EGN NEWS DESK
With an “Armenia wassup!” and rakish shimmy, Floridian pop sensation Jason Derulo opened the 2024 World Congress on Innovation & Technology (WCIT) in Yerevan on Oct. 4. “The greatest party on the planet is correct right here in Armenia tonight!” Derulo instructed revelers within the capital’s Republic Square, earlier than launching into his international hit “Dirty Talk” flanked by leather-clad, twerking dancers.
It was maybe a curious approach to welcome some 3,000 delegates from 80 international locations to bat round know-how subjects underneath the banner, “The Power of Mind: AI Beyond Limits, Within Ethics.” Panels included discussions on aerospace design, social media optimization, and cybersecurity. A various roster of audio system featured former MGM CEO Alex Yemenidjian and Rodrigo Messi, brother and enterprise manager of soccer celebrity and TIME’s 2023 Athlete of the Year, Lionel. Elon Musk despatched a congratulatory message. (Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was as a consequence of attend earlier than the French Police intervened.)
Yet if Derulo’s grandstanding was considerably incongruous with the thorny tech debates that adopted, few might begrudge Armenia for relishing its second within the highlight. It was, the truth is, the second time Armenia has hosted WCIT previously 5 years, underscoring how this landlocked democracy of three million is recasting itself as a world know-how hub. Perched on the crossroads of Europe and Asia, Armenia has revamped its schooling curriculum to offer a gentle stream of STEM expertise and supplied tax breaks to multinationals organising native operations. An illustrious roster has taken the bait, together with Amazon, Google, Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, Broadcom, and Nvidia.
“Back within the Soviet Union period, Armenia was actually very well-known as a hi-tech nation,” Armenian President Vahagn Khachaturyan tells TIME in his neo-Palladian official residence. “We had been thought-about a Silicon Valley. Now we need to get that fame again.”
Of course, Armenia isn’t alone in making an attempt to trip the AI wave to prosperity—however the drivers listed below are removed from purely financial. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s struggle of alternative in Ukraine has wrought an immeasurable human toll, whereas roiling markets, disrupting provide chains, and sending inflation hovering throughout the globe. Thousands of Russian professionals have since decamped in Armenia to each keep away from the army draft in addition to onerous Western sanctions, boosting a neighborhood financial system that grew 8.7% final 12 months. But an underappreciated corollary has been the evaporation of Moscow’s stabilizing safety presence in its personal yard.
In 2020, struggle broke out between Armenia and japanese neighbor Azerbaijan, resulting in a peace settlement that noticed nearly 2,000 Russian peacekeepers put in within the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh, a rolling highland famed for dragon-adorned carpets and piquant orange wine. But then Nagorno-Karabakh was seized by Baku in December 2022 and following a nine-month blockade over 100,000 Armenians had been forcibly expelled, throughout which these Russian peacekeepers stood idly by. “We really feel betrayed,” says Diana Gharibyan, 42, a mother-of-seven who fled from the regional capital, Stepanakert. “We got just some minutes to go away.”
Asked whether or not the Ukraine battle lay behind Russia’s wavering, Khachaturyan can solely shrug. “The truth is that we wanted the assistance of our companions when Azerbaijan attacked however didn’t get it,” he says. “So we have to make some conclusions.”
Most of that are grim. Last October, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken instructed U.S. lawmakers that Azerbaijan could also be plotting to invade Armenia. In March, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan warned that Azerbaijan was trying to begin “a brand new, large-scale struggle.”
In Yerevan, anxiousness is palpable. Other than Azerbaijan to the east, Armenia has no diplomatic relations with western neighbor, Turkey, whereas to the north sits Georgia and to the south the Islamic Republic of Iran. Shifting geopolitical realities has spurred a wholesale recalibration of Armenia’s overseas coverage mixed with a zealous effort to internationalize the financial system to render the value of any future battle intolerably excessive.
“Armenia is in a troublesome neighborhood,” says Rev Lebaredian, a vice chairman at NVIDIA who opened its Yerevan workplace in 2022. “In my very own little approach, I’m hoping to deliver some capabilities and assets so we are able to construct the Armenian financial system. If Armenia may be economically viable, that can assist with fixing lots of the different issues.”
It’s solely pure {that a} state penned in from all sides would search to look outward. And Armenia isn’t the primary besieged enclave to pursue safety by tying itself to the broader world. Tiny states from Singapore to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have sought to keep away from being devoured up by bigger neighbors by reworking into banking and funding hubs, seeding award-winning airways, and internet hosting worldwide conferences and pop concert events.
At first blush, landlocked Armenia is an unlikely entrepot, although it does have a secret weapon, of which Lebaredian is a primary instance: a vibrant diaspora in just about each nook of the globe, with some a million ethnic Armenians in California alone. Though it’s a boon borne from calamity.
