We Are Prisoners of These Primal Instincts and Basic Emotions: Mikael Minasian

How is it possible to sign a peace treaty in Syria when the country is still led by Assad, and it has been publicly stated from the very beginning of the conflict that negotiating with Assad is unacceptable? This was expressed by Mikael Minasian, former Armenian ambassador to the Vatican and son-in-law of Armenia’s third president, Serzh Sargsyan, in an article written for The Huffington Post. We learn about this from his Telegram channel.

“How can one talk about signing a peace treaty to end the Ukrainian crisis when voters have already formed the opinion that Russia has ‘already lost’, and that concessions made to Putin would be ‘disastrous for the West’? On the other hand, in another country, different voters, different media noise. The overwhelming majority of Russians have long been deeply convinced that Ukraine’s existence ‘poses a threat to the very existence of the Russian Federation...’”

Thus, emotional truths leave no room for the prudence of Realpolitik. We live in a chaotic era where emotional trends—opinions (meta-truths)—descend ‘from above’ and, due to general ignorance, poor education (and consequently, the absence of critical thinking), concentrate and thrive ‘below’, growing in even more radical forms, flavored by mass manipulations of fear, anger, guilt, and shame.

And thus, a consensus has been reached. We are prisoners of these primal instincts and basic emotions and can no longer let them return to real life and achieve peace. It remains to either continue the war or to stop and ‘forget’, in a somewhat peculiar, comfortable, and silent ‘stand-by’ state.

What is your opinion on the Tehran Conference of 1943, which laid the foundation for stable peace in the post-war period? Would it have been as effective if Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin had focused on counting Twitter posts, likes, monitoring journalists' social media profiles, or Google trends instead of centering on Realpolitik? Wait a second, let me check and I’ll understand...