American Thought Leaders - How One Peace Agreement Gave America a New Route Through Iran and Russia’s Backyard | Ambassador Narek Mkrtchyan

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

Almost a year after the Washington Declaration, Armenia is trying to turn a hard-won peace with Azerbaijan into something lasting. In this conversation, Armenia’s ambassador to the United States, Narek Mkrtchyan, explains what the agreement means on the ground and why the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity could reshape the region and the country’s future.“We sit in a very tough neighborhood. We sit in a very interesting geography. We are at the crossroads of Europe, Middle East, Central Asia, South Caucasus,” Mkrtchyan says.Mkrtchyan describes how Armenia is trying to turn geography into strategy through the development of diplomacy, new trade routes, and international partnerships. He views this as more than a peace process—it’s a chance to redefine Armenia’s place in the region.“In the center is the concept of crossroads of peace,” Mkrtchyan says.Recently, Armenia also got approval for the biggest artificial intelligence factory in the region—a $4 billion project that officials say could help make the country a hub for computing power and advanced technology.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

It's been almost a year since President Trump helped broker a historic peace declaration between Armenia and Azerbaijan. So we sit in a very tough neighborhood. We sit in very interesting geography, you know. We are at the crossroads of Europe, Middle East, Central Asia, South Caucasus. In this episode, I'm sitting down with Armenia's ambassador to the United States, Narek Makrchen, to understand how the peace deal and how the new U.S.-backed transit corridor are reshaping the region.

The center is the concept of crossroads of peace. Can this former conflict zone become the next hub for AI, infrastructure, and energy? Recently, Armenia got approval for the biggest AI factory in the region. It's $40 billion project. 58,000 blacker GPS from Nvidia will be delivered to Armenia and will be computing data and will be converting electricity to intelligence and then sent to US. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yankee Kelleck.

Master Natick Makrachan, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. It's my pleasure to be here. We're nearing the anniversary, the one-year anniversary of this Washington deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia. And I want to kind of dig into, we remember something happened. We knew it felt historic. But the details are kind of murky at this point. We don't remember, right? So I want to try to give people a sense of the geography. and also the sense of the significance.

Why is this deal important to Americans? Thank you for the question. You are right. So we are approaching one anniversary of the historical peace deal, or we call it Washington Declaration, when President Trump brokered a peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan after like three decades of conflict. So this peace deal became historical,

not only for Armenia and Azerbaijan, but also for entire region. And also it created a lot of opportunities for interregional cooperation. And of course, based on mutual interests, a lot of, it's opened a new chapter of bilateral relations between U.S. and Armenia. And it changed the geo-economics of the region, or at least it creates a new, like, opportunities for the change of the geo-economics. So the Washington Peace Declaration created another documents or another platforms for the cooperation. The first and the most important project is Trip, Trip project, which is like 42-kilometer connectivity route. I'll just read the whole name of it because it's the Trump route for international peace and prosperity. Yes, trip.

Which is, again, it's not only about like connectivity between like Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijan's enclave mine, land. But it's also about like a new inter-regional supply chain, a new connectivity between Central Asia, South Caucasus and Europe. Turkey as well. And Armenia and the US created a trip development company. This is, first of all, bilateral project. So created by the governments of Armenia and the US.

And the United States government shares ownership. 74% of the shares belongs to US government and 26% belongs to Armenian government. And this is a very important project for peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan because this will provide long-term opportunity for the peace because this is one of the examples how different projects can come together and bring dialogue. And in this context, I remember as an historian like Emmanuel Kant's concept of perpetual peace, that peace is not something that starts like signing a document, etc. We need institutions, we need dialogue, and we need mutual interests, economic interests as well.

