Hayk Kotanjian: Lessons-learned of Power Transition Mistakes in the Context of a Changing World Order

• 06.12.2020, 20:21
•  Armenia,  Analytics

We present to your attention Lieutenant General, Doctor of Political Science, former Head of Institute for National Strategic Studies, Ministry of Defense, RA Hayk Kotanjian’s article on "Lessons-learned of Power Transition Mistakes in the Context of a Changing World Order", published on June 8, 2020 by  “Golos Armenii" newspaper.

 When the peak of epidemics outbreak is passed, Armenia will inevitably find an updated political agenda, aimed at sustainable democratic development of two-subject Armenian national statehood, reaping innovative resources from the trinity of Armenia, Artsakh and Diaspora. Moreover, the reality is, that the issue is especially in demand in the Armenian society right now is what we expect in medium and long term perspective.  Experts, the media, social networks and the public in general speak out on this.

 This question in the final account assumes understanding of the challenges of the new transition of power, which is called upon to bring at least non-traditional and effective institutional solutions to the Armenian state building processes. The complex and systemic search for effective models of transition of power is now being pursued by political elites in many countries. We are witnessing such processes in Russia, China, the United States and in other  big and small countries.  In the search for effective ways to power transition, an extremely important role is assigned to the scientific and expert communities. It is on the basis of their analysis and consulting strategic centers that they develop their national and international centers for effective decision-making in the process of transforming the world order. 

The simultaneous search for these innovative solutions in Armenia should become the most important theoretical and practical task for a professional team of highly qualified state experts. These experts should be involved first of all, from the fields of political science, economics and finance, law, defense and security policy, cyberspace resources management and culture. They will have to develop a strategy and program for a new power transition aimed at effectively managing the sustainable and safe development of Armenia, in exchange for the course of the current authorities, responding to the challenges of the coronavirus, the economic crisis and the regional non-war and non-peace situation by spontaneous trial and error methods. 

The revaluation of the transfer of power in the international practice of the recent past may play an important role in the effective solution of this vital issue for the Armenians of Armenia and the whole world. Among the power transition lessons-learned in the process of fundamental changes in the world order of the near past, strategic analysts of our time usually pay special attention to Perestroika in the USSR.

 This is explained by the search for a system of international relations after the collapse of the bipolar world order, as well as by the search for a power and regime transition in states and their new alliances after the "syndrome of victory and defeat in the Cold War."

 Recently, in response to a question of a colleague, who is studying victories and defeats in the process of power transition in Armenia, on a strategic assessment of the failure of state governance during the “catastrophic emergency” of power-regime transition during the Perestroika in the Soviet Union, I considered to pay attention to the assessment of the lessons-learned made in Moscow by leading Russian and American state experts after the collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact.

 So, let's look at the lessons of power transition in the process of fundamental changes in the world order.  At the end of 1991, in Moscow under the auspices of Russian Academy of Public Administration to the President of the RF, a group of strategic analysts from Moscow,  Yale and Harvard Universities gathered to brainstorm the first results of perestroika (I was involved in the group as a young senior researcher of the Russian Academy of Public Administration to the RF President   and also as Academic Secretary of the Russian Association of Theory and Modeling of International Relations - under the presidency of Eduard Skakunov, professor of the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation).

 Understanding the hypersensitivity of the final assessment of the catastrophic destruction of the USSR, political scientists- system analysts , distancing themselves from possible partial and political preferences, as "political scientists with their rooting from cybernetics" considered it necessary, to use the abstract basis of the general theory of management (theoretical cybernetics).

 In the basis of this generalized and delicate assessment of the transformation failure of the USSR, political-state experts placed the - Law of requisite variety, formulated by one of the fathers of theoretical cybernetics - , William Ross Ashby, the British researcher of complex systems.

  As a result, the assessment of the collapse of state governance by the strategic decision-making center in the person of the Secretary General of the CPSU Central Committee, USSR President was formulated the following delicate way. The failure was due to the fact that the measure of the necessary diversity of Gorbi (the intellectual diversity of the subject of state governance in emergency situations) did not correspond to the measure of the diversity of governance object (the USSR on the way to transformation) and the complexity of the tasks to be solved (restructuration of the state-society).

 In contrast to it, again, in case of distancing from party-political preferences, the start of a strategic power transition in PRC, carried out under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping (he never served as the country's leader, but was the actual leader of China since the late 1970s) was considered. His intellectual diversity in the role of the leading subject of governance of the systemic transformation of the Chinese state-society was assessed as compatible with the degree of diversity of the emergency management object (PRC) and the degree of complexity of challenges and the problems to be solved (systemic modernization of the socialist state, taking into account the national specifics of Chinese society).

 As a result, I with my colleagues-state experts have reaffirmed the expediency of using the Law of requisite variety of professor Ashby, which is a universal law, in assessing the effectiveness of governance in the Republic of Armenia at this extraordinary stage, posing a threat to the security of our national statehood.