REVIEW ON LENA D. KRIKORIAN’S PAPER “NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY DYNAMICS: FOREIGN POLICY PRIORITIES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (Russia, China, Persian Gulf, Caucasus, Turkey, and Iran)”

Abstract

 International Conference "Regional and National Security Dynamics: Armenia-Turkey Relations", 29 September 2017  

Well thank you very much for the invitation. And I am thrilled to bepart of this panel and having an opportunity to read on the research asproduced by local researchers. I would like to first thank Lena Krikorian foran insightful paper and I don’t even know where Lena is - I haven’t met her,there is Lena. Thank you, Lena, very much for all the work and the insightfulresearch you put in to this work. Overall, I agree with most of the analysis.What I would like to do is to challenge you a little bit in an effort to give yousome feedback as you start thinking forward about your research. I alsowanted to briefly refer to what ambassador Cevikoz mentioned, arguing thatthe South Caucasus is not highlighted, is not viewed as important in globalpolitics. It is that criticism or lament that we always hear that in bigconversations among great powers, the South Caucasus in general is notregistering. And I agree with that, and I think as academics, we bareresponsibility for that reality. What I would argue, what I would call Lenaand other researchers to start reflecting on, is how we think about research onArmenia, on Georgia, and on Azerbaijan.