NATO has somewhat changed its status in terms of its mission and goals. Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia play a very important role in this context. It’s not about joining or not joining NATO, rather how involved NATO should be in the South Caucasus region.
This was what international relations, strategic security, political and economic issues analyst Richard Kirakosyan had to say Friday during a discussion organized at the “Congress” hotel by the “Friedrich Nauman” fund and the “Concord” center. Kirakosyan places emphasis on NATO involvement not merely for strategic involvement, but rather in terms of issues concerning corruption and domestic security. The analyst finds that Armenia cannot allow itself to not integrate into NATO for a couple of reasons. First, according to him, Armenia faces the danger of isolation. Secondly, Kirakosyan is of the opinion that the establishment of intimate ties between Armenia and NATO will give Armenia the chance to free itself from its dependency on Russia. Director of the “Concord” center and main speaker during the discussion, David Shahnazaryan, noted that a certain layer of Armenian society is of the wrong opinion that NATO is only a strategic alliance. According to him, NATO is really a strategic/political organization, where the political component is much more important. Shahnazaryan is of the opinion that NATO is the most effective security system that exists in the world. Michigan University professor and adviser to the first president of Armenia, Dr. Zhirair Liparityan, did not share that opinion. According to him, after the collapse of the USSR, it was hard to grasp the concept of the existence of NATO. Liparityan did agree with the view that NATO has gone through reforms over the past couple of years. He asked whether there was any issue that the South Caucasus countries must solve and whether NATO may solve that issue. Mentioning that there are European structures such as the OSCE and the European Union, Dr. Liparityan added that by presenting NATO as a strategic alliance, an attempt is being made to avoid mentioning that it is the tool of the U.S. According to him, it is uncertain what future NATO has at the international level. He finds that the U.S. has a problem of orientation.
“Will the U.S. be able to express its position on either supporting democratic processes, or dictatorship, on security issues? Is the elite of the U.S. ready to discuss the challenges and what it has to do in the future?”
Liparityan says that the problem of the Iraq issue shows that the U.S. cannot solve those issues. According to him, the U.S. doesn’t know what relations it will have with Russia, China, India, Iran, the Middle East countries and even Europe. However, the three countries of the South Caucasus have rather complicated relations, and conflicts with each other, and until those relations are settled, the deepening of the relations with NATO in these conditions, as Liparityan says, will mean the deepening of the conflicts.
“NATO is like a pill – it is useful, but not everybody can use the pill. Whoever has this or that problem should not use the pill,” mentioned Liparityan.
Here is where David Shahnazaryan expressed his opinion that history proves that the region is stable when all countries of the region are within the same security system. He mentioned that perhaps the complication of the current relations in the region is due to the fact that the region is politically very centralized. Georgia is actively striving towards NATO and Azerbaijan has also made an announcement with regards to that, while Armenia continues to stay under the patronage of Russia’s security, while establishing serious ties with NATO at the same time.
“The involvement of different structures in the region at different levels becomes the reason for conflicts,” says Shahnazaryan.
Richard Kirakosyan claims that Armenia must allow itself to integrate into NATO. According to him, non-integration will deepen Armenia’s isolation and Armenia will be ignored by other countries. Kirakosyan says that the Armenian authorities committed a strategic error by thinking that Russia has more interests in Armenia than the West does. On the other hand, the West, according to the analyst, is wrong to think that Armenia has a larger interest in Russia than it really does. Liparityan mentioned that Armenia is already an isolated country and doesn’t represent any interest at the international level. Liparityan explained the reason for the increase of Russia’s influence: Russia has more influence due to the weakening of Armenia and not the opposite. Liparityan is of the belief that Armenia has weakened because it hasn’t come to terms with its neighbors, doesn’t try to solve its important problems with the regional countries, and has lost all other alternatives…and in these conditions, according to Liparityan, going or not going to NATO doesn’t solve the problem. Shahnazaryan tends to differ. He announced:
“It is our fault that we have ceded the elements of our state system to Russia. We must clearly understand that we must simply join NATO.”
The important thing, according to Shahnazaryan, is not membership, but rather the process of going through membership, because the goal is to instill the system of values in the three South Caucasian countries. Shahnazaryan has the same approach towards the issue concerning relations with the European Union.