"REFORMS" TO PLEASE NATO
Hakob Badalyan

Lragir
Dec 21 2007
Armenia

When the military reforms of Armenia are considered, an important,
a core question occurs on which the quality of the reform and
effectiveness depends. The question is the motivation of the reform,
whether it is carried out because the NATO Individual Partnership Plan
requires that or we need the reform. At first sight, the motivation
does not seem as important as the reform itself. This is a mistake,
however. If we carry out a reform because our relations with NATO
require it, the best result of it will be the same as that of our
partnership with civilian international organizations. For instance,
our membership to the Council of Europe. It brought about legislative
reforms, assumed and officially enacted by legislative obligations.

However, we who live in Armenia know that these obligations are
formal provisions written on paper, which have nothing to do with real
life, in terms of both the government and the society. We carried out
reforms through legislative acts because we were obliged to but there
seems to be no hastiness to bring them into being. Life and relations
are the same or changed as much as it would change on its own. This
is the difference between obliged and voluntary reforms, if we may
describe them so. Certainly, with regard to membership to European
and other international political and economic organizations, as well
as partnership with NATO Armenia can say it joined them voluntarily,
realizing the stipulations, and without political will Armenia would
not have agreed to that partnership.

However, a person who is aware of the modern geopolitical reality
realizes that considering the economic, political, cultural and
geographic peculiarities Armenia could not avoid partnership with
NATO, and if not membership at least membership with international
organizations.

After all, our country has acquired considerable skills in fulfilling
international obligations and has almost solved the most complicated
problem – the elections. The parliamentary election of 2007 showed
that even in this connection the Armenian government has invented
mechanisms which can guarantee an impression and reason for a positive
evaluation for the outside. Meanwhile, we realize that deep inside
the state of things did not change. Moreover, it departs even farther
from the line of legality. All this allows thinking that the same
pretension may be with regard to the military reform, especially that
it is impossible to imagine a real reform in a separate sphere of
public administration if the reforms in the other spheres are mere
declarations. In other words, we may soon have an excellent military
legislation, an ultramodern structure of the army, modern mechanisms
of management. However, the most important question is what will be
underneath it, how the way of thinking of the command of the army will
change which is far from the elementary cultured level, while in other
countries the image of an army man, especially a high-ranking one,
is associated with intellect and good manners. How will the relation
between the officer and the soldier change, which is now that of a
master and a servant and in some military units it can be described as
slavery? How will the army avoid being a political tool when soldiers
are made to vote for the government? How will corruption be tackled
when most soldiers get a leave after they pay, or on credit? Or
what is going to be done about the sons of the officials, from the
president to heads of department to have them serve in the army like
the sons of ordinary citizens? These phenomena persist in the army,
and overlooking them is not patriotism but the contrary. And the main
result of the military reform should be the qualitative change of the
relations underlying this situation. It is possible only in case the
reform is necessitated by our inner compulsion, our way of thinking,
rather than the necessity to please NATO.