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Guests
Hosts
Introduction
Hello,
and welcome to the Armenian News Network, Groong,
Week in Review. I’m Asbed Bedrossian, and this week Asbed Kotchikian
and I will talk about topics that have been on our minds recently from around
Armenia, the South Caucasus and the rest of the world.
● Pashinyan & Co. Shun Artsakh Independence
● Turkey-Armenia Reconciliation Reconstituted?
● Afghanistan: Taliban 2.0?
● State of World Affairs
● State of Political Analysis
Asbed Kotchikian, is an Associate Professor of political science
and international relations at the American University of Armenia.
This episode was recorded on September 3rd, 2021.
Topics This Week
Pashinyan Shuns
Artsakh Independence
On September 2nd, Artsakh
celebrated its 30th year as an independent entity. Artsakh is still not
recognized by a single state, not even Armenia. This year for the first time,
neither Prime Minister Pashinyan, nor anyone from his government were present
at the annual celebrations.
Is this platform
policy, or prudent politics?
Turkey-Armenia:
Reconciliation Reconstituted?
There’ve been a lot of signals between Turkey and Armenia about restarting discussions about normalizing relations. Erdogan has said so, Pashinyan has said so, and Russia has said so. We can see everyone dancing around the politics of reconciliation again, so where is this headed?
Is Armenia ready to handle a discussion of this caliber?
Regional cooperation may or may not include Georgia.
Afghanistan: Taliban 2.0?
The Taliban are almost in complete control of the country (except in Panjshir) where a resistance led by Ahmad Massoud (the son of the former Mujahed leader Ahmad Shah Massoud) and Amrullah Saleh (self proclaimed acting president of Afghanistan) are consolidating their hold on government and country. The question is would the US support this resistance?
● What has the US learned from the 20-year war?
● What has the Taliban learned from it?
State of world
Affairs
The US withdrew from Afghanistan and its impact on US/Europe relations. Upcoming elections in Germany will be unpredictable, and France is trying to take the lead in Europe. All of these while there is a resurgence of Covid which might have economic but also social and political implications.
State of political
analyses
The depth and scope of political analyses
these days (be it in Armenia, the region or internationally) has been
problematic. One of the main challenges is that while everyone claims that the
world has become smaller and interactions are more intense, when analyzing particular issues, it seems that the so-called analyses are
viewed in a vacuum rather than making connections across issues. This doesn’t
mean that one has to find connections among events
when there are none, but the opposite is also true.
Wrap-up
That
was our Week in Review show, and we hope it helped you catch up with some of the issues in and
around Armenia from this past week. As always, we invite your feedback and your
suggestions. You can find us on most social media and podcast platforms, or our
website Groong.org.
On
behalf of everyone in this episode, we wish you a good week. Don’t forget to
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us on social media. Thanks for listening and we’ll talk to you next week.
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Keywords
Asbed Kotchikian, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, South Caucasus,
Turkey, Russia, Communication channels, Peace Negotiations, 5-year plan,
Superpowers, regional powers, military industrial complex, TARC,
Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation, Afghanistan, Taliban, Terrorism, ISIS, ISIL,
Al Qaeda,