Tuesday, May 15, 2018

A Color Revolution in a Teacup


In case you don’t know, Armenians are one of the most ancient nations on Earth. The country of Armenia started out as the Kingdom of Urartu around 9000 BC, and persists to this day, although most Armenians now make up a diaspora nation, like the Jews. Up until the 1990s Armenia was part of the USSR, and benefited greatly from this inclusion, but after the USSR dissolved it has languished. Virtually all of the industry that the Soviets built in Armenia shut down, and the specialists that worked in it filtered out to greener pastures elsewhere. Armenia deindustrialized and became largely agrarian, its economy focused on commodities such as apricots, wine and brandy, plus a bit of tourism.

Armenia’s difficulties have to do with certain problems caused by its location. Armenia is landlocked, with no access to major trade routes. It borders countries that range from useless to hostile: Georgia is more or less hostile and also economically useless; Turkey is useful but hostile; so is Azerbaijan (inhabited by Azeri Turks); Iran is useless (and the north of it is also inhabited by Azeri Turks). Throw in a region disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh) which is inhabited by Armenians but claimed by Azerbaijan, and requires the presence of Russian peacekeepers for the maintenance of the status quo, and you have a prescription for economic and political limbo.

Things were looking a bit sad in Armenia, but then it joined the Eurasian Economic Union, which is a free trade zone that includes Russia and other former Soviet republics. It provides a very large area for the free movement of capital, goods and labor, and there are plans for it to provide security guarantees. Thanks largely to its membership in the EAEU, last year the Armenian economy grew at a blistering 7.5% and people in Washington, DC and Langley, VA sat up and took notice. The American establishment views such Russia-centered success stories as most troubling. It was time to rope Armenia in.

Helpful to this effort was the fact that Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, hosts the second largest US embassy compound in the world, staffed to perfection with trained regime changers. Add to this the presence of Western NGOs, lavishly funded by George Soros et al., to assist in the effort. All of them pushed in the direction of, to put it bluntly, dismantling Armenia and turning it into just another denatured territory managed to perfection by international bureaucrats and bankers. In particular, they pushed through constitutional reform that changed it from a presidential republic to a parliamentary one (a dumb move for a country that is in a permanent state of near-war because of hostile neighbors and contested territories).

Add to this the fact that Armenia is a bit soft-headed. It is the bane of diaspora nations that the home country ends up pretty much fully stocked with imbeciles. Take a population of rats. (Mind you, I am not comparing Armenians to rats; I am comparing Armenia to a laboratory experiment.) Let all the rats smart enough to successfully run a maze—or, in the case of Armenia, learn a foreign language, get a passport and a visa, and find a job in a foreign country—escape, and a few generations later a lot of the rats that haven’t escaped are dumb as shit.

And so the Color Revolution Syndicate went to work. After a few days of street protests that paralyzed the capital the parliament was sufficiently intimidated to elect as Prime Minister one Nikol Pashinyan, a politician whose parliamentary faction polled at below 10%. The effort was aided by the fact that the former Prime Minister was rather feckless and didn’t seem to like his job anyway. The newly chosen Prime Minister was said to be a pro-Western reformer.

I previously thought that the Color Revolution Syndicate was pretty much dead. Indeed, all of the major nations have developed immunity to it. Its last victim was the Ukraine, which is still going through various stages of collapse. Russia is now clearly immune. Western champion Alexei Navalny, who had been indoctrinated in Color Revolution political technology at Yale and was once slated to overthrow Putin with the help of a large mob of idiotic adolescent followers, is now a pied piper used by the Kremlin to rid cities of adolescent idiots. Hungary has just banned Soros along with all who sail in her. But the Color Revolutionaries are refusing to just crawl back into the woodwork. After all, they still have money to spend on destabilizing regimes that get too cozy with Moscow or refuse to play ball with Washington. And so, they decided to pick a small, soft target: Armenia.

