In Russia the legislation draft was viewed as a sanction of US administration to interfere in the internal policy of other states. The authors of the document do not conceal that their initiative is mainly aimed at protecting the political interests of Unites States and not the civil rights of the people of countries that are considered undemocratic by Washington. «The promotion of democracy and freedom is simply inseparable from the long term security of the United States,” said Senator McCain. «When the security of New York or Washington or California depends in part of the degree on freedom in Riyadh or Baghdad or Cairo, we must promote democracy building and society improvement in those countries”, John McCain stated. It is quite easy to guess what the senator implies by saying “society improvement” because he mentions Georgia, Ukraine, Iraq and Palestinian autonomy as countries where Americans managed to achieve “improvement”.
The “Advance democracy act” supposes allocation of 300 million dollars for the “support to democracy abroad”. It is planned to establish in Washington a special structure aimed at coordinating “democracy producing” in developing countries. The “office of Democracy Movements and Transitions at the State Department” will be in charge for supporting regimes that are convenient for the USA. Separate “Regional Democracy Hubs” are planned to be established at American embassies in all those countries that Americans consider undemocratic. Up to now the role of those structures has been carried out locally by the departments of US National democratic institute. Such a department is functioning also in Yerevan and actively cooperates with more “progressive” oppositional parties. After the arrival of new specialists from Washington the tactics of “instruction” of Armenian oppositionists will possibly change.
It is likely that the leader of oppositional “Justice” bloc Stepan Demirchyan took into account the initiative of Lieberman and McCain mentioning about his readiness to cooperate with the US National democratic institute on his Tuesday press conference. Maybe this is a peculiar signal about the ability of “Justice” bloc to justify the expectations of Americans. After all 300 millions is not a small sum and even the hundredth part of that sum will be enough for supporting “velvet revolutions” that are so much spoken of by Armenian oppositionists.
However, there are no grounds to suppose that Armenia is one of those countries “democratization” of which is among the priority tasks of United States. The authors of the legislation clearly specify in what countries they want to “introduce democracy”. In his speech at the Senate Joseph Lieberman only mentioned that in the world there are at least 45 countries that really need to learn from the West what democracy is. It is likely that the matter concerns the list made by the international “Freedom House” organization. Armenia is not included in that list. From CIS countries there are only Russia, Byelorussia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
It seems that the answer to the question where the USA is going to stir up “velvet revolutions” should be sought in the talk between George Bush and the leader of Ukrainian revolutionists Vladislav Kaskiv. At the end of the conversation the leader of all-Ukrainian “Pora” non-governmental organization that brought Victor Yushenko to power said that the US President has blessed him to create an expert center for supporting democratic movements in neighboring countries – Russia, Byelorussia, Moldova and Azerbaijan. Armenia was not mentioned. It should noticed that after the meeting of Bush and Kaskiv “Pora” organization sent letters to presidents of several CIS countries warning about upcoming “orange revolutions”. In the cabinet of Ilham Aliev the letter spread panic and Kaskiv was immediately announced persona non grata in Azerbaijan. Meanwhile the President of Armenia has nothing to worry about since he has not received any letters from Kiev…