While the autumn of the Soviet Union was a seminal second in Armenia’s historical past, it pales compared to the genocide of 1915, when the Ottoman Empire systematically murdered some 600,000 to 1.5 million Armenians. Not solely did that atrocity scatter Armenians throughout the globe however it continues to outline regional dynamics. Turkish denials have successfully blocked Yerevan’s efforts to normalize relations with Ankara, which has backed Baku in its current offensives, even holding joint army drills final October in Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhichevan, one other Azerbaijan-controlled area to Armenia’s west.
Indeed, in 2021 autocratic Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev revealed his intent to determine a land hall to Turkey through Nakhichevan by taking management of the southern Armenian area of Zangezur, “whether or not Armenia needs it or not,” including “if it doesn’t, we’ll remedy it by power.”
The institution of the Zangezur Corridor would successfully seal off Armenia’s southern frontier with Iran and imply its solely open border could be with Georgia. Other than Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan troops already management some 200 sq km of Armenia correct, which Aliyev tellingly refers to as “Western Azerbaijan.”
Those who skilled the Nagorno-Karabakh exodus are underneath no illusions. On Sept. 24–30 final 12 months, some 99% of the territory’s inhabitants fled underneath an Azerbaijan artillery barrage. Some 218 individuals perished when a besieged gasoline distribution middle exploded, whereas some 70 others died through the fraught journey to Armenia. “Some youngsters needed to be in the identical car with their deceased father or mother for greater than 40 hours through the journey,” says Alla Harutyunya, vice chairman of the Mission Armenia NGO. On her final go to to Nagorno-Karabakh in late 2022, Harutyunya observed the ambiance had modified. “I finished driving for a relaxation, however Russian troopers instructed me to maintain going as they wouldn’t be capable of shield me if Azerbaijani troops attacked,” she recollects.
Many refugees don’t really feel protected even amongst the tree-lined boulevards of Yerevan. “During the displacement, the Azerbaijan troopers instructed me, ‘Where are you going? We are going to assault Armenia quickly. Do you suppose you’re escaping?’” says Gayane Movsisyan, a 55-year-old former military employee from Steparakert. “The Russian troopers had been simply standing there with their eyes down.”
Grigory Sysoev—Sputnik/AP
The lack of Russian assist prompted Armenia in June to announce its withdrawal from the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, which was established in 1992 and whose different members are Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a minimum of 90% of arms bought by Armenia got here from Russia. Today, it’s lower than 10%, and Armenia has been compelled to fill that hole by forging new friendships. India has emerged as Armenia’s high weapons provider adopted by France, from whom Armenia just lately bought 36 Caesars self-propelled howitzers.
Armenia can be diversifying overseas coverage past mere safety. Yerevan signed a Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement with the E.U. again in 2017 and in February agreed to deepen this cooperation through a brand new E.U.-Armenia Partnership Agenda, establishing extra hyperlinks for commerce, funding, in addition to potential visa liberalization. Armenia can be making an attempt to deepen its cooperation with the U.S., with President Joe Biden final month asserting plans to improve the prevailing bilateral strategic dialogue right into a strategic partnership.
“Much of the inhabitants [of Armenia] need to get farther from Russia,” James O’Brien, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, instructed a congressional listening to in July. “So we’re creating the situations for that to occur.”
Yet for a former Soviet satellite tv for pc—Republic Square the place Derulo strutted his stuff was named Lenin Square till 1990—issues are by no means so easy. The Kremlin is clearly involved by Armenia’s perceived Western tilt, prompting a Russian overseas ministry spokesperson to warn in March that Yerevan’s present course might “create critical dangers for the sovereignty of the republic.”
Worryingly, in a gathering with Aliyev in Baku in August, Putin voiced assist for the Zangezur Corridor, prompting a stern rebuke from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who posted on X that “any menace from North, South, East, or West to [the] territorial integrity of our neighbors or redrawing of boundaries is completely unacceptable and a pink line for Iran.”
Khachaturyan insists breaking with Russia shouldn’t be a part of the plan. “The enchancment of our relationships with the E.U. shouldn’t be in opposition to anyone,” the Armenian President says. “We don’t take any steps in opposition to any group or construction. It’s actually crucial that’s understood.”
Indeed, Armenia’s financial relations with Russia are booming. Bilateral commerce has soared from $2.5 billion in 2021 to $7.5 billion in 2023 and is on the right track to double once more by the top of this 12 months. Armenia’s second metropolis of Gyumri nonetheless hosts a Russian army base from the place its troops patrol the border with Turkey. Most tellingly, Armenia additionally continues to take pleasure in entry to vastly discounted Russian gasoline. The query is whether or not Yerevan can proceed to nod in all instructions.
