security forces) as well as of individual "mafia" groups usually predominate.

The dilemma facing Armenia is whether to stay in this half-way house, which provides an inbuilt stability of its own, backed by the existence of a large army and civilian militia, or whether to move forward to a demilitarised and open society based on a genuinely representative parliament wielding broader constitutional powers. It is arguable that Armenian society is ready for this . But it is also arguable that the abnormal situation on Armenia's borders and its growing political isolation over the Karabakh issue make it difficult for any Armenian leader to implement the kind of reforms which would require the authority and the spending of the power ministries to be curbed. Former president Ter-Petrosian, who became a victim of his own indecisiveness in this area, was forced to resign over intended concessions on Karabakh. The move came too late to carry his supporters with him.

It is obvious that Karabakh lies at the root of Armenia's problems and cannot be indefinitely finessed[2]. There is a tendency to believe on all sides that the status quo (no peace, no war) is more advantageous than any political settlement. Until the conflict is resolved, Armenia is likely to remain in its half-way house, unregarded by the major oil-importing countries whose relations with Azerbaijan have now gone beyond the purely commercial. The exception is Russia which still regards Armenia as strategically important both as a forepost in the Near East and, through its military presence there, as a means of exerting pressure on Azerbaijan. Though this presence is currently no more than trip-wire, it serves as a reminder that Russia has no intention of surrendering its influence in the region[3]. Moreover, recent reports that Russia intends to deploy the S-300 air defence system in Armenia would, if confirmed, suggest that Armenia is seen by Moscow as an important link in the CIS integrated air defence programme, in other words part of Russia's extended southern border. For Armenia, the Russian military presence is the guarantee of its western border, a matter of prime historical significance for both countries. It could also be a factor in any future confrontation with Azerbaijan.

It is clearly in Europe's interests to coax Armenia out of this half-way house and to encourage it to contribute to the stability and prosperity of an inherently unstable region. It is not enough to offer the carrots of a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with the European Union and full membership of the Council of Europe, or participation in the Partnership for Peace programme with NATO. These benefits are after all available, at least in prospect, to all the former republics of the Soviet Union, regardless of their state of development. Neither is it realistic for the OSCE to continue to back Azerbaijan's insistence, in the context of Karabakh, on the primacy of the principle of the territorial integrity of states over that of the self-determination of peoples. For the Armenians, this is an unacceptable pre-condition to the talks even though the eventual outcome (de facto independence for Karabakh within the Azerbaijani state) may not be seriously in doubt.

What is needed is the political will to address the historical problem of Armenia's relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan which in turn lies at the root of the Karabakh issue. Responsibility for the Armenian genocide of 1915-1922 in Ottoman Turkey (still unrecognised as such by all the major powers except Russia[4]), and the Armenian question more generally (how to guarantee the existence of a viable and coherent Armenian nation state) are matters which have been in abeyance since what remained of Armenia was bolshevised in 1920. And it continues to be expedient for the West that they should remain so, given the extreme sensitivity of Turkey on the subject of the genocide and the unimaginable prospect of Turkey disgorging those Armenian territories ceded to it by the Soviet Union. For the Armenians, of course, this does not reduce the political and psychological imperatives of conceding nothing over Karabakh until its status and security can be firmly guaranteed. Greater account should also be taken of the experience of Armenian communities in Azerbaijan in recent times. The causes of the war in Nagorny Karabakh and the scale of the massacres in Sumgait and Baku in 1988 and 1990 are not well enough known in the west, even though they are documented in Russian as well as Armenian sources[5]. The Armenians firmly believe that the Karabakh war was one of national survival and point to the fact that in Nakhichevan, an Azerbaijani exclave where they were once in a majority, not a single Armenian remains.

Armenians look to the new millennium with the view of a civilisation as old as that of the Greeks. No doubt they see it as the one in which their place in the modern world will finally be decided. Located in the outer marches of Europe, they aspire to, and deserve, a more central role in Europe's affairs especially in the spheres of commerce, finance and banking where they have special talents. But they cannot get there unaided. Too often the attitude of the rest of Europe has been "they are clever people, they will get by, there is always the diaspora to help them". This is surely expecting too much of a people overshadowed by holocaust and natural disaster, deprived of natural resources and with no experience of nation-building in modern times. The self-interest of other European nations may dictate that the riches of the Caspian make Azerbaijan a more attractive client, but self-interest also means that there should be at least a good working relationship between Turkey, Azerbaijan and Armenia as natural trading partners in the region. This does not seem to be possible, however, until the facts of the past have been fully recognised by all sides. Political expediency has resulted in understatements and selective interpretations which European governments have been too willing to accept as being near enough to the actual events, despite all the evidence that they are not[6]. This in turn risks devaluing the current efforts by political scientists and sociologists to trace the causes of genocides as recognised in the twentieth century. To make no reference to their precursor is a denial both of Armenian and European history.

Notes

1 By the mid 1980s, Armenia and Estonia were between them supplying almost all the computer software to the Soviet defence and space industries. In the late 1980s, Armenia was tooling up to produce an even larger share. The collapse of the Soviet Union left Armenia with a number of large white elephants.

2 For a discussion of the problem, see my article "Nagorny Karabakh: nothing ventured, all to gain", The New International Security Review, RUSI, London, 1998, pp. 233-41.

3 In addition, Armenia's borders with Turkey and Iran are controlled by Russian frontier guards.

4 The official British attitude at the time was to condemn the massacres and deportations as a premeditated attempt to exterminate the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. The evidence was published as a Government paper (the so-called "Blue book", Misc No. 31, HMSO, 1916, which had a confidential annex detailing the sources).

5 See for instance the "White book" on the Sumgait trials published in Moscow in 1990 and the account given by General Lebed of events in Sumgait and Baku (Za derzhavu obidno, Moscow 1995, pp. 218-63).

6 Over one million Armenians died in 1915, that is about half the population of Turkish Armenia. This is a fairly conservative estimate. Several hundred thousand more were killed during the Turkish invasion of the first Armenian Republic in 1918 and again in Ottoman Turkey during its last years, i.e. until 1922. Most of the victims were women and children. Circumstantial evidence makes it clear that the actions taken (mass killings, deportations to uninhabitable regions) were, in Lord Bruce's words "absolutely premeditated and systematic" (Hansard, 5th series, 1915, Vol. 19, Col. 1001). Though the pattern of events in Turkey from May 1915 onwards, shows the central authorities implementing what could only have been a deliberate policy of exterminating the Armenians, Western governments, while recognising the historic proportions of the massacres, tend to baulk at defining them as a genocide, citing the absence of unassailable documentary proof of such a policy.