«Since 2018, the Leadership of a Country Like Armenia Has Not Suited Pashinyan» – Oskenyan

Pashinyan's lack of diplomatic and military-political knowledge, the absence of a plan, and irrational decision-making have led us to today’s situation. Former Foreign Minister Vardan Oskenyan wrote on his Facebook page: “In my previous post, I mentioned that since 2018, the leadership of a country like Armenia has not suited Pashinyan. Even more so, it does not suit him today. I will repeat that no leader lacking the minimum diplomatic and military-political skills could succeed. Pashinyan did not have and still does not possess these skills.

I want to open and substantiate my claim in the previous post. First, Pashinyan truly lacks diplomatic and military-political knowledge and experience. His education did not pertain to these fields, he did not serve in the army, and, with the exception of a few parliamentary visits abroad during his entire opposition activity, he did not acquire significant experience in this area. However, Pashinyan's problem is that he is not a listener, and due to his limited knowledge, his engagement with real science was almost non-existent; he thought he knew everything. Naturally, when a person knows little but believes they know everything, they fail at everything.

Second, when Pashinyan came to power, he did not envision what needed to be done regarding the Artsakh issue. His position was vague and chaotic. Unfortunately, he did not want to consult with any of his predecessors. He found himself in a deceptive cycle of ‘if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get lost,’ thus never felt the need to ask himself whether he was going down the wrong path.

After a while, Pashinyan developed the idea—seemingly becoming the cornerstone of his Karabakh policy—that the solution to the issue should be acceptable to the peoples of Armenia, Artsakh, and Azerbaijan. This approach, coupled with the statement ‘Artsakh is Armenia, and that’s it,’ became the reason for the outbreak of war, giving Azerbaijan the opportunity to justify the impossibility of resolving the issue through negotiations. In the perception of Azerbaijanis, this was a combination of cynicism and unfounded idealism.

Third, Pashinyan was not and could not be a rational politician. Several conditions are necessary to be able to make rational decisions. Firstly, the individual must not be filled with hatred, fanaticism, biases, and similar complexes by nature and thought. Pashinyan's hatred towards his predecessors internally and towards Russia externally was enough for him to lose rationality. Moreover, a rational decision-maker should not have cognitive illusions. Yes, just as there are optical illusions, there are cognitive ones too. Throughout decades of his media and editorial activity, Pashinyan was guided not by a journalist's impartiality but by political and opposition considerations, systematically distorting and manipulating facts and events, thus subjecting his own readers to cognitive illusions.

Pashinyan could not remain immune from personally falling prey to such an illusion, especially when he had already included everything within the state narrative. Finally, a rational decision-maker must have the skill to differentiate between complementary yet fundamentally different concepts, confusion between which inevitably leads to extremely harmful consequences. Belief and evidence, probability and randomness, correlation and causation—these are just some of those concepts.

Pashinyan’s activities over the past five years, public statements, and especially the ‘results’ achieved show that he has been absolutely incapable of making these distinctions. In summary, his lack of diplomatic and military-political knowledge, the absence of a program, and irrationality in decision-making have brought us to today’s situation.