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NATO DID NOT ENSURE SERZH SARGSYAN'S SECURITY
A meeting of the heads of NATO information and resource centers of
Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan is held on
October 18 and 19 in Yerevan, which is quite symbolic in regard to
the Customs Union.
It does not matter whether the meeting had been planned a long time
ago or is a response to September 3 because the meeting itself is
symbolic against the background of the U-turn.
The meeting will be attended by James Appathurai, NATO Secretary
General's Special Representative for the South Caucasus.
Since September 3 focus has been on NATO because Armenia explained the
decision to join the Customs Union by security. It was an indirect
accusation to the Euro-Atlantic community for lack of substantial
proposals on security to encourage Armenia to continue the process
of association.
Interestingly, a few months earlier James Appathurai had stated that
NATO was going to come up with new proposals for the South Caucasus.
On September 3 Armenia yielded before Russian threats and announced
to join the Customs Union.
It is clear, however, that NATO's proposals could not satisfy Armenia
a priori because the issue of security that the Armenian government
circulated as an argument or justification for the government's rather
than Armenia's security.
In other words, it is not clear whether the Euro-Atlantic community
and NATO which performs the function of security for this community
provided substantial guarantees of security to Armenia, whether the
mentioned proposals contained those guarantees, but the Armenian
government cared for its own rather than national security. In other
words, Russia did not threaten Armenia or Artsakh but Serzh Sargsyan
to generate developments that have the potential for a change of
government, especially that the opposition is waiting on the Russian
line for these developments.
In this regard, Russia has an advantage over NATO. NATO may offer
certain security proposals to Armenia but it does not have sufficient
tools to compete with Russia over internal security. As a result,
Serzh Sargsyan chose Russia because the Euro-Atlantic community has not
offered sufficient proposals regarding the security of the government.
Nevertheless, this state of play is also a challenge to NATO and the
Euro-Atlantic community because in the long run the notion of security
for the South Caucasian post-Soviet reality is a package notion, and
if this package lacks one set of tools out of historical peculiarities
and civilization, it is necessary to compensate the lack by upgrading
the other sets of tools in the package.
Hence, the NATO meeting in Yerevan may have an important role for the
process of restoring the balance of the regional geopolitical forces
broken after September 3.
Hakob Badalyan 14:04 18/10/2013 Story from Lragir.am News:
http://www.lragir.am/index/eng/0/comments/view/31128
A meeting of the heads of NATO information and resource centers of
Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan is held on
October 18 and 19 in Yerevan, which is quite symbolic in regard to
the Customs Union.
It does not matter whether the meeting had been planned a long time
ago or is a response to September 3 because the meeting itself is
symbolic against the background of the U-turn.
The meeting will be attended by James Appathurai, NATO Secretary
General's Special Representative for the South Caucasus.
Since September 3 focus has been on NATO because Armenia explained the
decision to join the Customs Union by security. It was an indirect
accusation to the Euro-Atlantic community for lack of substantial
proposals on security to encourage Armenia to continue the process
of association.
Interestingly, a few months earlier James Appathurai had stated that
NATO was going to come up with new proposals for the South Caucasus.
On September 3 Armenia yielded before Russian threats and announced
to join the Customs Union.
It is clear, however, that NATO's proposals could not satisfy Armenia
a priori because the issue of security that the Armenian government
circulated as an argument or justification for the government's rather
than Armenia's security.
In other words, it is not clear whether the Euro-Atlantic community
and NATO which performs the function of security for this community
provided substantial guarantees of security to Armenia, whether the
mentioned proposals contained those guarantees, but the Armenian
government cared for its own rather than national security. In other
words, Russia did not threaten Armenia or Artsakh but Serzh Sargsyan
to generate developments that have the potential for a change of
government, especially that the opposition is waiting on the Russian
line for these developments.
In this regard, Russia has an advantage over NATO. NATO may offer
certain security proposals to Armenia but it does not have sufficient
tools to compete with Russia over internal security. As a result,
Serzh Sargsyan chose Russia because the Euro-Atlantic community has not
offered sufficient proposals regarding the security of the government.
Nevertheless, this state of play is also a challenge to NATO and the
Euro-Atlantic community because in the long run the notion of security
for the South Caucasian post-Soviet reality is a package notion, and
if this package lacks one set of tools out of historical peculiarities
and civilization, it is necessary to compensate the lack by upgrading
the other sets of tools in the package.
Hence, the NATO meeting in Yerevan may have an important role for the
process of restoring the balance of the regional geopolitical forces
broken after September 3.
Hakob Badalyan 14:04 18/10/2013 Story from Lragir.am News:
http://www.lragir.am/index/eng/0/comments/view/31128