SPEECH BY
MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS VARTAN OSKANIAN
AT
THE TUFTS UNIVERSITY FLETCHER SCHOOL OF LAW AND DIPLOMACY
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
Standing here before you today, I’m living a
dream come true. I had sat there, amongst you, a decade ago,
listening to a lot of interesting people speaking from this
podium over a period of two years. And I remember thinking /
wishing that I would stand up here myself one day and speak to
curious, eager students. Now, that day is here.
Fletcher itself, of course, has had a huge role to play in that
process. This school hasn’t just provided an education to
thousands of us who formulate, practice and study public policy.
It has also provided an incredible networking system from which I
benefit continuously, a not-so-secret society of political
junkies who enjoy the political game and want to have a part in
the decision-making process which influences all our lives.
Fletcher’s multidisciplinary program, its broad-based curriculum,
have provided me with knowledge and tools which are indispensable
in carrying out my job in today’s complex, interrelated world,
especially from a neighborhood as intricate and complicated as
Armenia’s.
I left Fletcher in 1992 and joined Armenia’s Foreign Ministry. At
that time, the Ministry staff consisted of a handful of
Soviet-era diplomats, an even smaller handful of Western-trained
law and diplomacy experts, and a building full of eager,
untrained young people.
Today, thanks to Fletcher, 30 of our young diplomats, have
received training at Fletcher. They have studied here, taken in
this atmosphere, heard the wisdom of these professors and brought
back with them a sense of the culture that Fletcher tries to
impart to its students. My thanks to Dean Steve Bosworth,
Professor Andrew Hess and to all those who worked with our
students for doing their part to increase our ministry’s
capacity. Of course, none of this would have been possible, had
it not been for the vision, the commitment and the generosity of
Aso Tavitian, and his late wife Arlene, who live what they
preach. Aso is himself the archetypical American self-made man,
who owes his success to his own hard work, his ingenuity, and –
as he is the first to say -- to a first-rate education. So, when
he wanted to help Armenia, he chose to do it by supporting the
continuing education of Yerevan’s best and brightest, and doing
it an American institution with a proven record. It’s obvious, I
wasn’t going to argue with the choice of Fletcher.
Tufts and Fletcher have a long-standing relationship with the
Armenian community. In addition to the two professors of Armenian
studies here at Tufts holding two endowed chairs, there are also
two very special Tufts trustees: John Baronian, someone we all
love, and Professor Joyce Barsam, herself, a committed educator,
and the greatest fixer-planner-negotiator of all time. They have
been extremely helpful to all of us, and our students, and we’re
grateful.
I’m sorry Aso couldn’t be here today, but I believe it’s worth
paying tribute to him, who -- in the tradition of self-made
Armenian immigrants giving back to American society, and
particularly American education -- follows in the footsteps of
Stephen Mugar whose name is familiar not just on this campus, but
on several campuses in the Boston area. Each time I would pass
the plaque downtairs in the corridor connecting to the Mugar
building, I would read and marvel at the foresight of men like
Mr. Mugar, and now Mr. Tavitian, who leverage their personal
success to make possible a successful future not just for young
people, but now, through them, a young country.
Armenia is an old nation but a new state. And it is a dream come
true. Many Armenians, many of your friends and neighbors here in
Michigan who grew up dreaming about a homeland and the identity
and security that comes with belonging, could not believe it
would be possible in our lifetime.
It did happen in our lifetime, and tomorrow, we will be
celebrating the 11th anniversary of our independence, and for me,
nothing is more rewarding and fulfilling than being present at
the creation, watching and participating in the statebuilding
process.
This past decade has been indescribably challenging and truly
difficult. Often, we have made decisions that have been crucial
turning points, and none of this more so than in the development
of foreign policy.
And don’t forget, all this in a chaotic world, following the
collapse of what we thought was an indefatigable USSR. That
breakdown didn’t just mean the end of an empire, it also meant
the disappearance of a world system with if-not-predictable, at
least understood and assumed, rules and parameters.
The new world order was a fashionable term then. A dozen years
later, is there such a new order? The answer is no. I just came
from NY where Iraq was high on the UN agenda and we can clearly
see that the situation is in flux as world powers jockey for
position and try to come to terms with a professed desire for
multilateralism.