After Washington Declaration, Armenia and Azerbaijan started to do trade. So we started to import some products from Azerbaijan. We started to bring different products from different countries, using the Azerbaijani territory to Armenia. And this is a part of our diversification policy because we sit in a very tough neighborhood. We sit in very interesting geography, you know. We are at the crossroads of Europe, Middle East, Central Asia,

South Caucasus and Europe, like collective vest, let's say, I mean European civilization. And this project actually can be very interesting, like, connectivity project, bringing all of these differences in Armenia and from Armenia go to other countries, other regions. But again, in the center is the concept of crossroads of peace, because we put forward the ideology of crossroads of peace, that we wanted to turn our small piece of land, like our Republic of Armenia has always been in a crisis situation you know it's a three decades is not like short period of time not at all

yeah now we are turning this is an opportunity like crossroads of opportunity crossroads of peace crossroads of tech for for the entire region and the united states of America has active participation and we are very proud of it that we have us as a important player of our diversification policy in in our country. Let me just lay out a little bit of the geography because it's really fascinating. Of course, as I was preparing, I looked carefully about how you're placed. As you said, it's a kind of a tough neighborhood, right? So you've got Iran to the south, right? And you've got two parts of Azerbaijan on either side of you and this corridor. And then this southern sliver of Armenia

touches Iran, of course, across the river. And then that's the corridor. So you're actually, that corridor also connects the two parts of Azerbaijan through Armenia. And then you have Russia over to the north. This is fascinating because this isn't just geopolitical from the Azerbaijan-Armenia perspective, but this is Iran, this is Russia. There's many dimensions to the U.S. having a controlling interest in this corridor. Why, so the role of President Trump and the U.S. government so important, and we appreciate their engagement, president's engagement, U.S. institution's engagement.

Because the Washington Declaration respects three important principles. Like you mentioned all of the neighbors, et cetera. There were a lot of negotiations concerning this connectivity, this route. But the Washington Declaration fixed very important principles. This project trip will respect three important principles of sovereignty of Armenia, territorial integrity, and the jurisdiction. Everything concerning the trip, the management, the operation, function, etc., Everything will be under the sovereign jurisdiction of Armenia's institutions. Like customs, border control, police, security, emergency,

everything will be managed by Armenian institutions. And this is something that we value and appreciate that Washington Declaration respects and fixes. And in the center, we have, of course, our national interests. And we communicated out with our neighbors with Iran. So, you know, that we have cooperation with Russia, we are in the Eurasian Economic Union. We say that this is our sovereign decision. So we are going to diversify our supply chain, our energy, our foreign policy, our procurement, our economic engagement.

And you have to respect that. And there's also this, the one NATO ally in the region, Turkey. And I'm curious what developments have there been since this. normalization, this Washington Declaration, in terms of Armenian relations with Turkey. You know that our borders between Armenia and Turkey are closed and we do not have diplomatic relations. But again, within the context of the diversification, within the context of the Crossroads of Peace Project, since Trip Project is the organic part of Crossroads of Peace Project, So we need to create other organic connections.

So we can't have closed border with Turkey and have vision to create crossroads of peace and to have inter-connected region. For that reason, again, our leadership made another important decision to normalize relations with Turkey, to establish diplomatic relations, to open the borders. You know, it's not an easy process. When you look back at the history, there are a lot of complicated experiences that we have to take into consideration, but also look forward.

And we decided to normalize these relations. From both sides now, we have special invoice. Sardar Kulch is the special envoy from Turkish side. Our deputy speaker of parliament is a special invoheration. And there is very active communication and dialogue between the leadership of Turkey and Armenia and president, Erdogan, Prime Minister Parishina, and they are always in touch discussing this issue. We really have a lot of optimistic developments and looking forward to have the borders open as soon as possible. we did all the infrastructural like things from our side. Now even we are ready to build the rail or reconstruct the railway infrastructure from our side

to have connections with the Turkish side and have access to the Mediterranean Sea, to have access to the European markets and also to create opportunities for Turkey to have access to Central Asia using all the infrastructures of Armenia. We say we are ready to open all the infrastructures, air, land, digital infrastructure, for interconnectivity. And we are very optimistic that the Washington Peace Declaration will create, like, important momentum. Recently, Armenia got approval for biggest AI factory in the region. It's $40 billion project. $58,000 blackwell GPS from Nvidia will be delivered to Armenia and will be delivered to Armenia

