ArmInfo. In the context of the Ukraine crisis, Armenia should think of building a sovereign state rather than of the threats of losing sovereignty in case the Allied State's borders extend as far as Armenia, Garegin Miskaryan, Director of the Democratic Platform foundation, said in an interview with ArmInfo.
"I would dare to state that, historically, Armenia has nearly always had serious problems with its nationhood and sovereignty. And we have hardly ever been sovereign. At best, our country enjoyed certain, insignificant elements of sovereignty during short historical periods. So at present we should not think of the threats of losing what we have hardly ever had. Rather, we should try to create it," he said.
According to Mr Miskaryan, present-day Republic of Armenia could be described as a sovereign state, "only with great reserve." And this is not the only problem of our country and society. First of all, for lack of not only democratic government institutes, but also, which is much more important, democratic society. That is why, being a formally transitional democracy, Armenia and its society are, in fact, far from being democratic, primarily because of "inferior social thinking" and the values cherished by this society.
Amid all this, a democratic state is impossible to build by building its institutes alone. On the other hand, Armenia has no resources to afford a luxury of retaining a conventional authoritarian government model. In this context, there is a yawning gulf between Armenia, with humans as its only resource, and Middle-East monarchies and some authoritarian CIS-members, the so-called petrostates.
"In petrostates the authorities are capable of ruling societies with an extremely low level of education and, consequently, low efficiency and productivity, mainly due to profits from energy resources. But Armenia has not such a potential. Therefore, Armenia has no alternative to democratic progress, with the human being in the center," Mr Miskaryan said.
According to him, even amid the present global shocks, the Armenian people and society have opportunities to start and successfully complete the process of building a sovereign state. And the major obstacle to it is in "the heads of Armenians themselves" rather than of their enemies or allies.
"It is our own heads that contain the answer to the question: are we, the Armenian political thought, mature for the idea of our own nationhood? And if we are close to it, are we capable of building a viable state or are we going to serve other states' interests again? I think that, before starting, we should put this question to ourselves and find an answer to it," Mr Miskaryan said.