The reason for this is that unlike previous turning points in
world history, with the end of the Cold War, there were clear
victors, but not clear losers. As a result, terms of a new order
could not be dictated directly, overtly, quickly. In all previous
cases, the victors tried to do two things: 1) totally dismantle,
dismember the loser’s resources, and 2) put in place new
structures and systems to avoid the repetition of the conflict. A
good example is the end of the Napoleonic wars, when France was
totally minimized and the Vienna Concert was created with its
security systems such as the quadruple alliance and the Holy
Alliance. Then, we saw World War I when the victors dismantled
Germany and created the League of Nations as a mechanism for
collective security. After World War II, at Yalta Potsdam, a
truly new world order was created with NATO, economic structures,
world bank, IMF. After the end of the Cold War, there was no such
abrupt, quick evolution of a system, and no new ones were
created, because the very institutions which led partly to the
collapse of the old system were used in new ways to accommodate
the new needs, such as the OSCE, NATO, etc. So, this whole
accommodation process – on one hand trying to subdue Russia, on
the other hand, tried to keep them engaged and in certain ways
accommodate them -- led to this situation of flux and the
continuing evolution and changes of a new world order.
In this context, it’s been interesting to observe US-Russia
relations over the past 10 years. Unfortunately, we in Armenia
haven’t just been observers, but also been effected by the
changing and evolving nature of this relationship still being
defined.
However, one change is clear: the world is no longer divided into
two clean halves. That division disappeared with the fall of the
Berlin Wall. Instead, several systems emerged, free to evolve and
develop their own game with their own rules.
One such system emerged in the Caucasus, comprised not just of
the three Caucasus countries: Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia,
but also our neighbors: Russia, Turkey and Iran. To make matters
a bit more complicated, major global powers also have an interest
in this region, and although they are not, strictly speaking, a
part of the Caucasus, you can believe that the activities of the
US, the EU and China affect the Caucasus system.
What makes a geopolitical system a system? Its parts, like any
kind of system are linked to each other. In this case, the
residents of the Caucasus neighborhood are tied to each other
sometimes historically, sometimes ethnically, sometimes
linguistically. There are shared memories, traditions, cultures.
There is a common infrastructure, including communication and
transportation.
Just as any system, in this system, too, there are factors,
elements that contribute to its stability and instability.
In the Caucasus, which is an inherently unstable system, there
are new and old destabilizing elements. The destabilizing
elements prevail and cause conflict and friction.
There are many such elements including historical rivalries,
ethnic conflicts, the uneven distribution of wealth, particularly
oil, superpower rivalry played out in the region, underdeveloped
economies, an absence of deep-rooted democratic practices and
institutions.
Given this environment, as we in these past years pursued our own
national interest, we also tried to reconcile those with the
bigger goal of achieving peace and stability in our region. The
pursuit of these dual goals led to the adoption of the following
regional policies:
First, Complementarity. We firmly believed that with the end of
the Cold War, so must end cold war thinking as well. As a result,
we refused to make choices between sides, powers, poles,
interests, and continue to reject the notion that that is
necessary. We want the Caucasus to be the place where the
interests of the powers converge and not collide.
Efforts to democratize not only Armenia, but the region, is a
second policy goal. For obvious reasons. It is a truism that
democratic states are less likely to go to war than
non-democratic ones. It is also apparent that democratic states
treat their citizens more fairly and equitably, thus creating
stable societies. Both of these are necessary in our region.
The other three goals are advocating regional cooperation, a
resolution of the Nagorno Karabagh conflict and securing Turkey’s
positive engagement in the region.
I would like to dwell on these in greater detail since these are
the most crucial and indeed, each of these situations has its
spillover effects for the region and the great powers with
interest in the region.
On regional cooperation, let me say that it is no secret, that
given our geopolitical situation, the conflicts or hostilities we
face and the limited resources we command, our room to maneuver
is rather small. That is why we’ve determined that it is neither
necessary nor prudent to choose among friends in our
neighborhood.
On the contrary. Our capacity to contribute to regional stability
depends very much on our success in managing our relations with
different and seemingly incompatible actors.
