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Pashinyan going to make Armenia world's most militarized country

4 May 2018 10:44 (UTC+04:00)
Pashinyan going to make Armenia world's most militarized country

By Rashid Shirinov

It has long been known that Armenia is one of the three most militarized countries in the world and the first one in Europe. The leader of protests in Armenia, the only candidate for prime minister of the country Nikol Pashinyan seems to be proud of this.

Moreover, he is going to raise Armenia’s position in the ranking, since his recent statement attests to this.

“I think that we must increase military spending, and we will do it. I am sure that we will be able to do this by increasing revenues to the country’s budget,” Pashinyan said in the National Assembly of Armenia on May 1.

Military spending already makes up a big share of Armenia’s state budget, thereby depriving of funding such spheres as education and healthcare. The country increased its defense spending for 2018, bringing it to $509 million, which is $70 million more than in 2017.

Moreover, Pashinyan did not specify how he is going to increase revenues to the state budget. Armenian economy is still in a long-standing crisis, which the authorities have not been able to overcome. Therefore, there are no real chances that the country will be able to increase its budget in the near future.

Pashinyan explains his wish to increase military spending by “the need to ensure military balance in the region.” Obviously, he hints at Azerbaijan and the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. However, Pashinyan is well aware that Armenia is far behind Azerbaijan in terms of military capabilities, and Armenia will never be able to catch up with Azerbaijan in this regard.

The only reasonable step for Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh issue is to join constructive peaceful negotiations with Azerbaijan on the conflict settlement within the OSCE Minsk Group. Every year Armenia foolishly spends lots of money on further militarization and on support to the separatist regime in Karabakh. Fight against unemployment, corruption, poverty and inflation – these are what the Armenian authorities must focus on.

Given that Armenia has big difficulties with the state budget, the military expenses intercept the funds that could have been spent on social sector, agriculture and other suffering spheres. Therefore, it would be more appropriate for the new Armenian government, to be apparently headed by Pashinyan, to allocate funds to improving the well-being of the country’s population, rather than to blindly spend them on military purposes.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz

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