and we'll be computing data and we'll be converting electricity to intelligence and then sent to US. And the same company recently signed $10 billion agreement with Kazakhstan government. Again, this is an example how this partnership can bring interregional, like cooperation. And to make this peace deal something resilient and to show our public and the region that peace is a precondition for the prosperity, we signed a couple of other documents at the White House last year on AI. semiconductor, energy, crossroads of peace. And now we have already comprehensive strategic partnership, which again, stemmed from the Washington Declaration.

We signed Minerals Agreement. We signed recently joint statement on Paxilica, that Armenia is becoming a trusted partner of US to work on energy, critical minerals, computing, semiconductors, to make the supply chains resilent for future AI systems. Okay. very interesting because this is my next question is going to be, you know, there's some people in America that believe that America is kind of overextended. Why America is all over the place,

has interests everywhere. And this is a new interest, right, somewhere far away from America. And why should, why should America be there? First of all, America, in that sense, is already in Armenia for, has been in Armenia for more than 20 years. So, when you look into the ecosystem of Armenian tech industry, you can notice interesting names. Nvidia, synopsis, national instruments, broadcast, Cisco, microchips, now global foundries, all of these big companies, they are in Armenia, some of them more than 20 years,

they are doing chip design, they are doing software development. So because of Armenia's highly educated workforce, highly developed AI and ICT ecosystem, And you mentioned this and I was reading that it's the number five user per capita of chat GPT in the world. Yes. That's something. Yeah. And recently, you know, I was in Silicon Valley. I had meetings with the headquarters in San Francisco with leadership of Open AI. Recently we signed agreement with Open AI. Starting from September, our public schools will be provided with OpenAIs' EDU platforms.

So we'll buying these platforms for our kids to, but it's not like, not only... But not to just write their exams for that right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not. It's mentorship. It's more mentorship. So these tools will help them to learn more about, so their studies. It's not about like cheating, no. I was just reading, I've been reading a lot.

I've been thinking about doing an episode on this because there's a lot of, there's a lot of cheating going on. I know, but there are filters, actually. this one of the main topics of discussions when I attended the Open AIS conference, all the American universities attended. And one of the important topics among the discussed topics was like how to avoid the cheating and how to really use the AI or chat GPT as an important tool for learning. And now they have filters and we are very proud to be among the first nations to be a formal an official partner of Open AI.

If I'm not mistaken, Armenia and Singapore are the first two countries that joined and signed agreement and will be official partners, and they already announced it's public disinformation. Let's talk a little bit about the Azerbaijan-Armenia relations.

And of course you mentioned there was this very, very massive toll from this war for many years. There was this very contentious region Goro Karabakh, which basically Azerbaijan is contained now. I know there's issues that Azerbaijan is interested in some constitutional changes and things like that, but just in general, right, since the peace declaration, what is the status of Azerbaijan and Armenia relations now, a year later?

Actually, when we are looking back to September Washington Declaration and what kind of achievement we have, what we have, I can say that we really advanced a lot and we really have very positive and very optimistic developments on the ground. Like, as I mentioned already, trade started. Trade, so five years ago, I'm not talking about like 10, 20, 30 years or five years ago, this is something even. difficult to imagine like Armenia would trade, would import oil, for example, from Azerbaijan. Or for example, we would buy some stuff from Kazakhstan or Russia and then use the railways of Azerbaijan to bring it to Armenia. Or that could be very difficult to imagine that there could be reciprocal visits of civil society representative, experts, both crossing the land and the air. And like visiting Armenia or Armenia.

experts, civil society representative, visiting Azerbaijan, or even some senior government representative, even, like the visit it discussed. You know, again, as a historian, again, the history teaches us how, for example, the nations decide to, like, rise or fall, and it depends on what kind of decisions the leadership are taking. So we decided that peace is a foundation for us. and we have to put forward the agenda of the peace. This is not only like the wish of political leadership.

