Any leader of Armenia without minimum politico-military skills could not succeed; PM Nikol Pashinyan did not have and still does not have these skills Former Minister of Foreign Affairs Vartan Oskanian wrote about this on Facebook. He noted as follows, in particular:
After the 44-day war [in 2020], when Nikol Pashinyan internally felt and realized his guilt and accountability for the [Armenian] casualties and losses, the human instinct to evade accountability, self-cleansing, and peace of conscience immediately appeared in him. The more time passed and the Armenian people began to realize the extent, depth and consequences of the losses, the more Pashinyan's vindication and self-cleansing efforts improved and received new manifestations.
Human instincts and feelings, however, have no place in state and international relations. There is a Constitution, there are laws, and there are written and unwritten norms in international relations.
What happened in and around Armenia after April 2018 is the failure of the country's first person—its commander-in-chief and the sole person responsible for foreign policy—, regardless of everything. Today, Pashinyan simply has no place to talk, to justify himself, and even more so, to blame his predecessors.
If today he had reached the signing of the peace treaty [with Azerbaijan], had opened the border with Turkey and Azerbaijan, had kept Artsakh [(Nagorno-Karabakh)] without war and casualties, with the NKAO [(Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast )] borders and the corridor, only then would he have the right to blame his predecessors for not being able to do all that for thirty years.
Pashinyan's dilemma—which aggravates and deepens his accountability and guilt even more—is that he received such a legacy from the previous three presidents that he could have done what I described above starting from 2018, also taking into account his broad public support after the change of power in 2018. He, however, pulverized all that.
Indeed, if Pashinyan had minimal diplomatic skills, first we would have avoided war, and today we would have had Artsakh with the full territory of the NKAO, the 20km Lachin corridor, recognized by Azerbaijan, Turkey and the international community, with an intermediate status guaranteed by the UN Security Council, with open borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey. All this is described clearly in the Madrid document.
Any leader of Armenia without minimum politico-military skills could not succeed; Pashinyan did not have and still does not have these skills.
Today there is a pacific and diplomatic alternative to what is being done. The international community is interested in the solution of the issue, not the content of the solution. Today, they, especially the West, support Pashinyan with great energy because they saw in him a person who provided the easiest and shortest way to solve their problem. At the moment when Armenia will be able to give a skillful and logical new wording to its approaches to the solution of the issue, there will definitely be a change in their positions.
In short, since 2018, the leadership of a country like Armenia was not to Pashinyan's fit. Moreover, it is not to his fit today. The most direct and shortest way to purification and peace of conscience is his voluntary resignation and handing over the leadership of the country to a person who is competent in politico-military and diplomatic matters.
