An act of a responsible politician…

Levon Ter-Petrosyan has already issued 2 political surprises: first by announcing his candidacy, and secondly, announcing that after 3 years of being elected he will resign and withdraw from Armenian political life forever.  Levon has delivered 2.5 speeches projecting an image of a responsible, skilled, clever and mature politician – it’s precisely because of this that the statement regarding the 3 year period came out.  It is because Levon Ter-Petrosyan recognises the need to restore people’s confidence in him that he issued to some extent allusions to admitting mistakes and responsibility for some of his actions in the past.  In the meanwhile there is a lot of talk in the media about Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s possible relationship with Raffi Hovhanissian and Vazgen Manoukyan. 

So here is what I believe would be an action of responsibility and integrity by Levon Ter-Petrosyan:

To continue campaigning and gathering support around him, AND THEN surprise us all  yet again by announcing his support for Vazgen Manukyan!

Armenia and Artsakh should issue a precedent over any possible military action from Azerbaijan

An important thing to understand about conflicts and disputes such as Nagorno-Karabakh is that “terms and conditions” for any possible settlement do change as time goes by.  For instance, just five years after Arafat and Barak failed to come to a settlement in Camp David the American and Israeli rhetoric changed – as Condoleezza Rice said “Palestinians had their chance to take the peace deal and they didn’t. Now the terms have changed”.  As far as USA and Israel are concerned today, by failing to take the deal at the right time and due to the violent events that followed afterwards the Palestinians have lost their cance to ever going back to 1967 border.  This is just an example of how these “terms and conditions” are not fixed but ever-changing.  These changes occur due to multilayered processes of diplomacy, civil action, civil disobedience, lobbying, civil society evolution, shifts in interests of imperialist powers and so forth.  Another important aspect in these is a direct military action and acts of violence by any of the concerned parties. 

Sketches toward a search for a just and ethical solution to Nagorno-Karabakh deadlock

  (These are my own reflections on what I think would be a just and ethical resolution to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, even though some of my comrades might disagree.)

The debate on Nagorno-Karabakh has hitherto been informed by 2 conflicting principles: Self-Determination vs State-Integrity. Both principles are embodied in the UN charter; neither of the two principles is privileged; they obviously clash with each other and are often resolved by powers that be.  The Armenian side supports the former and the Azeris formulate their arguments taking as a priori the latter.  This dichotomy between Self-Determination and State-Integrity, between Armenianness and Azerinness has been around since day one of the times when the search began for a non-military solution.  In this quick article I argue that the principle of Self-Determination offers an ethical and just solution to this deadlock, but for reasons other than those of Armenian “national interests”.

The principle of State-Integrity is a totally wrong way to go about this conflict for a number of reasons.  First of all