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Ian Bremmer: no war over NK, same challenges for Genocide resolution

Prominent political risk consultant offers Armenia, regional outlook for 2009

by Emil Sanamyan

Published: Thursday February 12, 2009

Ian Bremmer, 2d from right with, from left, Pres. Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian of Armenia, and Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki of Iran at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday Jan. 29. AP Photo: Michel Euler

And it is appropriate for the Armenian diaspora to push for what they feel is incredibly important to them. But it is also appropriate for the Obama administration to resist that, because Turkey is an important country. And that is healthy for a democracy.

Openness, stability, and risks

AR: In your 2006 book The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall, you argued that there is a peculiar relationship between a country's stability and its openness toward the flow of people, goods, and information (not necessarily being a democracy). Sometimes it seems that Armenia is just open enough to frequently find itself at the bottom of this curve, do you agree with that?

IB: No, Armenia is reasonably closed at this point and it pretty much has to be in the present environment. Armenia is a country that lost about thirty percent of its population in the 1980s and 90s, some of the most pro-globalization, pro-entrepreneurial citizens of that country, because they had opportunities outside of Armenia.

So it is not a surprise in that context that the Armenian government is focused on stability. They fought a war against Azerbaijan and their closest relationship is with authoritarian Russia. It is a very difficult geopolitical position and no surprise it finds itself on the left side of the curve.

AR: Overall, is the so-called Putin model of authoritarian leadership the best possible fit for Armenia?

IB: Not long-term. Being a small country with a very active diaspora, Armenia could open up in a relatively short time, developing ties and trade with Turkey, and move toward settlement with Azerbaijan. And if Georgia remains less stable, Armenia becomes a better option for things like pipelines. A small country like that with a relatively small amount of money gets a lot of optionality. But we are not there yet.

AR: And you have a new book coming out in the next couple of weeks, The Fat Tail: The Power of Political Knowledge for Strategic Investing. What is that about?

IB: The book tries to explain how politics increasingly affect the market. The notion of the "fat tail" is that so many of the things that affect us in the global economy today are things that we think are very, very unlikely to happen, but they actually happen much more frequently.

A lot of people say that these things cannot be predicted. And what I am saying in the book is that increasingly the biggest risks in the market are not economic but political in nature. And I am trying to help people understand what these political risks are all about.

Top 10 risks of 2009 according to Eurasia Group

(Eurasia Group's Jan. 5, 2009 release)

1. Congress: how the U.S. reacts to the economic crisis

2. South Asia security: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India

3. Iran/Israel: Nuclear Iran to shift regional balance

4. Russia: economic problems and tension with the West

5. Iraq: reduced U.S. presence to lead to spike in violence

6. Venezuela: Chavez to fight to retain power

7. Mexico: War on drugs taking a violent turn

8. Ukraine: economic implosion and political bickering

9. Turkey: Islamists v. secularists; drift from the West

10. South Africa: elections and political instability

Red herrings:

China: no domestic unrest and resilient economy

The Persian Gulf: Petro-states to weather the oil prices

Climate change: Issue to take back seat to economic crisis

Brief description for each item inserted after colon is the Reporter's summary of Eurasia Group findings.

connect:
 www.eurasiagroup.net