Our common borders with Iran, for example, though short and
mountainous, have offered us practical alternatives, even though
our views on this are distinctly divergent, at the moment at
least, with those of the US. Our engagement with Iran does not
pose any real or substantial security threat to anybody. It does
not tilt any strategic balance. Even its economic significance is
very minimal on the scale of global, even regional, trade. What
we have is the cooperation of two neighbors, each resisting
different forms of isolation and marginalization. Thus, we each
hope that the other can provide a bridge to the rest of the world
to which they are better connected. Armenia would want for its
relations with the US to explore and to exploit its bilateral
relations with Iran and make Armenia a useful channel for any
dialogue. As to specifically trade and transit, if anyone is
prepared to propose other avenues, we are eager to listen.
We believe Armenia’s ability to engage Iran can and ought to be
put to good use as a factor of stability and cooperation in wider
and wider constructs of regional structures and institutions. Our
security depends on it, our prosperity depends on it. We want the
legitimacy of these policies recognized, supported, positively
exploited by all our friends who have a stake in the peace and
development of our region.
Now let me address the Nagorno Karabagh issue which is
significant not only for the existential interests of the
protagonists, but for regional stability and the political and
security concerns of the Russian Federation, Turkey, Iran and of
course the US. While Nagorno Karabagh is not the only unresolved
conflict in the area, it is the conflict where the US, together
with Russia is the most actively, formally and patiently
involved. Everyone expects that larger issues of US-Russian
competition or cooperation, globally and more particularly in the
region, will affect every aspect of the process of dealing with
this conflict and the search for its eventual resolution.
It is true that the Nagorno Karabagh conflict is, at heart, a
struggle for self-determination.
But there are oceans of difference in the de-facto status of some
of today’s long-term conflicts. In fact, I think there are four
different categories of self-determination movements determined
by the combination of degree of control the state exercises over
its entire territory (including the territory occupied by the
insurgents) and the degree of self-determination achieved by a
secessionist movement.
Quebec and Northern Ireland, for example, fall in Category I. In
both cases, the territorial integrity of Canada and the United
Kingdom is preserved, while the provinces maintain
self-determination to such a high degree that they conduct
referendums and even decide their own legal and political status.
The overwhelming majority of today's secessionists fall in
Category II, where the movements struggle without any degree of
self-determination and the state continues to fully control the
territory under question. The Kurdish people’s struggle in Turkey
falls into this second category.
Those in Category III are the borderline cases where the state is
not able to crush the insurgents, and the insurgents themselves
are not strong enough to maintain control over their territory
with any certainty of permanence, and the outcome can go either
way. East Pakistan, later Bangladesh, was in a similar situation
in the 1960s prior to its recognition as an independent state by
the international community. So was Nagorno Karabakh prior to
Azerbaijan's acceptance of an unconditional cease-fire on May 12,
1994, following Azerbaijan's failure to crush Karabakh's declared
independence.
Today, Nagorno Karabakh falls in Category IV. Azerbaijan has no
control whatsoever over those territories as Nagorno Karabakh
enjoys complete sovereignty. Mediators pursue two policy goals in
all of these conflicts. One is to resist the break-up of the
state. The other is to search for a peaceful resolution. This is
done by simultaneously protecting the state's territorial
integrity while arguing for full political, civil and human
rights for all citizens (including the insurgent minority).
Regarding the dozens of such struggles around the world, the
international community repeats the same chorus. Sometimes it
goes so far as to even suggest some autonomy. The hope is that
the offer of such rights will dampen the pressures to secede.
The problem, however, is that the two goals are not
simultaneously achievable in all conflicts. This is especially
true when a national self-determination movement is being offered
rights which it has already achieved and sustained. In the US,
there is a frequent suggestion: “to combine the promotion of
democracy on the part of the central government with an effort to
help would-be breakaway areas benefit from cross-border economic
development and political cooperation.” To prescribe this bromide
in the case of Nagorno Karabagh, is to ignore the decade-long
evolution of this conflict and its legal and historical
foundations. Nagorno Karabakh already has political, civil and
human rights under its own elected government. To offer it the
same rights
Within Azerbaijan, while expecting that Karabakh will give up its
self-determination claims is neither logical nor acceptable. That
would work for category II conflicts but is not appropriate for
Nagorno Karabagh.
