By Andranik Aboyan
The recent dispatch from the Caucasus, detailing the arrival of fuel from the state monopolies of Azerbaijan into the Armenian market—facilitated by the high-ranking functionaries of the current administration—serves as a brutal confirmation of the cold, mechanical logic that governs our world. For those who look beneath the surface of diplomatic speeches and flag-waving, there is no “new era” here; there is only the continued turning of a global engine that treats human life as a mere lubricant for the movement of goods.
Mega Trade, part of the Sil Capital group controlled by Khachatur Sukiasyan’s family, was the first company to publicly confirm it bought part of the SOCAR shipment. That matters because Sukiasyan is not an ordinary importer: he is a sitting MP from the ruling Civil Contract party whose business empire expanded dramatically after 2018, including through state-linked opportunities. When a government frames a politically sensitive deal as “peace,” but refuses to name the beneficiaries until one of its own insiders does it for them, the message is clear: this “peace dividend” is being routed through a protected circle. The public is asked to celebrate the train; the margins are reserved for the connected.
There is a historical blindness that afflicts those who manage the levers of wealth. Like the ancient sailors of Chios who, for a few silver drachmae, sold the very navigational secrets to the pirates who would later sack their city, the modern commercial layer is structurally incapable of looking beyond the current fiscal quarter. Alternatively consider the Dutch “Mother Trade” during the Eighty Years’ War: the merchants of Amsterdam, driven by the absolute necessity of the profit margin, continued to sell gunpowder and grain to the Spanish Empire—the very power that was at that moment attempting to crush the Dutch Republic. To the merchant, the survival of the “state container” is a secondary concern to the immediate health of the firm.
In our context, the Armenian commercial layer acts as a parasitic passenger on the state. They will drain the social body of its resources today to secure a favorable contract, even if that transaction erodes the long-term security of the very territory they inhabit. If the state structure were to collapse tomorrow under the weight of its own economic concessions, the Sukiasyans of the world would simply move their capital to a new ledger in a different city. Capital has no loyalty to the “homeland” it occupies; it is a nomadic force that seeks only the highest rate of return.
We see here a fascinating, albeit tragic, paradox of the “short-term interest.” The figures facilitating this trade—the high-ranking intermediaries and the state-aligned entrepreneurs—are currently sawing off the very branch upon which they sit. They seek to extract immediate profit by strengthening the economic hand of a regional rival, ignoring the fact that if the state structure they inhabit were to collapse under that rival’s pressure, their own “privileged positions” and “exclusive contracts” would vanish overnight.
This is not a “choice” they make out of malice, but a necessity imposed by the system. The modern manager of capital is like a man in a sinking life-raft who begins to sell the rubber of the boat to a passing ship because the price is too good to refuse. The logic of the market demands that the merchant realize a profit today, even if that profit funds the artillery that will destroy his warehouse tomorrow.
There is a historical blindness that afflicts those who manage the levers of wealth. Like the ancient sailors of Chios who, for a few silver drachmae, sold the very navigational secrets to the pirates who would later sack their city, the modern commercial layer is structurally incapable of looking beyond the current fiscal quarter.
We see here a fascinating, albeit tragic, paradox of the “short-term interest.” The figures facilitating this trade—the high-ranking intermediaries and the state-aligned entrepreneurs—are currently sawing off the very branch upon which they sit. They seek to extract immediate profit by strengthening the economic hand of a regional rival, ignoring the fact that if the state structure they inhabit were to collapse under that rival’s pressure, their own “privileged positions” and “exclusive contracts” would vanish overnight.
This is not a “choice” they make out of malice, but a necessity imposed by the system. The modern manager of capital is like a man in a sinking life-raft who begins to sell the rubber of the boat to a passing ship because the price is too good to refuse. The logic of the market demands that the merchant realize a profit today, even if that profit funds the artillery that will destroy his warehouse tomorrow.
We are often told that the state is a fortress, a “homeland” that protects its own. Yet, this fuel shipment reveals the state to be less of a fortress and more of a transit station. When the Prime Minister’s office speaks of “mutual trust,” they are describing the trust between two sets of accountants who have found a way to bypass the “inconvenience” of borders.
Historically, this is an old story. During the height of the Italian Wars, the merchants of the great city-states would routinely sell arms and grain to the very mercenary armies currently besieging their neighbors, provided the gold was of the right weight. They believed they could manage the threat through the ledger. They were wrong. Once the economic balance shifts too far, the merchant is no longer a “partner”; he becomes a subject, or a memory.
The “unnamed intermediaries” mentioned in the reports are the physical embodiment of this lack of loyalty. They represent the “gray zone” where the national identity of the fuel—and the nationalist rhetoric of the politicians—simply dissolves into the universal language of the price tag. For the fuel-monopoly in Baku and the importers in Yerevan, the only “territory” that matters is the market share.
It is a mistake to view this as a failure of “patriotism” or a lapse in “governance.” To do so suggests that the system could be “fixed” by better men or more “loyal” businessmen. On the contrary, the system is working exactly as designed. The social and political apparatus is not the master of the economy; it is its servant.
The current administration, by facilitating these “peaceful” shipments, is not leading a movement toward regional stability. It is simply following the path of least resistance carved out by the needs of the regional monopolies. They are like a pilot who believes he is steering a plane, when in reality, the plane is on an automated descent toward the nearest refueling station, regardless of who owns the runway.
The reality for the common person—the one who will eventually buy this fuel at the pump—is that they are paying for their own vulnerability. They provide the profit that secures the short-term luxury of the ruling layer, while that same profit builds the economic leverage of a power that remains fundamentally hostile.
Against this backdrop, the “democratic debate” is a distraction. Whether the fuel is touted as a symbol of “peace” or denounced as a “betrayal,” the outcome is the same: the wealth of the community is being drained to feed a cycle of accumulation that has no regard for the survival of the community itself. The only way to break this cycle is not through “smarter” trade deals or more “patriotic” merchants, but through a fundamental realization that as long as the pulse of society is measured by the profit of the few, the future of the many will always be up for sale.
