WHY THE U.S. REPUBLICAN ADMINISTRATION IS NERVOUS
Editorial
`HAYOTS ASHKHARH’
Published on March 15, 2008
In their recent statements regarding Armenia’s current political
situation and the ways of overcoming it, a number of influential
American officials, including Secretary of State C. Rice, M. Bryza and
others, are gradually beginning to sound more and more menacing,
nervous and unbalanced.
There is such an impression as though by way of imposing conditions on
the Armenian authorities, the responsible representatives of the United
States Republican Administration are trying to `resume’ the sad events
that took place in the country after February 19. The threats of the
American officials regarding the partial termination of the US
assistance and even the freezing of the `Millennium Challenges’
program, a process that is currently under way, are accompanied with
the demand of lifting, as quickly as possible, the state of emergency
declared in the town of Yerevan, conducting an international inquiry
into the March 1-2 events, putting an end to the arrests of its
participants and `initiating a dialogue’ based on some incomprehensible
arguments.
There’s no doubt that the prompt implementation of the hasty demands
will be equivalent to our country’s destabilization, during which new
clashes are also possible.
To accomplish its strategy on `spoiling’ the finished presidential
race, Ter-Petrosyan’s team is striving to remind about its existence at
any cost even during the official oath ceremony of the newly elected
President.
The recent statements and undisguised demands by a number of American
officials are objectively directed towards that goal, because without
any recommendation, the Armenian authorities are doing their best to
mitigate the regime of the state of emergency and stabilize the
country’s internal political situation.
So, the hasty and unfounded demands of the American side are not
absolutely conditioned by their concern about Armenia’s internal
political situation. Otherwise, the American government would have made
a distinction between the OSCE’s positive assessments regarding the
Armenian elections which later received its approval and the
opposition’s unlawful steps aimed at disputing the them.
If, based on the OSCE assessments, the United States finds that the
February 19 elections were mostly in line with the international
standards, it should now have at least balanced approaches towards the
post-electoral developments. Whereas, such approaches were obviously
directed at ensuring the political revanche of L. Ter-Petrosyan, a
candidate who received no more than 21 percent of votes during the
elections which were mostly in line with the international standards.
This is equal to ignoring the opinion of 79 percent of the Armenian
voters, i.e. it constitutes a gross violation of the well-known norms
of democracy.
In fact, it is obvious that,
First: The Americans are strictly indignant at something but they have
serious grounds for concealing the real causes of their indignation.
Second: The Armenian authorities also have `to hold their tongue’ with
regard to the real causes of the United States’ indignation, pretending
as though nothing had happened in the bilateral relations.
Whereas the real causes of the Americans’ indignation, as well as the
true motives of their haste are underlying behind the US Republican
Administration’s failure of ruling over the South Caucasus prior to the
US presidential elections to be held in November 2008.
Some miracle should occur to save the Republicans from defeat in
November 2008, so they need hasty and impressive geo-political
progress-victories in the world’s most important regions. One of such
regions is the South Caucasus where, with the help of L. Ter-Petrosyan,
an attempt was made to stage a similar `miracle’, but as we see,
Armenia turned out to be a `tough nut’.
The obvious evidence leading to the realization of this fact was `The
Rating of States in Terms of Their Rating’ a publication by the
American authoritative `Brookings Institution’ Research Center. There,
in the list of 141 countries, Armenia occupied the honorable 105th
position, being estimated as a `quite powerful and stable state’. And
in this respect, our country exceeds even Russia in terms of its
indices.
Thus, nothing came out of the attempts of conquering Armenia by a
`single touch’ with the help of the well-known political technologies
which, in comparison with Tbilisi and later – Kiev, were dramatized in
Yerevan in a more powerful manner during the recent months and had an
`extremely diverse assortment’.
But the United States Republican Administration has no time to wait any
more, as it needs impressive victories, thrilling revolutionary scenes,
new and new group of demonstrators flooding the streets with the slogan
of `freedom’ and scenes showing the Russian tanks leave the distant
corners of the post-Soviet territory etc.
However, we are sure that what is happening in the Armenian-American
relations now has no bearing on the past and future relations of the
two countries and the new and serious achievements they are certain to
have. Besides, we have no doubt that unlike Armenia, the Government in
the United States will by all means change in November 2008, and there
will be a new upsurge in the Armenian-American relations under the
Democratic Administration.
The thing is that Armenia, as an independent state, determines the way
of its progress on its own, and no threats on applying economic and
political punitive measures can arouse despair in a nation that has
lived for 5 millennia, especially when the matter is addressed to the
attempts of `reviving’ an accomplished political process.
The political struggle accompanying the presidential elections has
already fallen to the bosom of history for Armenian state and the
Armenian people. And what becomes history cannot be turned back even by
the most powerful countries of the world.