Armenia: Geopolitical Correctness Redux
Armenia is a nation whose history spans three millennia. The Armenian people inhabited a vast region south of the Caucasus and north of the Fertile Crescent, and they even gained access to the sea, after resettling Cilicia on behalf of the Byzantine Empire. Centuries of persecution and ethnic cleansing have driven them back to the mountains of the Caucasus or deep into Western societies, in a prolific international diaspora.
After three thousand proud years however, Armenians are now confronted with the real risk of being driven into a Bantustan and eventually, into exile. The loss of Karabakh symbolizes more than a simple border dispute, it marks the end of regional Armenia and the beginning of an isolated ethnic state.
The current situation has come about as a consequence of Yerevan’s flirtatious romance with Atlanticism. After decades of Western NGO sponsoring in Armenia, part of the local elites have seemingly been persuaded that Armenia’s alliance with Russia is counter-productive. Consequently, the move away from Moscow has caused Turkey and Azerbaijan to have freedom of action against the Armenian enclave of Karabakh. Conversely, the loss of Karabakh along with the exodus of its Armenian inhabitants, while traumatic, has not caused a major backlash against Armenia’s pro-Western Pashinyan government.
In part, this is due to geopolitical correctness imbued by Armenia’s new ‘progressive’ partners in the West: since Karabakh was an illegal separatist region under International Law, its loss – while unfortunate – is ultimately well deserved. This ‘karma’ derives from the same progressive lens that famously informed Condoleezza Rice’s comments on Serbia’s ‘obsession’ with Kosovo: “1389! It’s time to move forward.” To the school of thought that advocates for ‘nation-building’ in Afghanistan or ‘liberal democracy’ in Iraq, historical ties to territory must seem rather quaint and passé.
Yet, the revolutionary strain in Atlanticism is anything but new. Already during the Cold War, many of America’s allies were baffled by DC’s recurrent willingness to undermine its own allies when geopolitical correctness – properly influenced by soviet and Third-Worldist philosophies – was at stake. Western Europe’s colonial powers were often left out to dry when their legitimate territorial claims overseas were attacked by communist forces sponsored by totalitarian Moscow. Who doesn’t remember America’s subversive influence in French colonial Indochina, immortalized in The Quiet American? One of the main culprits of this ‘moral diplomacy’ was the Kennedy Administration and, indeed, it should come as no surprise that the old world’s historical nations are now to be sacrificed once again. After all, today’s neocons started out in the Democratic Party as young JFK supporters. North-American exceptionalism ‘modernised’ Western Europe during the 20th century and in the 21st century, it is the turn of Eastern Europe. It is immoral for the Dutch to retain the Dutch East Indies but not quite so for the Javanese oligarchy to occupy the West Papuans or oppress the East-Timorese. British rule in Africa is shameful but local post-independence discrimination of whites and minorities is part of the course. Portuguese rule in Africa is illegal but the ethnic cleansing of a million whites is A-OK.
The trend began dramatically with the Suez Crisis of 1956 where both superpowers united against London and Paris. Washington DC and Moscow, oh so fraternal revolutionary capitals, brought their might to bear on the reactionary Europeans and ushered the era of definitive old-world decline. Curtis Yarvin once referenced to me a long-lost Carnegie Endowment opinion piece arguing for the same type of puritan-Bolshevik alliance in assembling a military intervention against apartheid South Africa. Alas, the USSR would eventually collapse itself and the isolated African regime would succumb to external political pressure thereby invalidating the urgency of the supposed intervention, yet the ethos did not die there. The ‘rainbow nation’s’ whites were convinced to introduce affirmative action and apart from rampant corruption and violent crime, they are today targeted racially by the new geopolitically correct regime – Zimbabwe informs on what awaits them.
Perhaps the one place where self-hatred and suicidal policies never really took hold was Israel. Not only because the nation’s survival was literally at stake daily but also because the wave of conservative eastern European Jews post-89, helped to keep the Right in power. Yet here too pressure was exerted to get Tel Aviv to compromise with the defeated enemy. Several peace treaties and power sharing solutions were offered to the Palestinians and Gaza was actually evacuated of all of its Jewish settlements. For all the political capital spent by both Israelis and Westerners though, no Arab concession was ever had in return. After 10/7, Israel seems to actually be in the process of reverting its past concessions.
During the Cold war, the United States was complicit with the erosion of European colonial power and inherited a Third-World either aligned with the USSR or anti-Western in the Non-Aligned Movement. In Eastern Europe one can observe the same trend of autistic moralism actually proving to be counter-productive in the long term. In Ukraine, two goals became incompatible: on one hand Russia felt the need to salvage the deterrent value of it’s A-235 missile defence system deployed around Moscow, and on the other, US led NATO refused to forego its ‘Open Door Policy’. If Ukraine decided to join NATO, Russia’s missile defences around its heartland would be rendered considerably deficient overnight. In contrast, if NATO abdicated from its Open Door Policy, it could no longer pretend to hold moral/normative authority, as it would no longer be an alliance for ‘good’ but merely an alliance. Practically a failed state, Ukraine was convinced to throw in its lot with the ‘good guys’ and not only did it sacrifice an entire generation of men, it is now risking its very existence in a war against a bigger, more numerous, wealthier and more technologically advanced foe.
Armenian leaders have been persuaded that retreat is the way forward and that the current and future world order will henceforth be moral and just – if only they concede this one last moral sacrifice. It is possible that their north-American and Brussels intermediaries actually believe what they’re selling to the Yerevan establishment. Saakashvilli too pinned his hopes on being on the ‘right side of History’ in his foolish attempt to reassert Georgia’s formal borders, back in 2008. Nevertheless, History is not at an end and no moral doctrine survives the test of amoral facts on the ground: Russia remains the regional arbiter while Baku and Ankara will never have Hayastan’s best interests at heart. To have assumed different was both the fault of the obtuse exceptionalists in the West as well as that of the gullible Armenians in the Caucasus, uninterested in empirically learning from recent – and, indeed, adjacent – History.
Just as the tragedy of the West is self-inflicted, Armenia will not have anyone else to blame but itself, either.
The Westphalian Post 