Despite challenges, Armenia working to free itself from the vestiges of the past

It is one thing to identify a potential problem. It is another thing to recommend solutions. Christina Gathman’s “Armenia’s Russia problem” in The Hill’s Congress Blog published on Dec. 13, 2016 goes to some length to catalogue the extent of Russian investments in Armenia and raises the question whether the degree of economic cooperation between the two countries affects its foreign relations. Without pointing out any valid evidence that this situation has in any shape or form influenced Armenia’s relations with the United States, Gathman wants to draw conclusions by implication alone.

By the same token, nothing is said of the fact that all major Silicon Valley companies are represented in Armenia today. The United States played an important role in helping Armenia build a robust IT and hi-tech sector to reduce the country’s dependence on analog sectors of the traditional economy, much as the U.S. has partnered with Armenia to make the country’s energy sector more self-reliant. Do the presumptive allegations still hold?

{mosads}The fact of the matter remains that since independence not only has Armenia had very warm relations with the United States, those relations have also been problem-free. Neither the Armenian public nor the Armenian government has forgotten the critical aid delivered to Armenia during the first trying years of its independence which made the difference in allowing a new country to stand on its own two feet.

But to frame an issue without the slightest attention to geopolitical context actually amounts to a serious and deliberate distortion of the realities prevailing in the South Caucasus region wherein Armenia must cope with its given circumstances.

It does not occur to Gathman to ask the question whether the now two decades-long and more blockade of Armenia jointly by Turkey, our NATO ally mind you, and Azerbaijan have significantly contributed to limiting Armenia’s choices for economic partners.

While corruption is a genuine concern in all of the post-Soviet states, nearly all ignore the problem while Armenia openly admits the challenges and is working to address it. Unlike what Gathman wrote in her article, despite having the same last names, the new Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan and Samvel Karapetyan are not brothers at all and their business successes are unrelated. In fact, when he led the purchase of the Armenian Electricity network (in 2015 before Karen Karapetyan became Prime Minister), Samvel Karapetyan did so promising an “uncompromised fight against corruption,” a promise he is keeping by all accounts.

The United States, through its Embassy, has brokered multiple efforts to improve the political climate in Armenia by encouraging the government to take measures that strengthen public confidence in election processes and voting results. By discrediting Western assistance which supports concrete measures designed to improve confidence in the election process and help prevent fraud in next year’s Armenian parliamentary elections, the author seems to be against any attempts to improve democratic institutions, which is in itself troubling. Through civil society initiatives and direct coordination with government programs, the U.S. has played a positive role that should only be encouraged and continued. This is an area that the Armenian-American diaspora strongly supports. 

Given the hostility that Armenia faces from Azerbaijan, where a regime that can only be described as repressive and authoritarian with a president who was named one of the most corrupt leaders in the world, it is understandable that Armenia is concerned about the uncertainty of the peace and security of the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh. Armenians everywhere know that an open and vibrant democracy is the best defense for their surrounded country, which is what Armenia strives to achieve with the help of Western nations, especially the U.S.

Rather than exacerbate and conflate the issues, the focus should be on what we can do as Americans to help Armenia realize its full potential, and like many other countries within the former Soviet Union, free itself from the vestiges of the past.

Bryan Ardouny is the Executive Director at the Armenian Assembly of America.

The views expressed by authors are their own and not the views of The Hill.