Armenia: 25 year-old persistent and unfinished struggle for decolonization
Styopa Safaryan,
Founder of the Armenian Institute of International and Security Affairs (AIISA)
After the collapse of Europe’s last empire—USSR and 25 years later from Armenia’s independency it’s still difficult to insist without ambiguity on the complete and irreversible elimination of neo-colonization risks if not for many of former soviet republics, then surely for some of them, including Armenia.
The country’s security policies remain deeply affected by crucial developments of the last 100 years yet, which have also left a large imprint on the national identity and memory. Being the first nation in the world to adopt Christianity as a state religion (301 AD) Armenians experienced the cruelest hardships in the periods of collapses or in juncture of especially two empires—Ottoman and Russian.
The nation saw the first Genocide of the 20th century—massacres of more than 1.5 million Armenians in 1915, in the period of the Ottoman Empire’s agony and in the whirlpool of the WWI. Then incorporation of the first Armenian Republic (1918-1920) into a reformatted Communist Russian Empire, followed by partition of Armenian homeland between Kemalist Turkey and Bolshevist Russia, and by attaching Armenian-populated regions of Nakhijevan and Nagorno Karabakh (NK) to Soviet Azerbaijan by Stalin’s decision were quite enough to hate both empires.
Nagorno Karabakh: detonator for dismantling the empire and driving force for Armenia’s security policies
Under Gorbachev’s Glasnost policy, the first massive democratic movement with the agenda of the reunification of NK and Armenia erupted in these very months of 1988. Shaking the foundations of the empire, the ethnic tension, heated and nourished from Armenian pogroms in Azerbaijani cities Sumgait, Baku, Kirovabad and irrelevant feedbacks by Baku and Moscow rather quickly transformed the movement into a full-scale decolonization process. Refusing “new reformatting” of the USSR, among the five dissident republics (Baltic republics, Georgia, Armenia), in 1991 not only Armenia, but also NK declared their independence in full compliance with the international and USSR laws.
While in the period of 1988-1991 the democratic movement had increased the gap with the Kremlin, the 4-year full-fledged war of aggression, unleashed by Azerbaijan against Armenia and NK and stopped by Russia under OSCE Minsk Group, has drastically changed Armenia’s security move.
In a complicated regional environment with other frozen conflicts and Turkey’s hostile policy and blockade, Russia became a crucial factor for Armenia’s policies of counterbalancing power asymmetry. Deployment of Russian military base in Armenia, membership to Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, in overall dominance of Russia and its interests in Yerevan’s policy choices, didn’t seem that much dangerous in the period of Yeltsin’s presidency.
From today’s perspective, it is obvious that two crucial failures complicated Armenia’s full decolonization then. Firstly, not reaching a settlement for NK conflict right after the war and by virtue of its outcomes due to its complexity, as well as being greatly beyond the power of Yerevan and Stepanakert.
However, avoiding of the second shortcoming was exclusively in hands of Yerevan, like other republics, failing in their test of democratization: serious deficit of legitimacy for leaderships, distortion of free market economy and political institutions, shortcomings in democratic and good governance, etc.
Amid the ghosts of Neo-Ottomanism and new Eurasian empire
Though Russian-Armenian relations have always been asymmetric, the situation became rather bothering after in 2000 V. Putin came to power in Russia with his agenda of establishing a multi-polar world under the smokescreen of Eurasian integration and declaring the collapse of the USSR as “the greatest humanitarian disaster” of the 20th century.
Despite NK conflict has permanently been Moscow’s favorable toy, it is hard to believe that the Kremlin has forgiven it as a detonator of “the greatest humanitarian disaster”. Apart from NK conflict, the above-mentioned shortcomings became no less vital tools in its hands to extract decisions from Yerevan. Already by late 2000s Armenia’s major industrial, energy, communication and strategic giants were possessed either by Russia or by its companies.
The Georgian-Russian war of 2008 and its outcomes, then hybrid war in the territory of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea delivered a rather clear message to Armenia regarding what may happen, if it continues moving to association with Europe and Euro-Atlantic organizations together with Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, denying Russia-led integration plan.
Almost in parallel with that project, the “neo-Ottomanism,” another ambitious concept initiated by Turkey’s president Erdogan to establish a pan-Turkish integration, more pressed Armenia between Russian and Turkish anvils: by canceling the Association/DCFTA agreements with the EU, the country joined Putin’s Eurasian Economic Union. As a result, by virtue of restriction of the sovereignty in conducting economic policies and new commitments within that Union, Armenia still faces difficulties in making use of the opportunity that provides unsanctioned neighboring Iran in terms of diversification of policies or redefining relations with the EU for more than 3 years.
Now, after Russia included Armenia in its orbit, Russia’s “new plan” for conflict settlement targeted Azerbaijan, promising to return some territories of NKR and not recognizing its status as an attractive bait for Baku. If succeeded, Russia’s new plan for conflict settlement may reach several strategic goals—deploying Russian peacekeepers on the conflict zone and controlling the region solely, thus minimizing the influence of the West on it, keeping the key to resolution of NK status in its hands, and therefore keeping the subdued Armenia and targeted Azerbaijan in its orbit. Moscow pursued those very goals during the 4-day war unleashed by Azerbaijan in April 2016, but failed as the Armenian army prevented another attempt of colonization.
Nevertheless, the formulation “Russia is an oven, to which if approached, one may get burnt, and if stepped back—one may get frozen” is the best reflection of two-faced nature of Karabakh factor and Armenian-Russian relations. It is derived from Armenia’s lessons learned from its colonial track-record, i.e. subduing empires but keeping distance from them, obeying them but with historically accumulated deep hatred and desire to revolt against them if endangered.
Recognition as a key to capitulate neo-imperialism
If today total and irreversible capitulation of Communism is an established fact, we cannot state the same for complete capitulation of imperialistic infection, inherited from previous empires and re-activated in the post-Soviet space.
This is because NK issue, one of the heavier legacies of two empires and linked to their foundations, is still facing the threat of return to its former status. Recognition of the NKR remains the key not only to dismantle the remnants of previous empires, still alive in the Caucasus, but also to open the perspectives for full decolonization and democratization of Armenia and Artsakh (NK).
This disease of neo-imperialism will also be maintained as long as the history isn’t completely detonated and discharged, primarily by international recognition of the Armenian Genocide. A brave step, which German president and Pope Francis did on the centennial of that crime in 2015, and the Bundestag in 2016, following other countries of the world.
Finally, that infection will successfully corrode foundations of independence and sovereignty of Armenia and same-fortune countries, even Russia, as long as they have not completely dismantled the Soviet past, their systems resembling Soviet political culture, and haven’t become democratically powerful and sovereign states either.
In addressing that imperial legacy of Armenia and others, Europe’s role is tremendous, to which we all civilizationally belong, but remain too far from its fundamental values and guidelines. Nevertheless, Europe is seemingly cautious and undetermined yet to touch the very foundations of empires and to eliminate all remnants of imperialism for Armenia.
The article was prepared for and recently printed in the German online news outlet “Zeit Online” within the series “The legacy of the empire – Russia´s role in Europe 25 years after the end of the USSR,” in partnership with the Körber Foundation.
The Armenian and English versions of the article were prepared by Lusine Moghrovyan.