But even in Armenia things didn’t quite go as planned. The Color Revolution planners neglected to take into account certain parameters of the Armenian political equation. First, Armenia gets a lot of its money from Armenians who live and work in Russia. Second, about half of the Armenian population is, to put it in a politically incorrect yet accurate way, Russian: it speaks Russian, it is culturally attuned to Russia, and it is yet another nation that is part of the large family of over 100 distinct nations that call themselves Russian. Third, Nikol Pashinyan is a fickle fellow. He started out as a nationalist, then became pro-Western, and tomorrow he will become whatever it takes depending on which way the wind happens to be blowing. He has charisma, but he is basically a lightweight: a college dropout with no experience in government or business, but opportunist instincts to spare.

Pashinyan’s malleable nature became obvious as he lobbied his candidacy before the Armenian parliament. At first, he didn’t have much of a platform at all and just made vague pro-Western noises. Realizing that this won’t work, he shifted gears and became decidedly pro-Russian. To be sure, after assuming prime ministership, his first meeting as head of state was with Vladimir Putin, and the public pronouncements were all about the ties that bind the great and not-so-great nations of Russia and Armenia. He then attended the EAEU summit in Sochi, looking a bit wet behind the ears next to all the seasoned statesmen assembled there, but got reassuring shoulder slaps from the various Eurasian worthies. The basic message seemed to be, don’t screw this up, and you’ll get to keep 7.5% annual GDP growth and will look like a hero.

So, what did Washington, Langley, Soros and the rest of the Color Revolution syndicate get for all that effort and the tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars they spent trying to refashion Armenia into a Western vassal nation or, failing that, to tip it over into failed statedom? I am pretty sure that even they don’t know the answer to this question. The brilliant Western geopoliticians looked at a map and, seeing a small, weak, vulnerable country strategically positioned between Russia and Iran, thought: “We should go and mess with it.” And so they did. But looking at their results, they could just as well have stayed home, made a successful trip to the outhouse, and celebrated victory.


Isabella said...

Ah well, there you go. Typical of the narcissistic nature of psychopaths as in "Well, I designed it, it has to be good because I'm too smart to be sucked in by all that empathy and "lets be decent" nonsense and look how successful my past runs of this brilliant idea of brilliant me turned out. Just perfect as all my work must be. The few that didn't go so well? Not my fault - it was .....[whipping boy de jour]."

The thing the narcissistic psychopath fails to take into account is that yes, they, even they, age. Things change - everything all the time in fact - something else they think they can control. Like the stiff dry wheat ready to be harvested, if a good wind comes and blows them over they snap at the stem and can't get up. No flexibility.
They now have dementia on top of everything else.
Nothing for it now but some sort of nursing home for aged, narcissistic psychopaths who still think they run the world. And some sympathetic staff who can murmur "Yes sir, certainly, sir, just take your pill dear".

Anonymous said...

Having been to Armenia, four years after the six-year flare-up of the on-going Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that lasted from 1988 to 1994, I can assure readers that the population far from merits the phrase "... a lot of the rats that haven’t escaped are dumb as shit".

No article on Armenia should leave out the fact that Greater Armenia once covered an area that stretched over most of Eastern Turkey. Neither should the Armenian Holocaust be left out, which left the nation with only a third of the total world population of Armenians.

Armenians are victims of two former Imperial nations if anything, the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, which Armenia had the misfortune to lie between.

As a point of interest Armenia was the first to adopt Christianity as its official religion in 301 AD. Mount Ararat, which can be viewed on the other side of the border in Turkey, from Yerevan, the country's capital. The mountain is believed to be the landing site of Noah's Ark, from whom Armenians believe they are descended.

I hope Mr Orlov offers an apology to the Armenian people, who have given such a lot to the world.

Dmitry Orlov said...

Perhaps Bryan Hemming was left behind when everyone smarter than him was allowed to escape. No apology is needed, since I was talking about a laboratory experiment involving rats, not about Armenians. Feel free to replicate the experiment; if you get a different result, then I will apologize. I wrote: "Mind you, I am not comparing Armenians to rats; I am comparing Armenia to a laboratory experiment." Spells it out, doesn't it? But nooo, that's not clear enough for some people!

Clay Gilliland said...

