Status Updates From The Small States Club: How ...

“And yet a cool-headed analysis made it clear that the result of the war was not an event; it was a process: the culmination of twenty-five years of failure to turn victory into peace.”


I wish I could staple this sentence into some people’s heads.

Tomorrow, I will finish this book.

“Part of the reason I have meditated on this ugly aspect of Switzerland’s recent economic history is because it would be neglectful of me, as an Armenian, to sidestep it”

“My first visit to Israel was a mixture of frustration, sadness, admiration and a touch of envy. Here was a country that had so much in common with Armenia—an ancient nation, a tiny dot on the map, determined to survive, to thrive, and punching so high above its weight.”
If only Armen knew that I have had the same thoughts as him.

“Forty-three years later, I decided to give Nouneh the church wedding of which we—like countless other Armenian couples—had cruelly been deprived”
😢

“Large states are evidently failing us. Small smart states, such as Singapore, give us reason for hope.”

“It is sobering to remember that the most consequential and wasteful post-9/11 military campaigns that plunged substantial segments of the world into chaos and carnage were waged by large powers with the imprimatur or acquiescence of international organisations.”

“Even as they rejoiced in their freedom, Armenians, with their inimitable gift for gallows humour, asked if they were not hurtling from the Space Age to the Stone Age.”

“Gorbachev pulled out a Soviet-made pen from his pocket to sign his letter of resignation, but the pen did not work—a final demonstration of the communist enterprise’s decrepitude.”

“It was the Armenian quest for self-determination that initiated the unravelling of the Soviet Union.”

I need to know if this is objective fact or just the opinions of a proud man.