I think that the announcement made by the vice U.S. Secretary of State Matthew Breizen wasn’t really paid attention to. Journalists were more concerned with the scandal about calling John Evans to the U.S. Meanwhile, Matthew Breizen made a startling announcement. He said that from now on, the U.S. will use its resources to have democracy in Armenia “make its way up the ladder”.
Basically, all this time, the U.S. was trying to develop democracy in Armenia by going along with the “up-down” principle. In other words, the U.S. was convincing the president, MPs and ministers that democracy is a good thing; Americans were persuading the authorities to pass democratic laws, respect human rights, freedom of speech, etc. Now, Americans confess that this “technology” didn’t work out. So, they have to start “from the bottom” and make their way “up”. For anyone who doesn’t understand what it means to develop democracy by starting from the bottom and making it up the ladder, I will explain.
This is simply a democratic revolution. You can call it any kind of revolution-“Orange Revolution”, “Revolution of Roses”, etc. It doesn’t change the meaning. The important thing is that the U.S. government has made a decision to use all its resources to start a democratic revolution in Armenia.
This gets pretty complicated when we add a few factors:
1. The international community, especially the U.S., had high hopes for the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations in Rambeau. It is quite possible that Kocharyan and Aliev had made some promises to the co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group. After the failure of the negotiations, the U.S. must surely try to prove to the world that one who doesn’t keep his promises must be punished. The governments are not the ones to be punished, but rather the presidents because they are the ones responsible for the failure.
2. U.S. Ambassador in Armenia John Evans probably doesn’t realize the internal political situation in Armenia. Generally, when you hear his announcements, you get the impression that Armenia is the most democratic country in the world and the U.S. has a lot to learn from Armenia. Based on his evaluations, Armenian authorities go along with everything stated in the Constitution and there are only two issues facing the country-hail in the spring and the opposition, which is trying to destabilize the country. Then, all of a sudden, we receive news that John Evans is being called back to the U.S. In fact, the ambassador doesn’t deny this. He has simply said that as long as he hasn’t set foot on that plane, he is still the U.S. Ambassador in Armenia.
3. Some strong, Armenian political party leaders are starting to be repressed for their pro-Western views and intimate ties with American politicians. In fact, even prosecutors are getting involved in that. Armenian authorities are actually taking action to prevent this. Although at first sight you get the impression that nothing is wrong, however, in reality the opposition has nothing to do.
It would be wrong to say that these three factors are connected. In any case, it is hard to say that this all fits in, especially if we consider one thing. The U.S. is dealing with a major issue in foreign politics and that is Iran’s nuclear weapon project. It seems as though Iran can not evade punishments.
It is obvious that everyone is concerned about who is going to control the southern section of the liberated regions (the layer of the Arax river shore). If the negotiations in Rambeau went well, there would soon be international peacekeeping forces there and that issue would be out of the agenda. The negotiations failed and the issue remained in the agenda. Apparently the issue had two solutions: either to immediately control those regions or control the officials controlling the regions (in other words, Armenian and Karabagh authorities). The first didn’t work out, so that leaves us the second. But in order to do that, Armenia needs a democratic revolution and it has to make its way up the ladder. This is what the American vice state secretary is trying to say.
There is only one conclusion to all this: if the people don’t stand up for their rights, there will always be foreign powers which will try to solve their issues on behalf of the people not fighting for their rights.