This is a wish or strategy backed by the people. So when we asked our people, do you want we create a peace agenda? You have to give us a mandate. And we went to snap election in 2021. And the people say yes, we want peace. We're tired of this war and we want development. And for prosperity, we need peace. And we already confirmed with this argument after Washington Declaration,

having a couple of documents and now we on the ground have a lot of development projects. So that's why we asked, okay, after war, it's just a year after war, devastating war, you know. We went to snap election. And when you look again back to the history, it would be very difficult to find a case when the same authority can be re-elected, the same government re-elected, after being defeated in the war. But the people believed in this agenda of the peace, in this value of the peace, and our mission, and again the same government re-elected. Recently in June, we got another election. Again, people re-elected. The number one slogan, let's say, of the campaign was take care of the peace, protect the peace, give us another chance to institutionalize the peace.

Hey, you are talking about the constitutional change topic. This is something that we initiated it, when our prime minister put into forward the ideology of real Armenia. You know, historically, Armenia, all nations in the world. When you look, for example, you mentioned Poland. When you look at the current map of the Poland, I don't think that the current map of the Poland would be the same like 200 years ago, 300. It's been a lot of change over the years.

I think all maps in the world changed. And we say, no, we have to focus on, we should use out of illusions. Utopia is good always. You have to be realist. Yeah, the Republic of our, this is something international recognized and we have to take care of this piece of land. That's why we say in the constitution, which is sometimes the manifestation of the world order after the collapse of the Soviet Union,

when the nationalistic aspirations and the national movements were the key. Of course, Soviet Union collapse because of different reasons, But the nationalistic, like the national segment, national component layer was one of the influential and powerful layers. And in the constitution, there is a declaration of independence, the historical manifestation, which contradicts to current trends and current philosophy and current foreign policy, priorities of Armenia. And who says that the constitutions, there are like a sacred text that cannot. be changed. The constitutions, first of all, are about our vision, so our aspirations about our aspirations, and this should be aligned with all of these components. That's why we also started this internal negotiations, communications with the public. And you know, again, the same government

elected because of the support of this vision from the public, from citizens of Republic of Armenia. There are also diaspora and there are differences among Armenian diaspora. But in order to understand these differences, we have to understand what kind of identity, concept of identity they have

because there is no monolithic diaspora. The diaspora are different and the sources of diaspora formation are different. How close do you think you are to diplomatic relations with Azerbaijan? You know, we have really very well-established diplomatic dialogue, let's say. Sure. There is no diplomatic relations established yet, but there are very strong communication right now.

And this is important. I want to mention this one, like to emphasize, so that we always keep engaging bilaterally. Our Prime Minister, President Aliyev, so this is also thanks to their political maturity that they decided to speak with each other. Of course, both Armenia and Azerbaijan have friendly nations that would be happy to intermediate, to provide platform, etc. But our prime minister always told the best way of the support, just you can provide a room, a platform, and we together can discuss the fate of our nations. I'm happy that now there is really a nice development

and the commitment from both sides that we have to build a peaceful region. Again, but it's not easy process. it will take time. It will again, it requires dialogue, it requires mutual interest. We need to create a mutual interest.

It requires people to people contacts. For more than 70 years, Armenians and Azoress, they live together in the same system of the Soviet Union. Our elderly generation, I think it's more easy to engage with others, easier than for the current generation. But there is nothing impossible. Look at the European history.

