The Price of Incompetent Diplomacy is the Deaths of Our Youth at the Border: Babajanyan

MP Arman Babajanyan wrote on his Facebook page: "During his last Facebook live, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan addressed the accusations made by his opponents regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, including the propaganda manipulations about 'surrendering Nagorno-Karabakh.'

Overall, Nikol Pashinyan's statements were well-founded, argumented, and justified. However, on the other hand, Pashinyan's approaches to resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict contained significant conceptual gaps. In essence, Pashinyan presented the army and the programs and expenditures carried out in the armed forces as the advantageous solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue and a guarantee of security. In this regard, Pashinyan was correct; noticeable progress has been made in the armed forces over the past year and a half.

However, throughout his live session, Pashinyan did not reference foreign policy in any way, nor did he mention diplomacy as a guarantee for a favorable resolution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the assurance of security. In modern world, the security of states is ensured not only, and sometimes not primarily, by armed forces, but by flexible, adequate, and proactive diplomacy. States with such diplomacy consider and speak of their military last, as a last resort.

Meanwhile, even today, post-revolution, we continue the detrimental political trend of defining our security and strength on the Nagorno-Karabakh issue solely through the military. It is this political approach that has resulted in our armed forces lacking adequate support from diplomacy; it is also the reason why the valor shown by them at the border is not formally acknowledged or documented diplomatically.

In such diplomacy, the army would be one of many means for ensuring security, rather than the singular method. The task of diplomacy should be to conduct foreign policy that connects the security of Armenia and Artsakh to the international security system, where any encroachment would also pose a threat to international security. Yes, this is not an easy problem to solve; it requires enormous intellectual and professional effort, which, unfortunately, is not demonstrated by either our foreign affairs office or diplomatic corps.

Also indicative of this was Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan's recent disgraceful interview, about which Nikol Pashinyan remained modestly silent. The absence of adequate diplomacy and foreign policy is one of the weakest aspects of the new Armenia. The price of incompetence in diplomacy is also the deaths of our youth recorded at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.

The result of flawed diplomacy is the unacceptable policy of relying solely on the military, a strategy that was employed yesterday, continues to be used today, and seemingly will be employed tomorrow judging by the approaches of the current government.

We urgently need to radically revise and transform our foreign policy. Among other necessary steps, we must bring our foreign policy out of the molds it has been in for nearly thirty years, which include the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and Armenian-Turkish relations. These two issues have essentially defined our foreign policy, and our diplomacy broadly serves these two directions.

However important they may be, they should merely constitute separate directions of diplomacy, without fully monopolizing the efforts and resources expended on foreign policy. For this, it is first necessary for the country's political leadership, led by Nikol Pashinyan, to reconsider the tasks set before foreign policy and the mission of our diplomacy as a whole. Otherwise, our foreign policy interests will continue to be predominantly served at the border, with the accompanying risks of human and political losses.