Ashot Manucharyan: “We must succeed in having atomic weapon located in Armenia”

Interview with Ashot Manucharyan, member of Karabakh Committee

– What political developments do you see during these months?

– The most important developments to expect are the inner developments. We have been discussing those things that are happening out of the country. Armenia is a country without statehood, elected political team, because what we are calling political elite is the effect resulted from the activities of external powers in our country, and from this prospective there is no future for the country. From this prospective the most important thing is the inner developments, which are tendencies out of the political and state systems, which may be formed as one process and become a stimulus for the development of the country. What about those political contexts, I think those will stimulate and conflicts will become more intensive. Those powers will have to understand that the role models for us during these years have not given any good to us and we have to find a way out of the deadlock. The other people on the planet are looking for the same too; maybe we will be success in that.

– What do you think the opposition’s current situation?

– We have taken a component of the political sector in Armenia and as I said a few things depend on it only, and maximum what we can do is developing Armenia up to the level of Georgia. What is Georgia? Georgia is one of the centers of the world administration; a territory dominated by the logic that really dominates the entire world. This means that Georgia has advanced with one step and from being a third world country it is becoming second world country. In fact Georgia is knocking at the doors of the so called Western civilization. However, the advanced countries in the West such as Spain, Greece and Europe in general, as well as the US are living a shock.

The political powers of Armenia what can do maximum is bringing Armenia up to that level, but it is more realistic for them to keep this system of embezzlement that really exists in third world countries. Armenia is still among the third world countries and many processes happening inside the country are directed from external powers.

There are two types of directions and two types of institutions that are trying to be in Armenia. One of those two is the British and American partnership, which tries to be a sponsor for the authorities and some part of the opposition, as well as the civil society. In fact the US took the youth movements in their hands and Clinton’s visit was not by chance.

However, it is a matter of question whether she was able to do that. The important thing is that spectrum, which involves the most promising power of the country, has western civilization model thinking. They believe the highest point of the society’s achievement is the constitutional order and a developed civil society. Of course these are very good things, but a part of the world that is leaving. People have passed that phase and now we have to speak of other things.

The youth is mainly in that group of the society, which also includes some representatives of the intelligentsia, and they generally have a pro-western thinking. In the opposition there are pro-western powers with such thinking, but they are weak and those powers are the Heritage, Free Democrats, Republic parties and a part of the ANC. The other part of those groups are trying to rely on Russia because about one year ago the US decided to control Armenia’s processes, and the dialogue between the authorities, ANC and opposition was stimulated by the US.

But later the process was failed because the opposition was discredited as it was looking for partners among the government. The current situation is that now Russia is in an extreme tension both inside the country and in foreign relations. Russia has many domestic problems and meanwhile is trying to recover its role in the international arena. Russia has appeared in an inner crisis and is trying to give a strict and harsh response to those challenges. Everything can be expected from that Russia because the other world was cruel to them, and they are acting strong and harsh.

At this time in most of the countries there is no statehood, which means those are administrations under the control of the world centers, and mostly those are ruled by the United States. In our country this division exists as well, and there are powers that are trying to play in Russia’s field. However, the situation is more complicated in our country because the powers that are keeping with Russia are trying to have good relations with the West as well. Everything is being done in accordance with that logic. For that reason they believe that we should be closer to the stronger one. Even those who are considered to be the best loyalists of Russia are keeping good relations with the West.

– Do you mean that the ANC’s candidate for presidency will be agreed with Russia?

– I think Russia will have it candidate here for sure. This candidate may play two roles. First, if Russia sees that the incumbent government is approaching closer to the West and they will lose the influence, they may use that candidate to make a revolution. Second, if those relations are still within the permitted levels, they will use their candidate to control those relations and make sure everything is within the permitted limits. This is the situation and process happening in the political sector, which is in fact manipulated with economic leverages and tools.

– Which one of these two poles does the incumbent government prefer?

-The government is definitely pro-Western.

– Who do you think will be Russia’s candidate?

– It is hard to say. I think the decision will be made later just before the processes become active because as we see that are many people for that position. Recently something happened that showed the real level of Armenia’s independence, it was when the president of Armenia refused to leave for Tehran to participate in the non-Aligned summit. This was very shameful for Armenia. I would not condemn only the official that was in that position. We do not have statehood.

There was no one in Armenia to say it is a shame. For the Armenian people Iran is a very important country. Also the Armenian and Iranian people can give a lot to the world as they have a history of cooperation between Christian and Islamic civilizations of thousands of years. It is unacceptable to undermine an important thing for the humanity in favor of the timely wish of another country. I think that those who are active now and think that changes must be made in Armenia had things to do here as well.

They had to generate noise and ask to the US and other powers of the world what this is done for. This reflects the picture of the civil society in the country and as they are the followers of the west, they don’t like Iran. We must discuss and if we come to the conclusion that Iran is bad for us, simply we can stop going to Iran in general but not stop our relations with them because of the call or announcements of a second or third-class official or newspaper from the US. For Iran our solidarity is very important and we had to be there.

– Don’t you think that Armenia should preserve balance with the super-powers of the world?

– I did not mean that due to this problem the resident of Armenia should not participate in the events of NATO. This has nothing to do with it but what I mean is that we should not give a place to their pressure.

– The president has submitted a bill on allocation of armaments on the territories of the Collective Security Treaty Organization to the parliament, according to which in order to allocate the armaments of a third country on the territory of any of the CSTO the given country has to get the consent of all the members of this organization.

– I already said what the current situation of Russia is; it is not stabile and full of inner uncertainty. They receive challenges both from inside and outside. This Russia in this situation is trying to protect its own interests. As Russia sees that the armed forces entered the socialist area, they have to behave like that. Even though NATO promised not to enter that area if the Soviet Union would take out the forces from Czech, Hungary and Germany, but they did. Later they said it would not happen in the post-Soviet area, but again it happened. Now Russia is trying to protect its interests as much as possible as they know that the West’s policy does not speak the truth.

For example, there should not have been such power invasion in Libya but it happened. You may ask what is our concern about what Russia is doing. Now we are participating in two military formats, the first one of which is the CSTO and the second one is bilateral contracts with Russia on allocation of Russian armed forces in Armenia. If we are offered to do something for them, we cannot refuse that offer, and I think we should have proposals against such offers too because we are being threatened by another NATO country which is Turkey keeping us in blockade.

That is in fact war because according to the international law blockade is a war too. We are receiving threats from Azerbaijan all the time and no one is trying to stop them; the co-chairs do not ever warn Azerbaijan over those threats.

However, on the other hand, we can feel that recently there has been some kind of warning. In Azerbaijan the military tone has drastically reduced and most importantly the aggression on the border has reduced. Let’s compliment the ones, who contributed to this. And it is probably the west. But the problem is different. You have mentioned the military trainings of the Collective Security Pact. Russia tells the whole world the following, “I understood your rules and laws. I will implement these laws myself. You think that you can send troops to Libya and Syria for the sake of democracy?

I will do the same in Georgia.” Today the ones, who praise the west, try not to see all these facts. But what will happen next? Are you accountable for what will happen in the future? We are located in a crazy region and at any time Russia may be out of the game because of internal jolts. We should enforce our defense system. So I agree with making similar suggestions. We should offer Russia to deploy a nuclear station in Armenia in lieu of a military base. That way, we will speak with our enemies in a different language. So this would mean that if in the future someone from Pakistan says that Armenia should be destroyed we shouldn’t respond to them in an expert-level analysis but show the photographs of our nuclear system. It means that now we should develop more in-depth military relations with Russia.