ArmInfo. No tools of army development - including innovative and IT tools - will work until the Armenian army goes beyond the political scope, Hrachya Arzumanyan, Director of the Stepanakert-based "Ashkharh" Center for Strategic Studies, expert in military and national security, has told ArmInfo.
"The fundamental reason hampering the growth of efficiency of the Armenian armed forces is the inconsistency to continue the policy by other means of existential military threats to Armenia that require the army to go beyond politics and political life," he says.
The analyst stresses that politician Serzh Sargsyan does not seek to take the army out of the political game. As a result, people are being appointed to the top military command positions according to political rather than military logic, whereas the current threats require an absolutely different attitude towards the army. However, the power elite is not prepared to change the attitude to the army and has to create tools to retain control over the army: incredible powers of military police, bribery of the top military command, etc.
Arzumanyan thinks that the army nation concept recently declared by the defense minister should have intrinsically removed this contradiction and should have made the army a more significant element than politics. However, the authorities' instinct of self-preservation put all the things right and the idea was killed with the first 1,000-AMD initiative. This was anticipated, Arzumanyan says.