That is our challenge now. And we are at a point where the
international community has come to see this reality. That
Nagorno Karabagh has never been, and can never be a part of
independent Azerbaijan. That the people of Nagorno Karabagh are
ready for, and in fact, have already begun, through elections and
other democratic processes, to build their own societies and
their own lives.
Of course, the process to finding a peaceful resolution is not
being made easier by the fact that Turkey acts as Azerbaijan’s
big uncle on the world stage, and provides blanket support for
their claims. And, at the same time, Turkey does not have formal
relations with Armenia.
It is not for Armenia to judge Turkey’s friendship with
Azerbaijan. Shared ethnic, cultural, linguistic, economic or even
strategic interests are understandable.
But that is no reason to isolate others or hold captive one set
of interactions for the benefit of a third party. We do not hold
Turkey’s moral, political, economic -- even military --
assistance to Azerbaijan against it. We may not always like that
closeness, or appreciate its implications for our own security.
However, Azerbaijan has succeeded in convincing Turkey that
blockading Armenia will diminish Armenia’s economic capacity,
undermine its self-reliance and force Armenia to negotiate from a
weaker position and hence compel it to consider concessions it
would not otherwise be willing to make in the conflict over
Nagorno Karabagh.
Turkey’s and Azerbaijan’s continued closures of the borders with
Armenia are based on the demonstrably false premise that
Armenia’s weak and collapsing economy will force it to accept any
solution imposed by friend and foe alike. Perhaps, Azerbaijan,
for a variety of reasons, including domestic consumption, world
public opinion, and the need to justify clinging to a politics
that so far have been ineffectual, needs to create and perpetuate
the myth of Armenia’s utter vulnerability, and its being on the
verge of economic collapse.
Armenia and its economy are not collapsing. In fact, the opposite
is true. Against all odds, Armenia’s economy is growing. Last
year our GNP we had 9.6 %; in the first half of this year we’ve
achieved 10 percent, and hope to finish the year at that rate of
growth. Our Human Development Index is ahead of even Turkey and
Azerbaijan.
Nevertheless, we are ready for dialogue and we advocate full
diplomatic relations with Turkey without preconditions. This does
not mean Armenia is willing to renounce its national memories nor
dismiss the historical injustices it has suffered. We notice with
satisfaction that in Turkey there has been a movement away from a
monolithic, undifferentiated rigid approach concerning the
Genocide to a more pluralistic and varied debate. This debate
within Turkey may have not moved forward official policy, but
Armenia is gratified to see this debate occur, where the subject
is no longer taboo.
Armenia believes that given American regional strategic and
economic interests -- from stability to trade to energy supplies
-- the US should welcome the normalization of Turkey’s relations
with Armenia, for many obvious reasons. And some less obvious
ones, too, such as deflecting the pressures of the Armenian
Diaspora lobby in the US, removing the irritant of Armenia’s
reticence or veto wherever international forums permit, reducing
the frictional cost of Turkish-Armenian contentions that
antagonize European institutions and thus making it easier to
rehabilitate Turkey’s human rights record or at least shift
attention from its reluctance to come to terms with that record
including its denial of the Genocide of 1915.
However, the way it looks from Yerevan and probably from many
other places, is that Turkey’s relations with many countries,
whether neighbors or not, are filtered through the special
Turkey-US relationship -- whether it is Turkish candidacy to the
EU, or the strategic partnership with Israel, or its role in
Afghanistan or Iraq. There is nothing unusual with this kind of
partnership except that the web of reciprocal IOUs becomes so
intricate between the two, that in a paradoxical way, options are
narrowed on both sides. For us, this poses certain difficulties
and frustrations, even if we understand perfectly well why
certain promises cannot be kept.
So it is clear why a talk that is essentially about Armenia’s
foreign policy is entitled the effect of Great Power Politics.
We’re in a complex neighborhood, where domestic situations and
inter-country relationships are complicated. Russia-Georgia
relations affect us, US-Iran relations affect us, Russia-US
relations affect us of course, and we were therefore very pleased
that at the last meeting between presidents Bush and Putin in
Moscow, the two made a statement indicating their intent to
cooperate in the Caucasus. We believe that such policies,
together with greater political will on the part of each of the
countries involved, can bring the Caucasus to peace and economic
prosperity.
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