The presence of the Azeri army on the line of contact between Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) no doubt helps Mr. Pashinyan focus on what's really important. Any real sign of disunity and a break with Russia would probably result in Azeri army tanks in Stepanakert and eventually Yerevan with help from Turkey no doubt. They both itch to finish the genocide the Turks began a century ago. It should be noted that the last round of fighting between Armenia-Artsakh and Azerbaijan, in the summer of 2016, came 3 weeks after a visit to Baku by then Sec of State John Kerry during which he suggested there should be a "speedy" resolution of the Artsakh question. That fighting was ended by Russian diplomacy before any great harm was done. On the same trip Kerry visited Moldova and made tried to stir up new trouble between Transnistria and Moldova. Several night time live fire exercises by the Transnistrian and Russian army helped Moldovan's remember that it would be Transnistrian tanks in Kishinev not Moldovan tanks in Tiraspol. It's the same pattern as when the US and NATO hung Georgia out to dry after conning them into attacking Russian Peace Keepers in South Ossetia. Maybe Mr. Pashinyan got a clue and not every rat left in the box is so stupid.

Chris Ferris said...

About Alexei Navalny, are you saying he was educated in the ways of Color Revolutions just so he can weed them out. Or did he turn afterwords. I find this interesting and just wondering how it was actually planned. It's pretty much a given that any organizations or assembly in the US to protest against the status quo is embedded with FBI informants and provocateurs. Battle in Seattle, DNC convention in St. Paul, the Black Panthers just to give a few examples. So I'd most interested to know if this mode of operandi is being played on them in kind.

Beagle Juice said...

While I'm no expert on the subject, I would disagree with the notion that Iran is useless as a neighbor to Armenia. While the two nations may not have the warmest relations, they both share the same existential threat of a "Greater Turkey" (Turkey + North Azerbaijan (Azerbaijan) and South Azerbaijan (northern Iran) + Turkmenistan). Thus, Armenia should be able to count on Iran (and Russia) when the missiles start flying over Nagorno-Karabakh.

A Blackman said...

These days no matter what you say or do someone is always offended. Writing and talking has now become a tiresome affair. Even with multiple disclaimers it seems some folks carefully sift through the words to find something that will upset them. The other alternative to my dismay is the tendency to not consider facts and come up with other information to support or refute the other persons statements. Rather the alternate tendency is name calling and profanity. In my opinion the art of debate and reason seems to have vanished !

Mr Orlov made valid points in his article about Armenia. I have also seen the same phenomena in other countries where the majority of the best flee leaving a small number of the intelligent to do as they please.

Mr. Lemming, sorry I meant Hemming, is one of the multitude who daily demonstrate that their garments of wearisome and continual offense at every little thing is held together by the silly stitches of self righteousness and sanctimonious indignation.

LS said...

- Gamal Abdel Nasser

Jean-Paul Printemps said...

Everybody knows there is a phenomenon of brain drain from marginalized nations. But we must remember that people remaining in a country where conditions have become intolerable are usually those who have the courage and wherewithal to stay. They are tied to the culture and not grand ambition or the political process. It is not surprising, then, that stooges come to power. But it is a mistake to see the ruling class as representative of the people as a whole.

AriusArmenian said...

Anonymous: The Russian Empire never tried to exterminate us Armenians.
You know what the Young Turks attempted.

Tony VetFlat said...

Formerly abducted from the odessa by my parents who were jews that fled pre collapse. Am now watching the same commie cloud descend as it does on nations that thrive a little too much for the needs of europe as Germany of coyrse and Russia.
America has a become a giant colony of old gophers and hungry wolves. My salvation is that I can communicate and hear the opinions of the world.

I'm praying the zombies dont come and steal my home and all my pickles and cabbage. Will be riding out the collapse in style in the mountains of NY with plenty of deer and rain every few days. That is all a man needs plus a little company of course. Its going to be messy here no doubt. The people have been turned infantile and cannot connect more than 2 or 3 thoughts together or deduce correlation....thats all gone...what we have left are people that just avoid the big topics like politics, religion, society in an effort to sleep better in their living graves they call homes they never leave but to mow the lawn. No one is politically engaged which I find to be the biggest problem. Nobody gives a shit about going to council meetings and voicing their opinions. None of that.
The kids are too busy talking about roll8ng marijuana cigs and getting laid. One in ten is concerned about anything but their urges. Its truly a satanic experience if you distinguish it since most were born into this hedonistic shadow hanging over this land. I for one will be putting my skills into gardening and thinking about my creator and his creator.

Tony VetFlat said...

Love your birds eye philosophizing.