During the visit of the Speaker of U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi people often mentioned Taiwan where she visited recently.

Taiwan achieved great economic success in the second half of the 20th century and, along with Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea, is considered one of the “Four Asian tigers”. Today, Taiwan is the 19th largest economy in the world. I think this is enough to call all parallels between Armenia and Taiwan absolute nonsense.

When on September 13, Azerbaijan launched an attack on Armenia and on Jermuk, in particular, I was not thinking about Taiwan, but about Amulsar mine project. I was thinking that if this project was not killed with the efforts of Nikol Pashinyan and his government, the 400 million USD invested by American and British capital near Jermuk could have been a deterrent for Aliyev.

Over 4.5 years, Nikol Pashinyan did not have the courage to make any decision, delegating it to “activists”, who for years held “combat posts” near Amulsar.

When the ambassadors of the US and UK talked about the importance of the Amulsar project in front of cameras and at closed meetings, Pashinyan did not realize that having a large Western investment in a country living in constant danger of war is an additional “security cushion”.

The “activists” enjoying his patronage claimed that they were “saving Sevan”, ignoring numerous studies proving that the exploitation of Amulsar would not harm the lake. Today, we do not have an active mine in Amulsar, but we have an enemy that has reached close to Lake Sevan.

During his tenure, Nikol Pashinyan did not take any real steps to encourage the promotion of foreign investments. Moreover, when he was told that Amulsar was a bad signal for potential investors, he ignored the warnings.

Of course, the construction of a plant in Amulsart would not guarantee that Aliyev would not order to attack Jermuk. But if to read the post of the deputy ambassador of Germany about the visit to Jermuk, it becomes clear that his reaction would not have been such if not German tourists who were in Jermuk that time. And now imagine what would be the reaction of Pelosi or other American officials if the plant built in Amulsar with western capital was threatened or damaged during the attack.

In recent months, Nikol Pashinyan’s “frenemy” Gagik Tsarukyan has been privatizing Mount Hatis with the apparent connivance of the prime minister (and without the required permits) under the guise of installing a statue of Christ, but there are no calls from the activists that “Hatis will remain a mountain” and there are no “combat posts”.

On the occasion of the first anniversary of the 2020 war, I wrote “Strong and flexible economy should become our only ideology” article. Unfortunately, it is also relevant on the eve of the second anniversary of the war.

Ara Tadevosyan is Director of Mediamax.