Hundred years' war. 30 years war. So now they live peacefully, yeah? As a friends, as a brothers, they live together. But we need to fix the vision. We need to fix the foundation. For us, peace now is a foundation. And we will take care of the peace

and we will do everything to institutionalize that peace and to turn our region into really crossroads of peace, growth sorts of opportunities. So really, I mean, in a way for you, the United States provides some added stability and also, you know, investment, I guess. Is the combination of those things? Is that the core role in your mind? Yes. And the aims of the United States government are very honest. They really want, first of all, to support the peace. And, you know, this is one of the success stories like brokered by the US current administration, President Trump. This is, and so far both Azerbaijan and Armenia are very careful and like to keep this

peace because this is a value, but for Armenia and Azerbaijan I think, you know, the most important value are people and we have to provide opportunities for the development of the people not to create another war condition and we are small nations we have to take care of our human capital yeah so but having all of these american investments and the projects this will create a mutual and interconnected region for example we are speaking about AI about technology for numerous times we say announced that this envidia project in armenia okay this is in armenia this is for Armenia. This is for U.S. and Armenia corporations, companies. But who says that we can't cooperate with Azerbaijan? Who says that Azerbaijan cannot be part of this infrastructure? They have energy.

We have infrastructure, ecosystem, we have chips, we have specialists, we have competing opportunities. We can cooperate. So that's why, again, I want to come back to the concept of perpetual peace. like through the prism of Kantian philosophy. If you want to have the final piece, we have to go through different steps, create institutions, create mutual interests,

people-to-people-people contact. And then, yeah, we need some, we can do it overnight and we can do alone. We need partners, supporters. And we are very happy that the US decided to partner on this way. And I think this partnership will be the long-term partnership. We have good relations with the European Union as well.

So European Union is very supportive. And they communicated with Russia, with Iran, and the others say, you know, this is our sovereign decision. These are bilateral projects, also bilateral, but it has potential to be regional and inter-regional. And it's not against the third country. So, well, what has been the reaction of these different countries? This is, and I mean, specifically, you know, the U.S. and Iran are in a war right now, right?

And actually, Iran has been firing missiles into some of its, you know, basically countries that it never did before, let's say, right? Is this, is this, is some way concerning to, I mean, are you under threat this way? So there is no risk in the threat. And when the war between Iran and Russia, and first of all, we pray that. this war will end soon. So representative of a nation which being in a conflictual situation so I value the importance of the peace and I really hope that very soon we will have we can see peace deal between Iran and US. But so far there is no negative like influence and we don't see any kind of risk that this project

in the U.S. and Armenia will be under danger. And, you know, some political or geopolitical centers, they started to spread some information, pessimistic information that the priorities of the United States of America will be changing in the region. But immediately after such kind of informational attack, let's say the State Department made a clear announcement that the trip project and the strategic partnership with Armenia

is a priority for US and we will be continuing. And, you know, diplomacy is art of the possible. And the key is communication. Of course, when we announced about the trip project, we got some concerns from our neighbors, but we communicated, this is not against you. And we don't want to do something against some countries. This is for our national interest.

You have to respect our national. meters. So we share borders with Iran, you know. We have Armenian community in Iran and we historically had good relations. And we always got respect from West. And we always got respect from Iran when we are engaging with Western countries and with U.S., with European Union. And so far, there is no real, like, risk, and there is no problems that can like question the current projects that we have. But of course, we need more stable, more peaceful region in order to make our vision of crossroads of peace concept project possible.

You know, there's still this Russia-Ukraine war happening. What about how is Russia viewing all this? You know, we always put it clearly that we are not partner of Russia in this war. So we never engaged in any kind of, we never took the side. And again, we hope as representative of Armenia who suffered a lot because of the wars, we really want peace in the region. Because the peace between Russia and Ukraine will bring a lot of benefits to Armenia as well. And human security is also very important because we have half million Armenians living in Ukraine

and we have up to 2 million Armenians living in Russia. So some of them are the citizens of these respective countries, but we really hope that there will be peace. And Armenia always been like showed its hospitality to host both Russian people and Ukrainians during the war a lot of relicants, a lot of, like, tech companies in order to save their companies, to save, you know, some of them dedicated half of their life to create a company and because of the war, there was a risk that this company, that company that could be, like, destroyed. And they moved to Armenia that brought to benefit to Armenia an economy as well.

and since our culture are very open to receive others as well, so we really treated them as brothers and helped them to create opportunities, incentivize their activity in Armenia. Again, we hope that this war will be ending soon. Fascinating. Another thing that makes Armenia different from many of its, neighbors is that it's a Christian country.

