Most recently, Armenian President Armen Sargsyan gave an interview in which he admitted that Armenia was not ahead but behind Azerbaijan in terms of its preparedness for 21st-century war and the availability of modern weaponry:

"We feign that we have a very strong army. But the worst thing is when we start to believe what we pretend to believe. Convincing ourselves of this is very dangerous. – This is Sarkisian's conclusion and it is very much in line with reality.  It was one of the reasons for Armenia's defeat in the 44-day war.

In fact, even from this interview, if we ignore the inevitable nationalist speculations for an Armenian politician, we can see that Armen Sarkisian is quite sober in his assessment of many things. And it is no coincidence that he ended up in 2018 as president of Armenia, even though he was formally deprived of serious powers after the constitutional reforms.

There had to be a sober person in the leadership of the country, a long-standing "project" of the West, who, in agreement with the main geopolitical players, should have traced the "paradigm shift" in which this very "Armenian project" exists. Namely, the transition from harsh confrontation and war with neighbours to new forms of co-existence, which of course does not exclude the Armenian lobby's own "game" and attempts to increase territory and influence at the expense of neighbours at every opportunity.

In principle, Armen Sarkisian, with his 'track record' and connections in the global elite, could have become president of Armenia much earlier and had much greater powers. Recall that on 8 November 1996, when Levon-Ter Petrosyan was president of Armenia, who was inclined towards the peaceful resolution of the Karabakh conflict with the de-occupation of Azerbaijani lands outside the NKAO, Armen Sarkisian, who had previously served as Armenian ambassador to the UK, was nominated prime minister.

However, he remained in this position only for a short period until 28 February 1997 and was then replaced by the future president of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan, who was "moved" by certain forces from the separatist "Artsakh", where he was head of the separatist occupation regime. As a consequence, Robert Kocharian is known to have 'nipped in the bud' all plans for a peaceful settlement in Karabakh and would not even hear of the de-occupation of Azerbaijani lands.

Most interestingly, when Armen Sarkisian became prime minister of Armenia, there was also "progress" in the resolution of the separatist conflicts on Georgian territory. The then foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov (in 1998-1999, 2 heads of the Russian government) promoted plans to restore the territorial integrity of Georgia on the principles of "wide autonomy" of the separatist regimes and to maintain a Russian presence on the separatist territory. In other words, if the trends that led Armen Sarkisian to become prime minister of Armenia in 1996 had been maintained, the separatist regimes in the South Caucasus could have been seriously 'limited', 'autonomised' and even 'incorporated' into Azerbaijan and Georgia to some extent, and communications could have been unblocked. It is precisely for this purpose that politicians such as Armen Sarkisian, who was intellectually "two heads above" the Party and Komsomol functionary and bloody executioner Kocharian, were most likely to have been "harassed".

Here, for example, is the record of Armen Sarkisian, originally a physics scientist:

Since 1985 he has been in the UK at Cambridge University. Remember, these were the years of the USSR and the "Iron Curtain", even for an ordinary Soviet person to study at one of the leading universities of the West is almost unthinkable, not to mention teaching there), and in 1988 he also headed the department of computer modelling of complex physical phenomena, which was founded in Cambridge. I.e. Armen Sargsyan was "in" the British elite even before the collapse of the USSR. And further his positions in the West only strengthened. Here is his track record:

1992-1993 Armenian Ambassador to the UK.

1993-1994 Senior Ambassador of Armenia and the European Union.

1995-1996 Armenian Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium, Head of the European Catholic Community of Armenia, Armenian Ambassador to the Vatican, Armenian Ambassador to Luxembourg. (i.e. links of Armen Sarkisian, himself an Armenian Catholic with the Vatican are obvious).

1996-1997 Prime Minister of Armenia.

1998-2000 special and authorised ambassador of Armenia to Great Britain (2nd time).

6 December 2012 - 8 April 2018 Armenian Ambassador to the UK (3rd time).

Let us compare this with the "career" of Robert Kocharian, who, before he became involved in separatism, had his "peak" position as a partisan of a silk factory. As they say, the two are incomparable.

