South Asia and Beyond

Pandemic Is The Consequence, Not Cause: Armenia’s Physicist President

NEW DELHI: As countries the world over struggle to battle the Coronavirus, the President of Armenia, a small Asian nation that has a population of 3.5 million, has what he calls a “strange” take on the current scheme of things. “Where we are now is not because of the pandemic. The pandemic is not the cause but the consequence,” President Armen Sarkissian told StratNews Global Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale in an exclusive interview. “Many things in this world are not behaving in a classical way. Pandemics are one of the risks. Humanity has not realised that we live in a completely different world,” said Sarkissian, a physicist who believes ideas of quantum mechanics can work in social life and politics. To illustrate how people are becoming ‘quantum objects’ in their behaviour, he cited an example: 60-70 years ago, people were shocked when a President made a public address through radio or television. Now, Presidents communicate with people through Twitter. The President called upon Turkey to recognise the genocide of Armenian Christians committed on its soil over a century ago. It takes strength to admit one’s mistake, he says. President Sarkissian also thanked India and PM Modi for the supply of medicines to his country in the wake of the pandemic.

Nitin A Gokhale WhatsApp Channel

Nitin A. Gokhale

Left to himself, Nitin A. Gokhale would rather watch films and sports matches but his day job as a media entrepreneur, communications specialist, analyst and author, leaves him little time to indulge in his primary interests. Gokhale in fact started his career in journalism in 1983 as a sports reporter. Since then he has, in the past 41 years, traversed the entire spectrum across print, broadcast and digital space. One of South Asia's leading strategic analysts, Gokhale has moved on from conventional media to become an independent media entrepreneur running three niche digital platforms—BharatShakti, StratNewsGlobal and Interstellar—besides undertaking consultancy and training workshops in communications for military institutions, corporates and individuals. Now better known for his conflict coverage and strategic analyses, Gokhale has lived and reported from India’s North-east for 23 years between 1983 and 2006, been on the ground at Kargil in the summer of 1999 and also brought us live coverage from Sri Lanka’s Eelam War IV between 2006-2009.    An alumni of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Hawaii, Gokhale now writes, lectures and analyses security and strategic matters in Indo-Pacific and travels regularly to US, Europe, Australia, South and South-East Asia to take part in various seminars and conferences. Gokhale is also a popular visiting faculty at India’s Defence Services Staff College, the three war colleges, India's National Defence College, College of Defence Management and the IB’s intelligence school.

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