We are not doing the right thing when we mean only the army, only weapons when speaking about security. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated this in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, to the question on when he speaks about diversifying Armenia’s relationships, what he means by that, and what can other countries and partners do.

“Unfortunately, in many cases we see that there are countries that do not have a problem with weapons, but have a security problem. And there are countries that have a problem of weapons, but no security problem. Of course, it depends on many circumstances, environment, etc.

Now, our understanding of security is, first of all, based on that we should try to make our environment as manageable and predictable in terms of security as possible. And we have to be predictable for the environment. That is, the threats are generally reciprocal, and sometimes it is very difficult to find the starting point, because it is always a chicken and egg problem. And sometimes it doesn't even make sense to find the starting point, because nothing changes from it.

And when we say arranging of our security relations, we do not mean that we should go and bring weapons from other places and shoot at our neighboring states. In that same security domain, we also need to build relationships with our neighbors to be able to build the right security relationships,” Pashinyan said, adding that delimitation of borders, mutual recognition of territorial integrity, and rules for opening communications are all very important components of security policy.

“And, especially now, I think today's world shows that the approach that you can have a lot of weapons, you can have a very strong army and produce weapons, import them and shoot them is at least outdated. It will never produce good results in the long term and it doesn't always produce good results in the short term. And when we say diversification, we also mean balanced and balancing policies in the context of foreign policy. This also includes our neighborhood, our environment, our region.

You know, the approach that we have to find allies somewhere, bring weapons and shoot at our neighbors, that is not our approach. Of course, we have fears that our neighbors will shoot at us. Those fears also need to be managed. But on the other hand, I think that any modern country should and has the right to have a modern army, it has the right to develop its armed forces, it has the right to meet its security needs with this component as well,” Pashinyan stressed.

“When we say peace, we mean that the borders of all the countries of the region are open to each other on the same principles, we mean that these countries are connected by economic ties; they are connected by political dialogue and conversation, they are connected by cultural ties. Look, there's no mention of weapons here; but this is an important security component,” the Armenian premier said.