\u00a0Paul Goble<\/p>\n
Vienna, July 30 \u2013 Yerevan\u2019s announcement that it will take part in military exercises this fall under NATO\u2019s Partnership for Peace program underscores an important and to Moscow disturbing trend: Public statements to the contrary, all former Soviet republics now prefer to cooperate with the Western alliance rather than with the Russian Federation.
\nIn some cases, Sobkorr.ru\u2019s Yuri Gladysh says, they have made this choice with enthusiasm believing that it is better to have a big friend far away than a big friend next door, but in others \u2013 and that seems to be the case with Armenia \u2013 they have chosen NATO over Russia as \u201cthe lesser of two evils\u201d (www.sobkorr.ru\/news\/488ED1F94EA6D.html).
\nOn Monday, Armenia\u2019s defense ministry announced that NATO\u2019s September 20-21 Partnership for Peace exercises will take place on Armenian territory and that Armenian troops will participate in them, a stinging defeat for Moscow that has long viewed Armenia as its closest ally in what many Russians call \u201cthe near abroad.\u201d
\nBut Russian officials should not have been surprised. On the one hand, the Sobkorr.ru site reports, more than half of all Armenians now have a positive view of the Western alliance \u2013 some 52 percent in a recent poll \u2013 with only 35 percent having a negative and thus pleasing-to-Moscow attitude.
\nAnd on the other, in recent months, Yerevan has been involved in exploratory conversations with Turkey despite the centrality of the events of 1915 in the life of the Armenian nation. Indeed, Gladysh says, were it not for that historical memory, \u201cArmenian would already long ago been among those countries oriented toward close cooperation with [NATO].
\nGiven Armenia\u2019s decision, the Sobkorr.ru analyst says, it is time to \u201chonestly answer a simple question \u2013 which of the former union republics and now members of the ephemeral Commonwealth [of Independent States] is sincerely striking toward a new union \u2018under the canopy of fraternal bayonets\u2019 of a powerful Russia?\u201d
\nMost observers, Gladysh continues, include Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Armenia as the most likely candidates for such a \u201cnew Union.\u201d But an honest answer, he suggests, shows that \u201cnot one of the countries enumerated above is interested in any union on a political basis, especially, alas, under the aegis of Russia.\u201d
\nKazakhstan and Kyrgystan, he says, simply don\u2019t need it and are increasingly directing their attention to their neighbors in Southeast Asia. Belarus is better off as an independent state so that it \u201cpreserves the possibility of successfully converting into real capital its favorable geographic position.\u201d For those three, \u201cRussia is not a subject of interest.\u201d
\nIndeed, Gladysh suggests, Russia has \u201cnot been able to present to its neighbors\u201d any attractive vision for their future relationship, and so they like all the other \u201cnewly independent states\u201d are looking to the defense alliance that most Moscow officials still view as ineluctably hostile to Russia.
\nArmenia, he continues, \u201coccupies in this list a special place. Despite longstanding ties with Russia and a sense that Moscow is its protector against Turkey and Azerbaijan, \u201cthis small Caucasus republic is \u2018the weak link\u2019 in the modest ranks of [the Russian Federation\u2019s] allies.\u201d Yerevan\u2019s decision shows that its \u201cpatience is ending\u201d with Moscow\u2019s \u201cloud but empty declarations\u201d and that Armenia cannot expect anything from Russia. Moreover, while Armenia does not have a land border with Russia, it does have borders in the south with \u201can active member of NATO.\u201d
\nConsequently, Gladysh concludes, \u201cArmenia willy nilly is choosing the lesser of two evils.\u201d And in this case, he says, \u201c\u2018the lesser evil\u2019 turns out to be close [and] constructive cooperation with the West\u201d and with the West\u2019s most important alliance \u2013 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
\n\u201cWhat an infuriating irony of Fate!\u201d Gladysh says. A great deal had to be done or left undone for \u201cArmenia to begin to turn away from its historical ally and direct its vision to its long-time opponent.\u201d But that is what Russia has succeeded in doing, a tragedy from her point of view but quite possibly a breakthrough to a better future for Yerevan.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0Paul Goble Vienna, July 30 \u2013 Yerevan\u2019s announcement that it will take part in military exercises this fall under NATO\u2019s Partnership for Peace program underscores an important and to Moscow disturbing trend: Public statements to the contrary, all former Soviet republics now prefer to cooperate with the Western alliance rather than with the Russian Federation. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":774848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenia","category-armenian-question"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}