Forecast: Activation of France and the United States will balance the  role of Russia

ArmInfo. The activation of France and the United States in the South Caucasus, at least, will balance the role of Russia in regional processes. An expert of the Armenian  Institute of International and Security Affairs Ruben Mehrabyan  expressed a similar opinion to ArmInfo.

"I believe that in the case of increasing diplomatic efforts of  France and the United States, in particular, as co-chairs of the OSCE  Minsk Group in the direction of resolving the conflict around  Artsakh, this will automatically lead to a narrowing of the role of  Moscow in this process. The role, which has quite increased as a  result of Azerbaijani-Turkish aggression regarding Artsakh and  Armenia last year, "the expert predicts.  Believing that today  Azerbaijan remains a rather important partner for the United States,  Mehrabyan, at the same time, believes that this importance does not  in any way prevent Armenia from striving and achieving the  preservation of the regional balance between the two countries. In  this light, the expert assessed the Armenian diplomacy in the  American vector and the efforts aimed at realizing common interests  for Yerevan and Washington as insufficient and unsatisfactory.

Meanwhile, in his opinion, the American direction for Armenia is an  inexhaustible source of potential for the development of relations.  And if it is implemented, Armenia will receive the widest  opportunities in terms of the development of democracy and the  general development of society and the country. And, of course,  ensuring security, which in the light of recent impulses, in the  expert's opinion, is an extremely important area of  Yerevan-Washington cooperation.

"In general, in any case, the South Caucasus is extremely important  for the United States in terms of existing and potential  communications. This region has great potential for development.  Accordingly, we are already seeing an increase in Washington's  interest in our region. At the same time, we see the US concern about  the fragmentation of the South Caucasus, the presence in the region  of many sources of threats, which seems to be quite important, "he  stressed.

As another important circumstance that determines the US interest in  the South Caucasus, Mehrabyan considers the line of the US  administration, according to which authoritarian-corrupt regimes are  viewed as a threat to the country's national security. In this light,  the transformation of Armenia into a target and victim of the  aggressive policy of corrupt authoritarian regimes with the support  and connivance of other similar regimes, in his opinion, leads to  concern, respectively, an additional increase in the interest of the  United States in the situation in the South Caucasus as a whole.