Let me just tell me about that dynamic in the region. Yeah, Armenia is the first Christian nation in the world. Armenia adopted Christianity's state religion in 301 AD. And since the fourth century, Christianity became inseparable part of Armenia's national narrative. Since fourth century, so every sphere of the public sphere, public life in Armenia, influenced by the concepts and ideologies of Christianity and we are very proud of it still we have more than 2000 medieval and ancient manuscripts sorry monasteries churches cathedrals and the oldest cathedral in the world is in Armenia building 4th

century yes and this has become the Armenian Apostolic Church and Christianity always played an important role in preserving national identity, culture, when we didn't have stated. When you look in the history of Armenia, you can find several centuries that we didn't have stated. We lost the statehood. And Christianity and the values of Christianity and the writing culture again developed through the Christianity

helped us to preserve our culture, our national identity, and more importantly, our language. We're still using the language that the alphabet that we created in the 5th century. And when you visit Yerevan, in the downtown, there is one of the biggest museum of ancient manuscripts, research centers. And recently we signed agreement with Museum of Bible to create a permanent exhibition of Armenian Christian heritage in D.C. And to show the world, especially to younger generation of U.S., they can visit Armenia. We will be showcasing some of illustrated manuscripts, etc. But again, this is our wealth, and we are very proud of it to be a part of the world heritage.

And we have a lot of manuscripts about ancient Greco-Roman philosophy remained in Armenian, survived in Armenia. So we are like the Christianity also contributed to the world heritage. thanks to that Christianity that we created this writing culture and translation of like the books from the ancient authors into Armenian, then it happened that all of these manuscripts and this like knowledge survived in Armenian and we are very proud of it to convey to the future generations. And it reminds me a little bit of Poland who has had a similar situation, lacked sovereignty for a number of years. And it was the Christian faith that kind of maintained the structure, if you will, of the national. identity or helped at least considerably to do that. But when you look at the history, there is an interesting, like, pattern.

The Christianity and the church always became stronger when the state was stronger, when the kings, kingdoms, etc., they supported and kept the church stronger, independent from other influences, et cetera. So there are a lot of interconnections, like the institution of the statehood played the important role in making church and the Christianity resilient. So again, the Christianity of Armenia, it was one of the state projects. It was brought to Armenia by the support of one of the kings. Like it was by the decree of the king, like to follow the Christianity and to turn into Christianity

and to provide all the opportunities for the Christian intellectual activity. You know, the foundation, I think, the origin of Poland in 966, I'm just talking from, from a, you know, a similar, a comparable example. It was basically the baptism of Poland that created the Polish nation. That's the historic picture, right? The king took on the faith of his new wife. But how does that manifest today? still Armenian Apostolic Church and the Christianity plays an important we consider this is an important national institution and the government of Republic of Armenia right now doing a lot of projects to support the Armenian Apostolic Church and one of the examples I mentioned so the government

will be financing a project and a museum of Bible to create this platform to show the culture, Christian cultural heritage to the world and we have a couple of other big projects as well. So we value this is and we really consider this is an important national institution and we have to keep it safe

keep it safe from possible foreign interference. I mean the church to not let the foreign like actors to use church or even some of church fathers to not

politicize these institutions because we consider these institutions as real value, you know, from the fourth century to the 21st century, it always accompanied the Armenian nation. So always, you know, when you look back at the history, you can, during different period of history, you can see different countries, different kingdoms. They tried to create gaps between the nation and the faith, Christianity, church and the state. But, you know, I strongly believe that our society are quite mature and quite like they have wisdom to value this important institution and preserve this institution. Still, it's very like Armenian public, 99% are Christians, first of all, but we also very, like, fond of intercultural activity. We have mosque in the downtown of Yerevan.

