When traveling to Armenia the first thing anyone notices is the terrible timetable for flights. As the country has only three million inhabitants, and its economic importance is limited, the airport has to rely on leftover time slots. Our flight was via Athens and arrived at 4:30 in the morning. To prevent paying huge sums to make use of an unmarked taxi, we had to negotiate in a vaguely menacing atmosphere. After enacting the infamous walkout, we got a 50% discount but, as we would later discover, still paid four times as much as we should have. I was still a bit uneasy during the drive to the city center, clutching my bag and checking my pockets for passport, wallet and phone, as these things tend to disappear when sitting down in sweatpants. The weather outside was not as cold as I had feared, as the capital city of Yerevan is at the same latitude as southern Italy. Rain was pouring down though, only the significant number of luxury car dealerships along the route could be observed in the damp and dark.
Armenia’s friends and foes
My trusty co-author and I were there to promote our book Regionalizing Eurasia at a conference centered on the international relations of said supercontinent. Although Armenia features in our case studies on both the Eurasian Economic Union and the Eastern Partnership, I had never visited it, and was a bit apprehensive to do so. As Armenia is a member of the EAEU (the Russian answer to the EU) and the CSTO (the Russian answer to NATO) it seemed I was transcending the iron curtain. These memberships would make it seem Armenia is a strong Russian ally, but the last months have seen a rise of dissent in the Russian bloc. On the 23d of November Armenia’s president refused to sign a joint CSTO declaration, causing outbursts of anger on the part of the Russian and Belarusian presidents.
The reason for Armenia’s posturing is its military conflict with neighboring Azerbaijan, that has flared up since 2020. Armenia has been fighting a number of losing battles. And although Russia has intervened diplomatically and sent peacekeeping forces, there was no joint CSTO defense of Armenia. Understandably, the Armenian government is wondering why they are members in the first place.
Sad as it may be for the Armenians, Azerbaijan holds all of the best cards in the conflict. They have international law on their side, as the contested area is officially within Azerbaijani borders. Azerbaijan has strong allies in Turkey and Israel that are willing to share high-tech weaponry with their smaller ally. Of paramount importance are Azerbaijan’s supplies of natural gas that have made it the belle of the ball when it comes to international attention. After the invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, Azerbaijan has managed to ingratiate itself with the EU. Armenia has to rely on Russia and on intermittent support from their diaspora in the United States and elsewhere. The September visit of Nancy Pelosi, until recently speaker of the house of representatives, has done more for her approval rating in California than for drumming up US support for Armenia: they are on their own.
A quick glance at the map highlights the Armenian predicament. Its main ally -Russia- does not border Armenia. This means that any intervention in the conflict with Azerbaijan would have to come from the other side, an operation both militarily and politically unfeasible. In between lies Georgia, a nation facing its own territorial conflicts, with Russia in their case. Unlike its neighbor, Georgia has been on a pro-western trajectory for years and has already experienced a Russian military intervention in 2008. To Armenia’s east lies Azerbaijan, while to its west lies Turkey, a nation with which Armenia has no diplomatic ties whatsoever. Relations with Iran are friendly but highly unlikely to decrease Armenian isolation. There are no highways west or east, the only rail connection is to Georgia, and to risk stating the obvious: Armenia is completely landlocked. Since the Ukraine war the alliance with Russia has become less and less attractive, however, there seems to be little alternative.
Exploring Yerevan
We arrive at the hotel at the witching hour to find the staff napping in the lobby. They sadly had to be present to welcome international visitors (who all arrive at these impossible times). Our return flight was graciously delayed. The original plan was for a flight at 00:00 that would arrive in Amsterdam at 9:00. This would have meant an entirely sleepless night. Instead, the flight plan was amended to 5:20, arriving at 13:00, this meant a generous six hours of sleep. If the timing does not make sense that is because there is also a three hour time difference.
The city outside is sizable, housing about one million people, a third of the country’s population. Latin, Cyrillic and the beautiful Armenian alphabet are all used on signs and commercials. Since 1827, Yerevan had been part of the Russian empire. Many Armenians however, lived to the West, in what was then known as the Ottoman empire. During the first world war the Ottoman government inflicted terrible hardship on their Armenian citizens. When the Russian revolution started in 1917, Armenia managed to break away to form an independent state. At the time Yerevan had about 30,000 inhabitants. The Armenians managed to defeat the Turks in multiple battles and survivors of the genocide flocked to the new Armenian state. However, as the Russian turmoil was concluded with a communist victory, the USSR sought to regain the former Russian imperial territory: Armenia was incorporated in the USSR in 1922.
