January 2005

Armenia’s Crossing

The year past pushed the Republic of Armenia into the pivotal period of its teenage life. The quality and gravity of its national development, regional connection, and international reach will turn on how we, alone or together, approach and overcome the challenges immediately ahead.

Our Center tipped ten at about the same time. We are grateful to all of our friends and partners, in Armenia and around the world, for their faithful support of our decade-long struggle. Our quest for national unity in the face of partisan play, vital interests over parochial conflicts, and democratic process against the odds of archaic “mentalities” never ours.

In their search for a dignified new political culture of consensus-building, both Armenia and the Center have borne their share of adversity. Whether presidential or personal, fear-driven or envy-anchored, the sources of that adversity have formed a pool of hypocrisy and double standards, of petty arrogance and baseless self-promotion, and hence of citizen alienation and public mistrust.

We wish well upon our colleagues in government and in opposition who today, a full decade after the Center’s founding, are following a host of individual proprietors in their fad of presiding over “strategic research institutes.” It is to be hoped that this mushrooming industry, far from serving as empty, non-institutional imitations for the propagation of private ambitions or the laundering of money and patriotism, will not also come to reflect the sad state of the state, an uncivil society, and the rulelessness of law. These are not the values we, and our millennia, are all about.

In every matter of import—from Armenian security and Karabagh’s liberty to legitimate leadership and the integrity of man and woman alike—the nation deserves the real deal. And our heritage as witness, we commit our generation to continue the fight to deliver it.

The Center’s deed is done, and its record speaks for itself. It is now Armenia’s turn to call it like it is and cross over the divide to the fair banks of its future.

Founded in 1994 by Armenia’s first Minister of Foreign Affairs Raffi K. Hovannisian, and supported by the Lincy Foundation and a global network of contributors, ACNIS serves as a link between innovative scholarship and the public policy challenges facing Armenia and the Armenian people in the post-Soviet world. It also aspires to be a catalyst for creative, strategic thinking and a wider understanding of the new global environment. In 2005, the Center focuses primarily on public outreach, civic education, and applied research on critical domestic and foreign policy issues for the state and the nation.

For further information on the Center and its activities, call (3741) 52-87-80 or 27-48-18; fax (3741) 52-48-46; e-mail root@acnis.am or info@acnis.am