YEREVAN — Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated on Tuesday that Armenia has successfully overcome significant security challenges, asserting that he can now guarantee the country’s survival “for the next century.”
“Two years ago, I announced from this podium that if we managed to maintain our statehood for a year or two, it would mean that we had created and were creating a real opportunity to have a state in the coming century,” said Pashinyan. “And now, two years later, I must state that in the medium term, our strategic objective for the century has been achieved. But we must not let our guard down for a second.”
He emphasized that the key to Armenia’s survival lies in focusing on the economic development of its internationally recognized territory and creating a new “security system” in which a strong army would not be the main component.
“Armenia must act only and solely in accordance with the interests of its own economic development,” he said during a parliamentary debate on his government’s draft state budget for the next year.
Pashinyan argued that Armenia must overcome its perception by the international community as a nation-martyr. “Especially in the context of our national strategic objective, which is the eternity of the statehood of the Republic of Armenia, it is highly important for us to understand how the world perceives us. This might seem like a simple question, but it has many important layers and nuances. When I recently tried to sum up my impressions of the past six-and-a-half years, I reached an unavoidable conclusion: the world perceives us as a nation-martyr. Overall, the message we want to send to the world is this: we consider our government’s biggest mission to be overcoming the status of a nation-martyr,” Pashinyan said in parliament.
He noted that in the past, the proposed solution to this perception was the adoption of the nation-army concept. “Our average statistical reaction to this situation has been, and to some extent continues to be, that the best way to overcome the nation-martyr formula is the nation-army formula. However, I am not sure this is the right approach. My deliberations lead me to conclude that the nation-army concept is a continuation of the nation-martyr concept. If you position yourself as a nation-army, you generate other armies against you. It is the right agenda to have a strong army, but one must ask: how strong? Stronger than whom? How strong of an army should we have, and what if our challenges extend not only to our enemies but also to our friends?” Pashinyan said.
He advocated for adopting the logic of a state that functions within its recognized territory and prioritizes its own interests, instead of adhering to the nation-martyr or nation-army paradigms.
“Armenia must function solely for its own economic development. A security system must be created in which the army is not on the front line, and there are security buffers in place beforehand,” Pashinyan concluded.