“It’s a really delicate steadiness to develop relations with France, with the European Union, with the United States, and to not set off a possible harsh response with Russia,” says Benyamin Poghosyan of APRI Armenia, a Yeveran-based think-tank. “It’s actually a tightrope.”
And a precarious one since new friendships, together with with the West, might not show safer than Russian ones. On Sept. 14 final 12 months, Yuri Kim, performing U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, instructed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “the United States is not going to countenance any motion or effort—short-term or long-term—to ethnically cleanse or commit different atrocities in opposition to the Armenian inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh.”
Yet one week later that very same inhabitants was forcibly expelled in what human-rights teams have certainly termed “ethnic cleaning.” Varduhi Dadunts, nation director for the Armenia workplace of Prague-headquartered NGO People in Need, says refugees “weren’t even capable of take financial savings, passports, or belongings. We even noticed youngsters arriving with out footwear.”
Although a bipartisan Azerbaijan Sanctions Review Act has been launched to Congress, thus far the U.S. authorities has not enacted any penalties in opposition to Azerbaijan or sanctioned a single official. In truth, the world will descend on Baku subsequent month for the COP29 local weather convention, the internet hosting of which Aliyev—a dictator who succeeded his father in 2003—has explicitly cited as “an indication of super respect and reverence from the worldwide group.”
The fact is far grubbier. Armenia additionally needed to host COP29 however withdrew its rival bid in December and as an alternative backed Azerbaijan with a purpose to safe the discharge of 32 prisoners of struggle (a minimum of 23 stay in squalid captivity). The undeniable fact that Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault on Israel occurred simply two weeks after the Nagorno-Karabakh exodus actually didn’t assist garner worldwide consideration or sympathy. But historical past’s merciless lesson is that some democracies are valued greater than others, which is why Armenia’s present mission is to dramatically enhance its personal value.
“We want to search out the department of financial system or the sector which might be actually crucial for the world,” says President Khachaturyan.
Yervant Zorian, an Armenian American who serves as chief architect at $80 billion California-based semiconductor provide agency Synopsys, is aware of this solely too effectively. He says that he’s proud that shoppers in Japan and South Korea at the moment are plugged into the Yerevan time zone owing to the 1,300 workers that Synopsys has stationed right here. “The motive that Taiwan is safe is TSMC,” Zorian tells TIME, referencing the oft-touted “silicon defend” across the self-ruling island owing to its semiconductor colossus. “So having a robust financial system, producing sure issues that the world is dependent upon, that’s a part of safety.”
On high of attracting overseas funding, Armenia additionally goals to leverage that inflow of money and expertise to foster home champions. An extracurricular schooling program known as Armath Engineering Labs has launched 17,000 younger Armenians aged 10 to 18 to sensible STEM topics by means of interactive after-school lessons, camps, and competitions throughout 650 workspaces. On the sidelines of the WCIT, Yeveran hosted a DigiTec Expo of over 200 start-ups engaged on all the pieces from AI-controlled hydroponic chambers for cultivating micro herbs, drone-powered crop dusting, and augmented actuality improvement planning.
Still, an unmistakable aura of safety hung over the occasion, with a civil protection NGO actively recruiting volunteers, a start-up devoted to sustaining communications throughout occasions of battle, and a taking pictures vary to encourage attendees to get gun licenses. “All the founders are tech guys, founders of startups, who got here collectively as a result of there was no taking pictures vary in Armenia,” says Sargis Karapetyan, CEO of the Union of Advanced Technology Enterprises, which organized DigiTec. “They obtained impressed after the struggle.”
But removed from bolstering Armenia on the expense of its neighbors, Khachaturyan insists that sharing that budding affluence will additional improve safety. His authorities has rolled out an bold The Crossroads of Peace proposal, which seeks to remodel the Southern Caucuses right into a commerce hub with a restored community of street, railway, and pipelines linking Central Asia to the Mediterranean and Russia to India by means of Iran. “It may be actual if we get a peace settlement with Azerbaijan,” Khachaturyan says. “Any battle may be solved by negotiations. I’m certain that we are going to have success, as a result of I don’t see another various for peace.”
Whether Armenia’s neighbors are listening is an enormous query. Earlier this month, Aliyev turned down Armenia’s newest peace proposal, calling it “unrealistic.” The stakes couldn’t be greater and hinge on the deft balancing of realpolitik. “Armenia shouldn’t be pro-West, pro-Russia; Armenia must be pro-survival,” says Poghosyan of APRI Armenia. “Because mere Armenian statehood is unsure. We are actually on the brink.”
