Trump Administration's Decision Contains Dangerous Messages for Yerevan, Political Scientist

Political scientist Gagik Hambaryan writes: “The US 'Artsakh' slap to Pashinyan. The Washington Armenian National Committee reports that the Trump administration is cancelling the assistance provided to Artsakh. This pertains to the demining program funded by the US Agency for International Development. Just two weeks ago, the House of Representatives had approved funding for the program for 2020. Now, this will be cancelled within two months. After Armenia, the US is the second country that has directly provided financial aid to Stepanakert, and this fact has greatly irritated Baku...

Azerbaijani authorities have been working hard in recent years in Washington to cancel direct aid to Artsakh from the US...

Aram Hambaryan, director of the Washington Armenian National Committee, warns and urges our compatriots living in the US to 'flood' their congressmen with messages to annul this disgraceful decision...

No one can deny that this decision by the Trump administration is political and carries rather dangerous messages to official Yerevan. As for what our authorities are doing in this regard? I will answer: nothing... Since the Velvet Revolution, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has completely neglected foreign policy. I have repeatedly referred to the failed Russian, CSTO, and EAEU policies. As it seems, the European and American directions are also problematic. However, as far as I can guess, the Armenian authorities are more interested in internal political 'manipulations' — creating fake agendas and thus distracting public attention from the real internal, and especially external, political issues facing the country, of which the most pressing at the moment is this 'anti-Artsakh' decision by the US authorities...

It is noteworthy that the Trump administration made this decision after the visit of the President of the National Assembly of Armenia and his delegation, as well as the Deputy Prime Minister of Armenia to the US, the results of which were praised by government media. However, it appears that official Washington has evaluated the outcomes of Mirzoyan and Avinyan's visits quite negatively and has responded to Pashinyan through this 'Artsakh slap'...

I would like to remind that previously, French courts made several 'anti-Artsakh' decisions, to which official Yerevan hardly responded, as it was once again busy with internal political 'witch hunts'...

The Armenian authorities have fundamentally left all directions of Armenia's foreign policy in disarray. And the guerrilla and KGB-style work of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its head Zohrab Mnatsakanyan, which he has copied from the previous minister, is simply unacceptable...

I remind you that Ilham Aliyev's regime has long been working hard in Washington to cancel the direct aid provided to Artsakh by the US at all costs, but until now it has not succeeded. In my opinion, the only way out of this situation is the active involvement of our compatriots living in the US since the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its 'subdivisions' in the US are treating all this as mere observers...

P.S. Lobbyists from Turkey and Azerbaijan operating in Baku, Ankara, as well as in European capitals and Washington are skillfully exploiting Pashinyan's disinterest in foreign policy and the fact that most of his associates are dilettantes in this field...