I want to congratulate all of you, and especially Tony Moroyan and the committee that succeeded in attracting you here for what can only be described as a gathering of visionaries and futurists. 

This is the second time in a week that I’ve had a chance to address a large, organized group of specialists from Armenia and the diaspora, together. Last Saturday morning, in Yerevan, I spoke to 1700 health care professionals who were exploring ways of bringing their know-how to Armenia’s health care institutions. 

I’m not a physician. Nor am I an IT professional, but I flew 20 hours to tell you what I told them:  partnership among specialists and professionals is the way of the future for Armenia-Diaspora relations.

Fifteen years and more have passed since we gained, or re-gained, independence. Since we are living this history and not watching it from afar or reading about it, the full import of this transformational event is not yet fully clear for us.

Of course, there are already various assessments of this period. But there is one achievement that is unquestionable: despite the most dire, most restrictive, most acute social and economic conditions, to everyone’s great astonishment, not only did we survive, but we competed with our neighbors, and, in many areas, we came out ahead of them. Armenian statehood is consolidated. We are on the path of democracy. We do have an economy that is consistently rated open and liberal. Each of these triumphs is a source of pride.

Our triumphs, as well our failures, were created by all of us, together, inherited by us all, together, and like it or not, will serve as the basis of the agenda we develop together for our country’s development in the next period of our history.  No group should take credit for our successes, no group should be blamed for our mistakes.

To move forward, we must acknowledge two important, new realities. First, domestically, all that we have achieved we owe to reforms that were the less controversial changes, particularly from the perspective of the economic and political elites and their interests. Let’s not forget that those reforms were the most obvious. They succeeded due first and foremost to the resiliency of our people, faith and commitment in the future, and their hard work.Now, we have completed and exhausted those initial, straightforward transformations. Today, we need additional, deeper, indispensable, second-generation reforms which are more difficult to identity, formulate and adopt.

Second, regionally, we managed to compete with and beat our neighbors in this decade and a half when our neighbors were still in the process of seeking their advantages. Today, the situation is strikingly different. Today, our neighbors’ strengths are no longer just potential tools; they are already exploiting their real assets and reaping the benefits. Therefore, now that the nature of our competition has changed, Armenia must exercise the resiliency that is part of our national character to find or create new resources, in order to preserve our favorable position.

Some of those new resources will come from Armenia, some from the Diaspora.  None of those are under the earth, our resources are around the earth. Groups such as this are part of those new resources. You represent nationhood without borders. Or, more accurately, across borders.  For centuries, the idea of our nationhood was uncoupled from both statehood and from territory. Today, we have statehood and we have territory. But our traditions, history, identity and connections – and of course potential -- extend beyond that territory. “You don't belong to a place,” William Saroyan once wrote, “until one of your family has been placed into its ground.” With that logic, we belong everywhere.

The Diaspora expands the geographic reach of our nation. It also expands our capacity. We thrive on synthesis. We soak up what others have to offer and adapt it for our own use. In turn, we create, innovate, contribute to the pool of knowledge that is modern civilization. In this increasingly knowledge-based global economy, the wealth of a nation is determined by its capacity for innovation.

Our challenge – Armenia’s and Diaspora’s – is to enhance our capacity for innovation. Let’s use the occasion of this gathering to commit to nurturing the innovators of today and tomorrow.

First, we must invest thought and money in education: Capitalism has mutated in a way that puts a premium on a knowledge economy, on technologies, on individual skills and on flexibility in both labor and business. It is education that is going to produce self-reliant citizens and feed the knowledge-based economy that is the basis of the new capitalism. If our children used to learn for the sake of learning, now they must learn to survive. Our schools and institutions must do more than teach dates and figures, they must teach how to turn knowledge into an asset in order to enable us to compete in a globalized, shrunken world. 

To talk about education today means talking about IT and the internet, about bringing those resources to every school child – in and out of Armenia. Yes, even out of Armenia, because the Diaspora, too, needs educational tools that will disseminate and re-enforce our common culture. An online public sphere has already been created, thanks to Groong, and to a whole host of thoughtful, contentful sites, voluntarily maintained from Sweden to Orange County, which have managed to link our dispersed peoples, double and triple our population, and provide an easy, noncommittal, inexpensive avenue for action, without legislation, elections, taxation, transport burdens or costs. These, together with electronic media, offer new resources and new disciplines for the construction of our new modern selves. Together, we have the opportunity to imagine the world we want for ourselves tomorrow and to create it.

In Armenia, within the framework of the Rural Development Program which we announced at the last Armenia Diaspora Conference, we want to enable comprehensive development in our vulnerable border villages. The borders of our country, today, are dependent on villagers who don’t have water or gas, electricity or fertilizer. They also have never seen a cursor and can’t speak English.

We have a lot of work to do. Information technologies must play a significant role in our program to bring sustainable rural development to Armenia. For that, we need you. Don’t build school buildings or construct water pipes. There are already generous donors who will do that. YOU help to devise a program that will provide our village students with computer skills.

Second, to enhance our capacity for innovation, we must commit thought and money to research and development. This is a neglected area of Armenia-Diaspora cooperation. We have dozens of invaluable programs to help our orphans, but not nearly enough to support research and development. Institutionally, the cohesion, the linkages that are required between science, technology, education, economy and society are weak.

I ask you to develop partnerships with our scientists to enhance their ability to innovate. Let’s harness our age-old capacity for individual creativity, feed it and channel it back into our society. Some of the best of Armenia’s scientific and technological community are here today and they will tell you, as I will, that if we have brain circulation, we won’t need to worry about brain drain. If we can support and nurture peer-reviewed, peer-selected researchers and partner them with those with a deep knowledge of the home country, advanced western education, exposure to western management practice, experience in business, good governance and ethical conduct – we will reap achievements disproportionate to our reality.

Dear Friends,

Armenia has come full circle. Two years ago, we surpassed the production capacity of the Soviet level. I’m sure you’ve been told by other speakers from Armenia that we’ve been, for seven years, experiencing double digit economic growth. The prospects are promising and we believe this trend will continue. All this, as I said, was possible, because of our people’s commitment, but also because of the domestic and regional stability that we were able to maintain all these years.

Indeed, despite the unresolved conflict that is a part of our reality, we have not andwe will not allow that state of no-peace no-war to guide our history. This determination has driven our growth of the last decade.  Just as we will not allow an unrepentant Turkey to determine our agenda, we will also not limit our choices and options by the lack of a willingness on the part of Azerbaijan to enter into a lasting agreement. They do not want to acknowledge either the past, or the present. As a result, they are not interested in discussing a common future. The mental state of war persists in Azerbaijan. In Armenia and Karabakh, I am proud to say that OUR outlook is towards the future, towards an eventual peace, towards progress, stability and prosperity. 

Dear Friends,

With determination, pragmatism and most of all, unity, we can develop adopt the right policies to identify and utilize new resources for the common good, and to assure our continued and comprehensive development.

If yesterday, we dared to struggle and survive, today, we must dare to prevail.