Arbak Khachatryan: Will the message get through?

Independent human rights advocate and geopolitical expert Arbak Khachatryan is a regular commentator for our newspaper. All his grim forecasts come true: problems in Russia’s relations with Georgia, Ukraine, and Turkey; the danger of ISIS; the economic crisis—he warned about every significant challenge to civilization long before it emerged. But Khachatryan does more than predict: he keeps repeating that there is a way out of this nightmare. That way lies in the principles of ‘People’s Diplomacy’ he advocates.

Arbak Khachatryan has never put personal safety and comfort above state interests. He wrote his first open letters to Vladimir Putin in 2003–2004, while serving as adviser to the Russian Commissioner for Human Rights:

‘Many decisions are made for publicity and provide temporary, local gains. Short-sighted actions are evident that will play only a negative role for Russia in the future… I think similar problems will arise with Ukraine, where anti-Russian sentiment is gradually growing…’

In spring 2015, when ISIS and Novorossiya had already become realities, Khachatryan was still urging people to recognize and remove the root cause of global evil:

‘In 2003, when I warned about Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine, people laughed. They no longer laugh. But the true causes of both local and global crises are not being resolved either. And they never will be while the old libertarian economic model operates, while the so-called “golden billion” runs the world and 70 percent of the Earth’s population meanwhile goes hungry. The Russian economy and banking sector all follow this model like diligent pupils. Unless we reorient the economy to serve the whole of society, rather than the “chosen,” we will continue suffering defeat after defeat. The ideological component does not matter—ISIS’s Salafism, Banderite nationalism in Ukraine, or the Houthis in Yemen. What matters is that a well-fed people will not overthrow its government.’

That same April 2015, when ‘the Russian and the Turk’ were still ‘brothers forever,’ Khachatryan warned: ‘Turkish Stream, presented to Russians as a great victory, is really a time bomb. Yes, it promises economic benefits. But the difference between a wheeler-dealer and a statesman is precisely that the latter looks beyond the next incoming payments.’

Then again in May 2015:

‘This information and political game not only brings Russia no strategic dividends, but adds hatred and chauvinism to an already heated region.’

2016 arrived. An economic crisis joined all the other troubles. The Gaidar Forum is taking place in Moscow, but no recipes for saving the homeland seem to be heard there, so we meet the human rights advocate and geopolitical expert in a café near the metro.

— Arbak Shaumyanovich, at the start of the year we so want to hear about faith, hope, love, and light at the end of the tunnel. Are you willing to share expectations of joyful changes with our readers?

— Did you turn on your iron today? I did, and even it was talking about the Gaidar Forum. Look at the forum’s speakers: everything really is wonderful for them. Their banks and corporations have all their debts written off and are pumped full of money again. Their houses, banks, and private islands in warm seas grow bigger and more beautiful despite the crisis.

Ever since they began carving up the USSR at Belovezhskaya Pushcha, they have been unable to stop: not only draining all resources but constantly tearing things apart—Karabakh, Georgia, Ukraine, Syria…

— War is a disaster for some and a boon for others…

— Then there is no need to cry: ‘Oh, we were raped in Cologne.’ Who produced them? Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria—not cities, whole countries lie in ruins. Bombings are shown on television every day. You need not be an oracle to suppose that the number of future terrorists rises proportionately with every apartment bombed. The global economic system produced them.

— Wait, ‘why us?’ Russia clearly is not the flagship of the global economic system…

— But we are linked to the global economic system. All these Gaidars studied there; all their interests are there; all their children are there. It is like putting a chronic drug addict in charge of raising children in a kindergarten. Yet, although they point to Western market standards, they created an ugly monster in Russia. What is the underlying purpose of the economically developed countries, the so-called G7? To enslave the Third World. What is the purpose of our Western-oriented economists? To enslave their own people. And they still wonder why people are leaving! (Speaking at the Gaidar Forum, G. Gref called the brain drain ‘our most frightening and biggest export.’ — AN.) People flee your governance.

You say ‘not the flagship’… It is like that question from Vladimir Putin’s interview with Germany’s Bild: ‘Is Russia a regional power or a superpower?’ Russia has a great history and culture, an unbending national spirit, a vast, rich territory, and nuclear potential. Why, then, is Russia not a superpower? Because the economy is run by ‘Yeltsin–Gaidar metastases.’ Because instead of feeding the people, they invent enemies and unleash wars. Because you cannot defeat a terrorist by waving a nuclear club; he will only be pleased, becoming a ‘nuclear martyr.’

