Armenia\’s Achille\’s Heel

By Hakob Badalyan

The Central Intelligence Agency of the United Stated released the GDPs of Armenia and Azerbaijan. If the GDP per person in Armenia is 5 800 dollar, in Azerbaijan it is 11 000. Even a child would understand that the difference is due to oil and gas resources. However, the fact is that Azerbaijan is registering faster growth than Armenia.
The main danger is that Azerbaijan can gain more weight in the world, become stronger and one day get a super power’s permission to start a war and to win since it is more powerful than Armenia is. Or one day, this permission can be due to other factors, and in this case Armenia will be unable to resist, because modern war is determined by economic potential of the parties.
To say that this danger is absolute would be wrong. Not always the statistically stronger side wins a war. Moreover, in Karabakh war, Azerbaijan’s economy was not less than now. But Azerbaijan lost. And the reason was not only the Armenian spirit, it surely exists but you cannot win only thanks to this factor.
Merely, Armenia and Karabakh turned out to be more consistent and adequate to the world system of values. They managed to use efficiently few advantages available and eliminated the economic advantage of Azerbaijan by adhering to modern values even during the war.
Now times are different, Armenia and Karabakh are different. Now international reports give similar assessments to Karabakh as to Azerbaijan , and Armenia only responds in the traditional framework of a “global treachery” against Armenia. This attitude of Armenia and not Azerbaijan’s GDP is the greatest danger. Armenia and Karabakh ceased to be adequate to real life and global developments.
Quite different values are generated in the real life, “national, patriotic” concepts are speculated trying to deprive the society of the possibility to think and create, trying to centralize public resources in the hands of few people considering any activity against this a treachery against the nation and the state.
Right under such conditions, Azerbaijan’s economic advantage becomes dangerous. While for the Armenian “elite” this economic advantage becomes a regular reason to deepen those conditions. Recording evident statistical advantage over our country, the “elite” does not think that it will disappear only if a liberal and wide field for expressing the potential of citizens is created, but it only tries to speculate those statistics decreasing the limits of the creative freedom.
This is the Achilles’ heel of the modern Armenia.