The Soviet past of Yerevan is visible everywhere, as communism left both dreary apartment blocks and imposing monuments. Particularly noticeable are the many beautiful statues. The larger monuments are tidy but crumbling, especially sad are the empty fountains. The Armenians are proud of their Christian heritage, raising a huge Christmas tree in the central square. Perhaps the holiday decorations were extra festive as Yerevan was hosting the Junior Eurovision song context; a party that your author was unable to enjoy as he was trying to make the most of the aforementioned six hours of sleep. Like many cities in the region, Yerevan is very safe. In the city center there is little sign of poverty and a lot of people speak English, it is possible to forget where you are and imagine yourself to be in Warsaw, Bucharest or Sofia.
Aside from the impressive Armenian genocide memorial there is not much to draw in the tourists, but one aspect bears mentioning. The food is very good and exotic to someone not well versed in Eastern European cuisine. A traveler can feast on filled vegetables, all sorts of delicious meats and many different kinds of dumplings. The country produces excellent wines and the famous Ararat brandy. This brandy is named after the mountain rumored to be visible from the city (it wasn’t for me, but weather conditions were highly unfavorable and I have poor eyesight). Within the country they call it cognac, but abroad this is not possible for legal reasons.
The conference begins
The conference itself took place in the local Holiday Inn and started off with a number of official speeches. The Chinese ambassador, who was funding the event, talked warmly of the world as a “human community with a shared future”. This global community was sadly destabilized by an unnamed great power, bullying other nations in its quest for global hegemony. The Western reader might expect this to be about Russia, but the ambassador was of course talking about the US, the country trying to block Chinese access to computer chips and forming alliances around the pacific region to contain Chinese expansion.
Then came a EAEU official, lauding the increase in trade between the EAEU bloc and China. She mentioned that trade increased by a third “despite sanctions on some members”. This official was pulling a switcheroo, as the key cause of increased trade are these very sanctions that have made especially Russia more and more dependent on the Chinese economy. A spokesperson for the Armenian government spoke about integrating Iran with the EAEU, in which case Armenia would become the crossroads between East and West, of course after the border block would have been resolved. This seems particularly far-fetched, if the borders are opened, there is still no infrastructure. And once there is infrastructure, what will there be to trade? Armenia has not been blessed when it comes to natural resources, and its balance of trade has always been abysmal. I later heard an anecdote about a European trying to export wine; as of yet the costs are prohibitive. The official part was rounded out by a representative of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, in theory an Asian alternative to NATO, but in practice mostly focused on cooperation in combating terrorism and organized crime, despite far loftier goals being stated now and then. Although the representative was Chinese she wore Armenian dress and spoke in Armenian, headsets were handed out to hear the English translation. I did not manage to get mine to work so I did not understand any part of the speech. Be that as it may, the academic part of the conference was ready to start.
The Bejing consensus
The keynote panel was highly diverse in terms of nationality, if not in terms of opinion. All agreed that polarization of the world is going on. During the cold war there was a bipolar world, with the US and USSR butting heads, followed by a unipolar world in the 1990s after the US remained the sole surviving superpower. Since the attack on the world trade center and the ensuing debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq it appears the superpower had to start sharing power with others, heralding a multipolar world. This shift is nothing to be afraid of, as the unipolar moment in fact had the highest number of military interventions. Small states can bandwagon with one of the great powers or pursue a neutral strategy. Neutrality seems to work, but not in the context of great wars, then all bets are off.
This polarization is mainly taking the shape of decoupling: a decrease in trade between the West and China. On this topic the keynote panel was also in agreement: decoupling was going on, it was bad and it was driven by stupid politics. Instead what we needed was a concert of Eurasia, modeled on peaceful 19th century Europe. The inexorable rise of China was lauded as an inescapable development that the US and others simply had to accept. Globalization had been a force for good, the only problem being US dysfunction. For years the cheerleaders of globalism could blame this problem on Trump, however, president Biden has only accelerated the adversarial stance towards the People’s Republic of China. Still, the panel blamed this attitude on “stupid” and “crazy” politics. There was some acknowledgment that globalization may not have been all positive for the West, however, the downside was described as mostly political, only becoming an issue because news is not coming from experts but through social media.
Although no one can deny that social media provides unprecedented opportunity for destabilizing public discourse, one of the main culprits is the Chinese state, doing whatever it can to foment unrest among their rivals. One fellow westerner I spoke disregarded Chinese atrocities in Xinjiang as comparable to American misdeeds elsewhere. The Chinese technological dystopia consisting of social credit, mass surveillance and zero covid was even lauded by multiple Europeans as a great model for public policy. Most of all the US was criticized for dangerously trying to delay the inevitable: China as the greatest power in the world. Yes, Fire of Europe has already reported that the US is playing a dangerous game, but the US know what they are doing, the Chinese ambition to dethrone the US as foremost superpower is not inevitable. For starters, Chinese figures are unreliable as they are tainted by censorship in China as well as serious influence on respected media abroad. Even if we believe official figures, China is already losing low-cost production to even cheaper locations, such as Vietnam, while its GDP per capita is nowhere near South Korea and other Asian nations that followed an export-led growth trajectory.