However, certain forces preferred Kocharyan to Sarkisyan at a certain stage.

Let us try to analyse why.

Armenia was both then and now 'embedded' in global processes. Therefore Armen Sarkisian's dismissal from the premiership and the subsequent rise to power of Kocharian and the Karabakh clan (including through a bloody terrorist attack on the Armenian parliament) were not at all accidental.

Let us also recall that certain forces began to change their "global agenda" in 1997-1999. Namely, a peculiar "demonization" of Muslims and inclusion of the Russian Federation in the "global anti-Islamic hysteria" began. This was somewhat at odds with the former policy of the main geopolitical players.

It should be recalled that during the confrontation with the USSR, the West supported the Muslims who opposed it, especially in Afghanistan. And during the war in the former Yugoslavia, the West was more than loyal to the Muslims, and sometimes even defended them. For example, the genocide of Muslims in Srebrenica in Bosnia was condemned as a crime against humanity. In Kosovo, too, Western sympathies were known to be on the side of Albanian Muslims.

Within the framework of such trends in the de-occupation of Azerbaijani territories, the return of over 1 million Muslim refugees, Azerbaijanis of Karabakh, seemed entirely logical. As did the return to their places of origin of Georgian refugees in Abkhazia - albeit not Muslims - as part of the overall campaign to restore justice and eliminate separatist "hotbeds of tension".

In 1999, however, things changed abruptly (and everything had apparently been prepared in advance). And it all started with Russia's "union" with Armenia. It should be recalled that Vladimir Putin's wild rise in popularity was associated with a real "anti-Slamicist" hysteria, when it is still not clear who blew up houses with ordinary people in them.

And then it started. The explosions were blamed on "Chechen terrorists" who, of course, turned out to be linked to "international Islamists", the second Chechen war began, Georgia was accused of helping Chechens, anti-Georgian hysteria was immediately spread in Russia and separatists started to be "cajoled" in Sukhumi, etc.

The anti-Islamic hysteria so "tested" in Russia will become global in just two years. There will be the 9/11 attacks, then the Western coalition's invasion of Afghanistan, why Iraq, the global crackdown on policing under the pretext of fighting all that "terrorism", etc.

Analysts have differing views on the reasons for these trends. According to one version, the so-called neo-conservatives (or "neocons" convinced that their country, as the world's leading power, bears special responsibility and must oppose certain "threats") came to power in the U.S. And the notorious "Islamic terrorism" was assigned the role of such "threat"; in fact, a number of Muslim countries and peoples who, for one reason or another, "did not quite fit in" with the Western order.  In this way, the role of the U.S. as the "world's policeman" was consolidated and other Western countries, either willingly (France) or involuntarily (Britain), temporarily agreed to this.

One way or another, when Muslims were artificially linked to "terrorism and threats" in the global information agenda, no one insisted on restoring historical justice to the more than one million Muslims expelled from their homes. It was the underhanded executioners - Kocharian, then Sarkisian - who turned out to be in demand.

And for Russia, which, in fact, was "singing along" with the neocons in the anti-Islamic hysteria, a "duty enemy" was also invented and allowed to be "defeated". It was orthodox Georgia that Russia "brilliantly defeated" in August 2008, provoking just a wild surge of ura-patriotism. And at the same time "imperialism" by supporting separatist pseudo "states".

But now the situation has changed. Firstly, the attitudes of major global players to both Muslim countries and separatism are undergoing a change. The demonisation of Muslims has stopped, and separatism is treated as an unambiguous evil. At the same time, overland trans-continental routes have become in demand - for which there is a "demand" for the elimination of conflict zones and the restoration of justice there.

It is for these tasks, most likely, that Armen Sarkisian, associated on the one hand with Britain and on the other with the Pope, was introduced into the leadership of the Republic of Armenia. Of course, not to change the very essence of the ultra-nationalist "Armenian project", but to fit it into the "new realities".

What matters for Georgia is to what extent these new realities will be compatible with the continued existence of separatist projects. It is likely that such "compatibility" will tend towards zero.

Kavkazplus