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Vart an Oskanian Speaks About "The Greatest Challenge Facing Us"

Founder of the Civilitas Foundation, former foreign minister of Armenia,
Vartan Oskanian spoke in Toronto and Los Angeles at two community
gatherings.

In Toronto on October 24, Mr. Oskanian was the guest of the Canada Armenia
Business Council. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the
organization.

In Los Angeles, on October 25, Mr. Oskanian was named Professional of the
Year by the Armenian Professional Society which is celebrating its 50th
anniversary.

In his remarks, he addressed Armenia¹s international and domestic
challenges, but also what he characterized to be ³the most important issue
facing us, the issue of identity for our young people, in Armenia and in the
Diaspora.² Below is the text of his speech.

Dear Friends,

This is my first public appearance since I left the office of foreign
minister.

As I was gathering my thoughts about what to say, I realized that we’ve come
a long long way these 17 years.

If I was still in office, I would tell you about Armenia’s successes and
challenges. Today, as a private citizen, I am going to do the same. But the
reason I wanted to be a private citizen, is to be more outspoken about and
to work for all that still needs to be done. I believe that my
responsibility, our responsibility together, to Armenia and its future is
the same whether one is in government or not.

My commitment to Armenia and its future did not begin when I became foreign
minister. It will not cease now that I am no longer foreign minister.

I have been here since the inception and I’ve seen the ups and downs. I
served as foreign minister since the beginning of President Kocharian’s
term. I served as deputy minister and first deputy minister under President
Ter Petrossian. In other words, I have served not a man, but a people and a
country. Just as it is not in my nature to follow blindly, it is also not in
my nature to be in bitter opposition. I believe in carrying out the
responsibilities I have undertaken. I believe I have done so these 10 years,
sometimes before the TV cameras but more often behind the scenes.

My responsibility now is to speak and act honestly and openly. That is both
commitment and responsibility.

The Civilitas Foundation which I have created believes in the concept of a
citizen’s responsibility to society. We, in Armenia and the Diaspora,
professionals, committed Armenians of all generations, across the world,
together, make up Armenian society. Around the world, we have attained a
level of professionalism, integration and wealth that our grandparents could
never have imagined and that obligates us to give back to our community –
here and in Armenia.

But you already know that. Your organizations, by their existence,
understand the inextricable links between Armenia and Diaspora.

I have often spoken of the Armenia – Diaspora interdependence. I don’t think
it is any longer a question as to whether one needs the other. I think the
only question is how one can build on and benefit from the capacities of the
other.

All of us in our consciousness, in our minds, in our dreams, we imagine our
own Armenia, and we strive to reach it. But in order to see the real
Armenia, to perceive it correctly, I think we must find the right
correlation, the right balance between our expectations of Armenia and
Armenia’s capacity.

It is not easy to build a state. It’s true that one can have expectations,
but they must also be realistic expectations.

Let’s look at what we have. We have built a state that is stable, and
advancing economically. Today, if we compare Armenia to other similar
countries, we see that despite our limited potential, despite the war,
despite the blockade – and in fact we even forget about these sometimes – we
are competitive with our neighbors.

The situation in our region today is changing very quickly. The challenges
are not the same today as they were 10 years ago, five years ago, or even
one or two years ago. And they are many. The Baku-Tbilisi-Çeyhan pipeline is
operational and prospects are improving for the construction of the
Trans-Caspian pipeline. These will seriously enhance Azerbaijan’s influence
and leverage over Europe and the US. Those countries in our region facing
self-determination issues have united and created a common front. The
punitive posturing towards Iran, our strategically important neighbor, is
growing. The likelihood of the creation of divisive lines in our region is
also increasing, and nothing demonstrated that better than the conflict, in
August, between Russia and Georgia. Finally, the Turkey-Azerbaijan
relationship is becoming deeper and broader, with Turkey more openly and
overtly assisting Azerbaijan militarily, politically and economically. Every
day, we see new manifestations of Turkey’s state policy of denial and
non-recognition of the Genocide. Add to that their hesitation to make the
only move that will have any meaningful impact on the region – opening
borders – and you can see that our foreign policy challenges are serious.

Actually, I believe that many of these will be with us in some form or
another, for a long time. Our neighborhood is not going to change.

But our domestic challenges – these are the ones that are in our hands to
fix, once and for all.

Many of our domestic problems are economic. The hopes of Armenia’s aspiring
young men and women rest on a fair, open, economic system. This means
respecting civil liberties, believing in democracy, actually allowing a rule
of law. Only then can will the individual citizen be unafraid to risk and
venture, and only then will we harness the energy of our society –
economically and politically.

Only then will be able to create jobs so that they see their future in
Armenia, and they see Armenia’s future in themselves.

Only then will we manage to eradicate poverty so that all our people begin
to believe that living in a country that is ours is better than living in
someone else’s empire.

Only then will we succeed in identifying corruption as the evil that limits
options, suffocates innovation, restricts enterprise and slams the door on
opportunity

Only then will we do away with nepotism so that it is what you know not who
you know that counts.

Only then will our government institutions be more effective because the law
makes each citizen powerful, and it is not the powerful who make their own
laws.

In other words, the stories of today’s rising generation must be stories of
prospects and convictions and successes, not stories of frustration,
discontent and disillusionment.

But we will not be able to tackle today’s ills if we do not heal our
political environment and change the psycho-social and moral environment in
which we live.

Our elections were not the cause of the damage to our spirit. They were the
consequence of our inability to bring civility to our society, to bring
civil society to our political stage, and to transform our political arena
into a competition of ideas and programs, not a battleground for defending
power and wealth/resources.

This failure is not just Armenia’s but also the Diaspora’s. The challenge
then is also not just for Armenia, but for Karabakh and the Diaspora, too.
In this, as in all things, we are together. There is no Armenia without
Diaspora, no Karabakh without Armenia, there are no divisions. We all belong
to one nation, have one identity, one past.

The most important challenge facing all of us is our young people’s issue of
identity. You in the Diaspora think this is just a Diaspora worry. But it is
not. This is as real a question for those who are growing up today in
Armenia and Karabakh. To what do they link their identity? To a divided and
injured society? To apathy and hopelessness? To endless cycles of poverty?
To third world villages? To homelessness and earthquake? To the mentality of
a warrior — victorious but always under siege? To the economy of a petty
merchant?

Or to an Armenia that has a knowledge-based economy, where education is
valuable for the windows that it opens, where villagers like villagers
everywhere feel protected? To an Armenia with an economic and political
independence that is secure, to a prosperous Armenia, to an Armenia that is
fair and just.

Our young people – in Yerevan and here in Diaspora, too – want to believe in
Armenia. But that Armenia must be the Armenia of their imagination, the one
they have heard about from their grandfathers, the Armenia their parents
have dreamt about. If we can’t give this generation that Armenia, then in
the years to come, we will lose them to other dreams.

But if we can? If Armenia, the Diaspora and Karabakh join hands and use our
know-how and our dedication, see what miracles we will work.

The 21st century – the century of social and professional networks, of
globalization and of knowledge-based economies – is a century that will see
new countries and new diasporas. Our diaspora was created by the forces of
history. Ironically, so was our country.

Now we cannot leave them to the forces of history again.

It is that diaspora and that country that will define us as a nation in the
21st century. We must write that definition ourselves.