We have synagogue. We have ethnic minorities, we have religious minorities. Even by our law, all of the representatives of the religious and ethnic minorities, they have seat in the parliament. But of course we can't deny the influence and the contribution of the Christianity to the development of Armenian nation. And sometimes they worked very closely with the state institutions. You mentioned earlier that you're a historian. Of course, I know that, and that's kind of an interesting background. Maybe just tell me a little bit about your background, you know, on the road to becoming.

I know you were the labor minister at one point, but your road to becoming the Armenian ambassador to the United States. So, yeah, I changed my professions many times, but I never changed my mission. So when you look at my career, it seems that like always change of professions. But I think this journey is about the same mission of serving the nation. So yeah, I began with a historian because I always believe that history is not a science about the past. This is science about the future. This is science about the patterns because societies always live patterns which accompany us throughout the centuries. And then, yeah, I became history professor and I have been teaching the American University of Armenia for about 10 years.

And the teaching history always kept you updated, kept your critical thinking updated, and always kept you engaging with the students to remind them about their identity, about their belonging, about their role in future projects. because history helps you to engage in the future. And when in 2018, a velvet revolution started in Armenia by the current government, so I was thinking, should I still continue to study history or to be part of history making? Because history was unfolding in front of our eyes, you know, it was about the new Armenia. Yeah, and I decided to join this revolutionary.

It's a velvet, nonviolent, peaceful revolution. I joined this team and got elected as a member of parliament and began to support the institutions and the reshaping of Armenia, creating a new Armenia, new democratic like reforms in Armenia. And we call this new Armenia because we really started a new process of transformation of different spheres. But we didn't know that history was preparing a surprise to us. Just after two years, we went into war, devastating war.

But again, we decided that, you know, despite all of these consequences, we have to look forward. Then I was interested with responsibilities to be minister of social affairs and the labor. And that ministry in that time was one of the main responsible state agencies, to reply to the challenges of war and to... Like the social costs and so forth. Social costs like refugees and people with disabilities, we have to... But you know, we were in a dilemma

to only do management of crisis or to do reforms. But we decided to do the boat. So we successfully, adequately replied to the challenges and we helped people to overcome this crisis situation, but also we fundamentally change couple of institutions of the social protection system in Armenia. So this process, when I engage, it's like reminded me there's an interesting, again, author, English author Arnold Toynbee, when he speaks about the advancement of civilization.

There's a civilization or system. It could be civilization, country. It develops not because of absence of crises, but because you have mature society or like leadership who decides to turn crisis into opportunity. When you provide critical and creative answers to the challenges and the crisis, you can turn this into opportunity. So, you know, disappointment and the social,

like psychological problems after war, there were so negative energy, let's say, after war. But we decided that we have to turn this negative energy and this crisis, into opportunity. And for that mission, we needed a concept of peace. That's why just a year after all of these problematic processes, we went to the SNAP elections. And in Washington, last year, we got this historical peace deal. And after that peace deal, I got appointed as an ambassador of Armenia to US. Well, very good to have you here. And, you know, we're up.

presenting this amazing history of this of this nation and of course the present and the future right well this has been an absolutely fascinating conversation uh perhaps a final thought as we finish up mr ambassador so again thank you for this opportunity and um i'm proud that i now have a unique chance to serve my nation in this beautiful country in this very historical period of time not only historical because of the peace deal that we are discussing but also because of the new chapter of the bilateral relations that we have we never before had such kind of like rich agenda bilateral agenda with US now my mission is to implement concrete projects our relations with US is not only about

like value-based because Armenia is a democracy and we are very proud of it, but also to create conflict projects which would bring mutual benefits both to Armenia and U.S. And again, these benefits we, I think, both Armenian government and the U.S. governments are ready to share with the regional players, with different regions in our part of the world. Well, Ambassador Narek, Makur-chan, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. It's my pleasure. Thank you all for joining Ambassador Narik Makruchun and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Yekjekielik.