Eric Hacopian
Below and successively, in three parts, is an outline of an aggressive political and national strategy. This proposal is signed by one man, but is more than one man’s opinion. It is the outcome of hours of consultation and collective thinking, and years of political experience. Part analysis, part call-to-action, this four-part essay offers substantial resource with which to embark on a path of thinking and doing.
"Our actions may be impeded... but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."
M. Aurelius, Meditations, 5.20
Let’s start with this: Everything that has happened over the past six years has been a disgrace. In fact, the past few years are the combined results of every mistake we have made as a “Third World people” after the first Genocide and since independence 35 years ago.
You have, unfortunately, inherited a defeated state, but you will break this chain of catastrophic mistakes because there is no virtue in being well-adjusted to such failure.
You have been betrayed and have inherited a third world country. A third world country that is not denoted by its income, GDP or the form of government, but a nation of people, leaders and diaspora in which each generation betrays the next one.
There are those that want to normalize our current situation. That must be resisted, since there is no virtue in being well-adjusted to failure, defeat and injustice.
This message is an appeal to young Armenians to take on the generational task of breaking the chain of betrayal and forging a path free of our mistakes. Everything must begin anew, and that starts with a new psychology: stop being the nice Armenian. Stop being the losers. Have an understanding of the world order.
The modern concept of nationalism must be married to a cult of functionality and excellence, primacy of action and deeds over rhetoric, and a fanatical hatred of mediocrity in every aspect of Armenian life. As a final point on this matter, we must view the world through the lens of the past six years, more specifically through the silence of the world. Answering their silence on our terms and our timelines.
If Armenia is to survive, it must become more affluent, stronger militarily and gain more political clout. We, collectively, should understand the current moment only in the context of the future. We must scale up and expand on our high-value strengths: Innovation and technology, banking, and other similarly high-value economic sectors. We must make more meaningful economic ties and integrate with Western-based economic systems. The key is a focused drive to becoming more valuable to the West and in turn a card-carrying member of the Western club of nations. Whether time or our neighbors will allow us to do so successfully is another matter, but as far as our strategic intent goes, all other alternatives are dead ends. In short, you must start with a complete break from the past and create the new Armenian.
Creating the new Armenian requires doing away with the nice Armenian. The nice Armenian, foolishly, believes the following:
-justice is possible without wealth, political, and military power;
-peace is possible without the willingness to use extreme violence in defending ourselves;
-we should be bound by rules or conventions when it comes to defending our country, civilization and future of our children;
- others will safeguard our safety and security;
-our enemy is political and not civilizational in nature;
- the lie that the regime running our neighboring country has the cultural capacity for peaceful coexistence or that we can find commonality with this enemy when, in truth, they only understand the duality of dominance/subservience.
- we can appeal to the world conscience and by being nice, accommodating and keeping our heads down, we will be left alone to live and to prosper.
There is no better symbolic example of the falsehood of the beliefs outlined above, than that one of our noblest, a person with a grand vision for humanity, the founder of the Aurora Prize, is sitting in a jail in Baku.
You will need twenty years of planning and hard work to transform from being a nation of losers to a nation of winners. So far, we have not been ambitious enough. We have not hated mediocrity and weakness enough. We have not hated humiliation enough.
Where To Start
In practical terms, our goal by 2035 is to have per capita income at the mid-range of Eastern European countries - from $15,000 to $20,000. This is doable given our current starting point is the $9,000 to $10,000 range. An Armenia at the new level of development can go beyond simple deterrence of our enemy and have the complete capacity to defend herself and her long-term interests.
From 2000 to 2023, while going through worldwide recessions, revolutions, and multiple wars, we still averaged a 6.5 percent annualized growth rate. This trend continued in 2024, with Q2 2024 year-on-year growth at 6.4 percent. There is no reason for us not to do as well over the next 10 –15 years. Having our per capita income above the $15,000 range by 2035, will put us in the low-end EU income range and higher than almost all our neighbors.
The World & Our Region Over the Next 25 Years:
No one has a crystal ball, but the next 25 years of transformation are clearly foreseeable:
1. continuing instability and conflict in our region, as consequence of the new war on Iran
2. global warming/water wars,
3. end of the oil era in Azerbaijan,
4. mass migration,
5. the move to the right in European politics,
6. AI driven transformation and dislocation of the economy, and
7. transition to multipolarity.
We will be entering a period of having 10 to 12 Syrias, Yemens and
Afghanistans. The hard reality is that there are states, especially resource-based economies, that will not survive because of their internal dysfunctions or the transition from a post carbon world. An example is our hostile neighbor which has not done anything to build a functional economy beyond resource extraction.
Future wars will be wars of scarcity waged by failing or drastically weakened states against the world’s modern nations, and stateless armies of the militant poor escaping failed states stretching from Africa to Central Asia. An Armenia that is even moderately more affluent and en route to the EU will be the crossing point of this mass movement of people. In short, young Armenians are building a democratic country with billion-dollar data centers, technology unicorns and world class wineries in an unfortunate region of the world. For this, you will need strong leadership and complete readiness for security challenges.
Multi-polarization & Disorder
The world is moving from a unipolar world dominated by the US and the West to a multipolar world. This will happen while the western pole will still be the dominant one given the immense wealth and technological advantage.
Multi-polarization is not likely to bring stability but more likely the opposite. The next two decades are likely to resemble the 20th century’s interwar period, where cold peace is the most optimal scenario, especially in the aftermath of this most recent destruction across the Middle East and Iran. At this time, the primary task of any state like ours is military preparedness.
In such a world with competing yet unequal centers of power, what matters for small states is functionality: what can you bring to the table between these competing camps: Natural resources, Technology, Hard military & Intelligence capacities, political reach, Cultural and geopolitical flexibility.
In the future, there will be significant leeway for functional states to do as they please to less functional ones.
/to be continued/
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