Any authority gets its assessment based on the recorded results. Any government, even the most failed one, hopes to improve the recorded results and be remembered in history with some handiwork, trying to leave the failures in the shadows. Former RA Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan wrote about this on his Facebook page.
“Many people think that Nikol Pashinyan knew what he was doing before the 44-day war and knew what he should do after it. Imagine for a moment the opposite version, that Pashinyan did not know what he was doing, continues to not know what to do and does not have any serious agreement with anyone.
In this context, it turns out that five years have passed since Pashinyan came to power, and the result recorded is, to put it mildly, disastrous for the country. Defeat in the war, thousands of victims, loss of Artsakh, loss of the integrity of the border of Armenia and the risk of further losses.
Logically, Pashinyan must have set himself a problem to counter this with some achievement, which in his mind is, perhaps, the prosperous life within the borders of Armenia, perhaps, the new geopolitical situation and the favorable position of Armenia in that situation he imagines. At all costs, he should try to extend his power to such an extent that by implementing his imagined plan, even in spite of violating our moral, historical and other values, he would offer such “compensation” that would forget the losses and failures.
Even if we accept that there is such a “compensation”, which is initially difficult to imagine, if at least there is such a vision in his mind, the problem is that it cannot be realized if the implementer does not know what he is doing.
As in all foreign policy matters, Pashinyan did not know what he was doing from the beginning, which led to war and defeat, today, what he is doing with Armenia is part of the same path, because he again does not know what he is doing and does not realize it. the consequences of not knowing. After making a mistake and failing every time, instead of accepting the mistake and mitigating the consequences, Pashinyan justifies the mistake with the prospect of achieving some new unquoted goals.
What is that perspective? it was never fully formulated. But the periodic mentions of 29.8 thousand square kilometers give reason to assume that, in his opinion, Armenia should have a bright future with these borders. The anti-diplomatic, axe-wielding we are witnessing in foreign policy is probably part of achieving that “goal”. The point is that the threat to the current borders of Armenia logically comes from Azerbaijan or Turkey. But there is an impression that Pashinyan’s side of the negotiations are third parties. His foreign policy messages are addressed to those parties, and with those parties, he believes, he has reached some agreements. The tragedy is that it only seems to him. The reality is that no one has made any promises to him, but he continues to build his politics on those seeming promises.
One of the most important tools in diplomacy is creating a tradeoff opportunity. That is, to be able to expand the agenda, creating an opportunity for mutual trade. For example, if in Prague even after recognizing Artsakh as a part of Azerbaijan, he could introduce the indisputable circumstance of Nagorno Karabakh being an autonomous region in the Soviet period into the negotiation agenda, then today we would be in a much more favorable negotiating situation. He did not do this, again expecting something in return from third parties in his opinion. Even today, not raising the question of the return of the people of Artsakh to their homeland, at least minimal autonomy, the release of our compatriots in prisons in Baku, Pashinyan continues to offer something to the third parties in his mind, in return for which Armenia should receive what he thinks is “compensation” for those losses. is”. He relied on a third party without receiving any guarantees and, in fact, not even having a negotiated tradeoff with those third parties.
You don’t need to be a master of diplomacy to understand that if you put zero demands on the negotiating table, don’t formulate any issues, and expect your tacit concessions to be valued somewhere, it can only lead to new concessions, which most likely will. much smaller, weak and unstable Armenia”.
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