The counter-argument to this, is that if you would consider the coastal centers as a separate country, its GDP per capita would be comparable. Yes, if only you would. If only China was content being a mid-sized country. If only China did not seek to dominate Taiwan. If China did not have territorial conflicts with virtually all of its neighbors. If only China did not seek to prevent separatism by brutal crackdowns in Xinjiang. If China did not have 2 million active military personnel, if only…
A dissenting view
When it was our turn to speak, I walked to the stage and turned around to face my audience. As I was sitting in the front I had not noticed that most of the attendants had already left. Due to the lateness of the hour there was no time for Q and A, and we were advised to hurry up with our presentation (there is a video available online). Nonetheless we sought to set out our opposing view, that has two main elements:
- Decoupling has structural causes (not just stupid and crazy politics)
- Decoupling provides opportunities
I think we have captured the imagination of at least some of the audience, if not that will undoubtedly come when they read the book.
The second day of the conference brought some welcome nuance to the discussion. On this day the number of physical attendants was slightly lower but there were many scholars video calling from around the world. Most notably from Europe, the US, Japan and India. In other words: it was an opportunity for speakers from states trying to contain China to provide their point of view. The second day was positively haunted by the ghost of one man: Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Brzezinski was born in Poland in 1928, but migrated to America during the Second World War. He rose to prominence in US international relations, becoming national security advisor to president Carter. In this role he famously visited Afghanistan to express US support for the mujahideen. Later he continued to write books about international relations, including The Grand Chessboard (1997). In it he agrees with the classic statement by Halford Mackinder that whoever rules Eurasia will rule the world. Brzezinski took that view to the 1990s and saw the USA as the power that should be in the lead on Eurasian affairs. 25 Years later, the picture looks less rosy for the Americans, they are faced with a stark choice: to manage or contest their decline?
At the moment the Americans and friends are in full ‘contest’ mode. With the indo-pacific strategy, a term coined by former Japanese premier Abe, the US is increasing military ties with Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Japan is cultivating ties with Mongolia. And India, trying to walk a tightrope between the two sides, is more and more driven into the arms of the US by a belligerent China. Although there is no concert of Eurasia yet, the concept of balance of power is alive and well in the Eastern hemisphere. A discussion on NATO and its response to the Ukraine war led to veritable fireworks. Although the EU is not unpopular in Armenia, the NATO is mainly represented in the Armenian public eye by its key member Turkey. And the support of that state for Azerbaijan in the conflict, as well as the closed western border, are top of mind for the Armenians.
China’s apologists prefer to downplay its rivalry with America, warning the US not to fall into the Thucydides trap. This theory holds that fear of a rising power can lead to a military conflict between the incumbent and upstart in which both end up losing. China prefers a regionalization of international law, in which each region has its own version of the truth. For the Chinese, it is not legal principles, but history which confers the most legitimacy. In the context of the Ukraine war and the ensuing sanctions it has become a huge challenge for the Russian state to retain its freedom of movement and stay out of the Chinese orbit. Nonetheless, the two powers pursue wildly different strategies on the world stage. The Russians have continued to develop the concept of hybrid warfare after it was introduced by Lenin and Trotsky. The Chinese on the other hand have serious conventional capabilities, but no flexible special forces. To project their power abroad they prefer the use of diplomacy, sometimes bypassing national governments and engaging with local governments instead, as happened in Romania during the pandemic through Chinese ‘mask diplomacy’. Although the American approach to China is arguably heavy handed, the European approach has been weak and ineffective. The German approach of Wandel durch Handel or change through trade, has had no discernible political impact. In this sense Germany is emblematic of the status of the wider EU: an economic superpower, but a political nobody. A lot of different viewpoints and approaches, all providing a piece of the puzzle.
Back outside in the city of Yerevan, the impact of the heightened tension was not immediately noticeable. However, there were some clues that not everything was as it should be. When translating between euros and the local dram it becomes clear that Armenia is not cheap at all. On the street a lot of Russian could be heard and agencies had set up shop advertising legal support to Russian residents. Since the war started, about 200.000 Russians have crossed the border to dodge the draft. This has led to a wild appreciation of the Armenian currency and skyrocketing rents. Those who own apartments, restaurants and hotels are getting rich, the luxury car dealers are probably doing good business too. For average Armenians, the economic upheaval is adding more challenges on top of the existing conflict and international isolation. For Western Europeans living in Armenia, the opportunities to travel are few, a large part of the country is dangerous, connections to neighboring countries are either closed or undeveloped and all flights leave at inconvenient hours. I am glad to have visited this country but I do not know if I will return soon. In a hotel bar we met some Russians, natives of remote Chelyabinsk. One thing we could all agree on: everyone was hoping for Mir: peace.