MANOEUVRE OF DESPAIR

Armenian media continue to make restrained comments on the results of Serzh Sargsyan's visit to Washington. It was believed that the working visit of the Armenian president to the US capital should have become by definition a turning point in the development of Armenian-American relations, especially as during the visit, the governments of Armenia and the United States signed an agreement on "Trade and Investment", on which they had negotiated for many years. Yerevan stresses that the purpose of the document is to promote trade and investment between the two countries. The document was signed by Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandyan on behalf of the government of Armenia and Assistant US Trade Representative Dan Mullaney on behalf of the US.

Meanwhile, experts - both in the region and beyond - are sure that no turn or breakthrough should be expected in relations between Armenia and the United States. First of all, the agreement that has been signed is unlikely to promise Yerevan a golden rain of American investments. Armenian political scientist Sergey Shakaryants said in an interview with Regnum that the United States actually does not care how Armenia is developing and Washington has never been interested at the state level in providing investment flows to Armenia. "Moreover, we have never seen even a desire to participate in the development of Armenia's economy since 1991. Therefore, I cannot assess the framework agreement that has been signed as a real document, the results of which will be visible in the near future," the analyst said, while drawing attention to the fact that USAID recently announced the closure of assistance programmes to Armenia. Such agreements were a landmark event for the newly independent states that appeared on the world map after the collapse of the Soviet Union only in the first half of the 1990s. Then we waited for already tangible results, investments and contracts. And today the signing of such a document is not a political success, but a sign of failure.

Though Serzh Sargsyan's trip was called an official visit to the US, in reality, it did not even reach the level of a full-fledged working visit. The list of meetings and negotiations turned out to be too modest. He did not meet with the US president, the secretary of state or any of his deputies. The head of Armenia had complete negotiations only with the US representative in the OSCE Minsk Group, James Warlick. However, Sargsyan and the US vice-president participated in an interreligious prayer service dedicated to the "Armenian genocide" at the National Cathedral in Washington and delivered a speech there, but it was an event arranged by the Armenian community in the US, where the president of Armenia was invited, rather than a protocol step by Washington in honour of Sargsyan. Things reached such a point that the Armenian Church at the prayer service was represented not by the Echmiadzins Catholicos Garegin II, but by the head of the Catholicosate of Cilicia Aram I. Of course, the majority of Armenian parishes in the United States belong to the Cilician rather than Echmiadzin Catholicosate and Aram I is also very active in the ecumenical movement, but it is not difficult to guess that the "protocol prick" was very painful for Serzh Sargsyan.

Perhaps, the main event of Sargsyan's visit to the United States was his negotiations on Capitol Hill. According to the press service of the Armenian president, on 5 May, he met with the head of the Republican majority at the US Senate, Mitch McConnell, and the head of the Democratic Senate Minority Harry Reid. The meeting was also attended by a number of other members of the Senate - Republicans and Democrats. The press service also issued photographs of the meeting which, however, show another Democratic Senator John Frances Reed instead of the head of the Democratic Senate Minority Harry Reid. The conclusion of Armenian media was clear: it is a ridiculous attempt to "raise" the already low level of Sargsyan's meetings in the United States. Indeed, in fact, you cannot present as a source of pride the fact that the president of Armenia visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, where there is an exhibition devoted to "Armenian massacres", got acquainted with Armenian artifacts in the library of the US Congress, met with the editorial board of The Washington Post and urged the US to be guided by principles rather than interests in its policy, thus recognizing that the strengthening of relations with Armenia does not correspond to the interests of the United States. In Washington, meetings were also held with leaders of Armenian organizations and representatives of the Armenian community in the US. At the same time, the programme of the visit did not include a visit to the west coast of the United States and California, where the positions of the Armenian diaspora are the strongest. Thus, a full-fledged dialogue did not work even with the diaspora. And for Armenia this meant even more than a resounding failure.

In Armenia, apparently, even after entry into the Eurasian Union, they still hope to return to the policy the country conducted until the autumn of 2013: "Balancing" between Moscow and the West in anticipation of economic aid from both sides, and as an advance. And today, after joining the EAEU, Armenia continues to hint that it may review its foreign policy: the country remains a member of the Eastern Partnership, continues - at least formally - to remain in the NATO programme Partnership for Peace, etc. However, Armenia is no longer able to achieve real dividends in the West in this way. But it seems that all these gestures are addressed not so much to the West as to Moscow, whom they want to prompt to provide greater economic support to Armenia than today.

It is necessary to clarify something here. Economists have estimated that owing to discounts on oil and gas supplies, as well as the proceeds from uncut diamonds, Armenia receives approximately 1bn dollars per year from Russia. However, Yerevan clearly hopes for more, including, above all, the restoration of "industrial giants" left over from Soviet times. But Moscow is in no hurry to make investments. And the financial gifts that have already been made are not enough for the resuscitation of the Armenian economy.

Against this background, the visit to the US seemed quite a good move to Armenian politicians. In fact, Sargsyan left for Washington on 5-7 May in order to fly from there to Moscow to take part in a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council and then in the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the victory over Germany. Serzh Sargsyan could not but appear in Moscow, and not out of respect for the memory of the "fateful 1940s" - in this case, Yerevan would not have arranged an impressive cult around the deputy commander of the Armenian SS legion, Garegin Nzhde. Another thing is that Yerevan understands that the country is too dependent on Moscow to afford such demarches. But going to the United States before the trip to Moscow looked quite "safe". The programme of the visit, however, was very modest, but Yerevan has no room for manoeuvre left. Social problems in the country have reached a peak, and the authorities should act immediately. The visit to Washington was a kind of political "manoeuvre of despair".

But now, amid the very modest programme of the visit and its even more featureless results, Sargsyan's trip to the United States, which failed to boost Armenia's relations with this country, is unlikely to be used in political bargaining with Russia.