"Challenges to Armenian Statehood in the Turbulent Security Environment of the 21st Century" - Rachya ARZUMANYAN

Rachya Arzumanyan's article is devoted to an analysis of the challenges facing Armenian statehood amid the growing turbulence of the global and regional security environment of the twenty-first century.

Introduction and Methodology
The author proceeds from the thesis of the return of geopolitics and the geopolitical context as determining factors in world politics. This is substantiated by the mounting contradictions between global and regional centers of power, as well as by the activity along the "arc of instability" stretching from the Maghreb to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Such an environment is characterized as unstable, almost turbulent, which sharply increases the risk of a geopolitical provocation or error—by analogy with the Russian-Georgian war of 2008. The article separately emphasizes the artificiality of the South Caucasus as a post-Soviet region, and the danger that local states, accustomed to focusing on intraregional contradictions, may overlook more serious external threats.

Assessment of Armenia's Geopolitical Context
A key proposition of the article is the need for Armenian statehood (the Republic of Armenia and Artsakh) to revise its assessment of the situation from "crisis" to "threatened." The author points to structural constants of the Armenian security environment:

• the hostility of Turkey and Azerbaijan, unchanged since the time of the First Republic;
• Armenia's geopolitical isolation;
• the interest of regional and global centers of power in a weak and dependent Armenia;
• the risk of reducing the Armenian factor to a tactical level, which threatens to turn the Armenian Question into a "bargaining chip" of world politics.

Elements, Structure, and Functions of Armenian Policy and Strategy
The author's central idea is the transformation of Armenia's vulnerability into a source of strength through a reconceptualization of its "island-like" geopolitical position. Armenia is proposed to be regarded as a "fortress" providing global centers of power with the opportunity to operate in the region by controlling the communications and infrastructure of the South Caucasus. Such a strategy requires pragmatism, adaptability, and a combination of hard and soft power.

The implementation of such a policy cannot be achieved by Yerevan alone—it requires the mobilization of all three parts of Ashkhar (the Armenian world):

• the Republic of Armenia—representing Armenian interests on the international stage;
• Artsakh—leveraging its unrecognized status and traditional military-political potential;
• the Spyurk (Diaspora)—utilizing the cultural and communicative resources of the diaspora, which remain, as yet, untapped.

Yerevan, in this arrangement, acts as the coordinating center, the "conductor" of a concerted Armenian policy, ensuring synergy among the actions of all actors within Ashkhar.

Conclusion
The author concludes that Armenian statehood, for all its youth and limited resources, possesses the potential to participate in the geopolitical struggle of the twenty-first century, but only on the condition of clearly formulating national interests, goals, and "red lines" not subject to compromise. The key challenge, he argues, is not the position of external centers of power, but the ability of Armenia itself and the Armenian people to determine what they wish to achieve and what they are prepared to defend amid the looming geopolitical storm.