— The president is satisfied with the government’s work…

— I do not want to play the oracle again, but believe me, geopolitical processes are no longer flowing sluggishly; they are galloping. If we do not break this criminal international system now, fire will soon break out in Russia, first at the edges. It will involve not only returning trained ISIS militants (the organization’s activities are prohibited in Russia by a Supreme Court ruling), with whom we are frightened, but our own home-grown nationalists and fascists too.

— So, in fighting in Syria and pushing terrorism’s boundaries ‘away from our own doorstep,’ are we doing something wrong?

— We fight the consequence, rather than the cause.

Trace the path of the bloody machete with which a terrorist in a video beheads a captive. Who supplied the money for weapons, from whom were they bought, and who received the profit? The ultimate beneficiaries of this blood-marked money chain are the financial tycoons of the supposedly civilized world. There is no need to look far—look around. In Moscow, ordinary people still receive a few crumbs, but in the regions and the CIS, surviving requires being a wheeler-dealer. It is no longer about individuals, but state institutions and security structures: everything is permeated by the spirit of huckstering. We live in one enormous ‘Cherkizon’ marketplace.

Or take these particular young men who have already gone to fight on ISIS’s side. Did they go to fight for jihad? If the National Antiterrorism Committee or the FSB investigates any of these mercenaries, I am convinced experts will find that most of their families have taken out unaffordable loans. That is the system’s essence: it is inherently inhuman.

— Is it that simple—hand out money like Saudi sheikhs, and that is all? Where do we get it? Everything was stolen before us…

— It is not simple. It requires will. Strong will. As to where to get it, you have already answered. The capital of a couple dozen people who found themselves at the tap in time or sat higher up the stream would suffice. And there are far more of them! Everything stolen from the people must be returned to the people. And all creators and implementers of this criminal financial system must publicly repent.

Now we forgive all loans issued to establish small businesses and enable an ordinary person’s family to survive. The principle of the state’s new financial and economic strategy is very simple and long known: the state for the person, rather than the person for the state. It goes without saying that ordinary people will support the new course.

In this way Russia can show the whole world the road to a bright future.

— The whole world will call forgiving loans an attack on the foundations of the universe, a universal sin and crime.

— The crime was creating a system in which survival requires borrowing. You may be surprised, but all, all, all the forgiven loans together will not amount to one-thousandth of the money stolen from the people.

— The system is ugly, the banks are bad, but what replaces them?

— What replaces them does not matter! How is what matters! Not like the Papuans—gold in exchange for trinkets; not predatory interest that cannot possibly be repaid from the outset, but with no alternative; not draconian laws protecting only financiers. Look: the US mortgage crisis occurred in 2008, yet proceedings involving banks continue to this day. (On January 15, 2016, Goldman Sachs reached an agreement with the Justice Department under which it will provide $1.8 billion to compensate victims of its actions and develop US housing programs.

— AN.) If you worship the West, why copy it so uglily and lopsidedly, solely for your own benefit? Where do 30–50 percent rates come from when they have 2–4 percent? Are we not integrated into the global economic system, is Russia not an IMF member, did we not join the WTO? Why, in an age of globalization and a world without borders, do we fence ourselves off with cordons? Why build an isolated empire when all world history cries out that such empires ended badly? Above all, even if the Western financial system you worship is in the deepest… in a deep crisis, why do you believe the crisis will bypass your ugly hybrid?

If you sit on your backside doing nothing, it will not! And I have a question for the state: who is the criminal—the lender who knew beforehand that honest means could never repay the loan, or those who borrowed and cannot repay? Also, do not forget these are the Russian state’s funds, and by the state I mean the people.

Yes, what I propose is a revolutionary reform. But if we do not remove this bloodsucking intermediary, we simply will not survive the crisis. The whole world is on fire; we cannot wall ourselves off.

— I like the prospect you describe, but in our circumstances it is im-pos-si-ble!

— They said the same about my earlier forecasts. Now they are reality. We must not wait to see whether they come true again, but make decisions and act beforehand, while it is not yet too late.

— Sadly, in our country one person makes the decisions. Our newspaper published your open letter, read by millions in the paper, on the website, and on social media. Do you think it did not get through?

— I do not know. A time comes when a difficult decision must be made.

Imagine you are building a house, already finishing its roof, when suddenly you are told that a meteorite is heading directly for it. Will you keep building, or move your family far away into an uncomfortable but safe tent? That is the situation now. And the choice of what world to live in is yours.