Warning: This is a rush transcript generated automatically and may contain errors.
Jeffrey: Hello and welcome to this Conversations on Groong episode. Today, we’re talking with the world famous scholar Jeffrey Sachs, who is a renowned economist, a recognized public policy expert, and a professor of sustainable development, poverty alleviation, and global economic policy. We’ll talk about the recent escalation in Syria, as well as his impressions about the recent trip that he had to Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Hovik: Folks, we think you will enjoy the show greatly, so please stay tuned. But before we begin, a quick reminder.
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Jeffrey: Professor Jeffrey Sachs, welcome to the show.
Asbed: Great to be with you. Thank you so much.
Hovik: We’re thrilled to have you, Professor Sachs. Professor Sachs, you were recently in Armenia, and we’re eager, of course, to hear your experiences. But we initially wanted, in fact, to focus on Armenia. But world events compel us to take a short detour, if you don’t mind.
We’d like to begin our discussion with the escalation in Syria. Just as there seemed to be a hope for respite in Lebanon with the ceasefire deal, which, by the way, is being violated daily by Israel. Terrorist groups, some of whom enjoy the support, if not patronage of Turkey, Israel and the U.S., commenced an attack in Syria, taking control of Syria. Aleppo and the surrounding towns and areas.
Thus, a six-year fragile peace that was agreed upon by Turkey, Iran, and Russia in Astana in 2017 was violated, increasing the instability in the region as if that is what the region needs. But in your opinion, is this attack, is the timing of it, which occurred immediately after the ceasefire deal, purely coincidental? What can you tell us about that?
Asbed: I think these sequences of events are rarely coincidental. It’s also obvious, but important to state that our governments rarely tell us the truth about any of this. So we don’t actually have a definitive narrative. The United States government prevaricates or lies every day.
So you have to try to figure out around the corners, under the rug, over the parapet what’s really going on. Of course, in the case of Syria, the U.S. and Israel And at times Turkey and at times the Saudis have all been conspiring for at least 13 years to bring down Bashar al-Assad. So this is a pretty typical U.S. regime change operation that started in 2011 in earnest. When you have U.S. regime change operations in the Middle East, almost always look to Israel as the underlying motivator of this because the Israel lobby in the United States is very powerful, meaning that the U.S. political system generally does Israel’s bidding.
There are, I should add, two reasons for that. One is the influence of the Israel lobby. And the second is a widespread belief among power elites that Israel is America’s beachhead in the Middle East. And so this is part of American power system, not just influenced by Israel.
So there are mixed motives, but generally the rule is the U.S. is trying to overthrow governments and generally at the behest of Israel. And this is the underlying story for Syria. What’s surprising is in the current context is that this region, Aleppo, has been relatively quiet for years. The violence in Syria has been ongoing in different places.
The government troops apparently basically disappeared or faded away when this uprising started. It seems clear that there was a lot of preparation, intelligence operations, perhaps bribery of key units in Russia. the Syrian military. But this was a planned operation. The timing could have been triggered easily by the events more generally in the region and also in Ukraine.
Russia’s tied down. Iran is a bit on the back foot right now. Hezbollah certainly has been bloodied. And so Given all of this, the US, Israel, and Turkey may have judged for each of their distinctive reasons that this was a time to move.
Generally, with an operation like this, it’s not the insurgents themselves that are the determining cause or the determining timing. It’s generally the regional powers or the United States or a combination of the two that is determining these events and their timing.
Hovik: You mentioned that each of these players has distinct reasons and we can guess, for instance, for Israel and consequently the U.S., what those reasons may be. But what is the need for Turkey? Why would Turkey participate in this thing?
Asbed: I think Turkey’s engagement in Syria has been a big mistake of the government basically now for more than a dozen years. Of course, Turkey is one of the regional powers, and there has been competition in the Middle East of Turkey and the Saudis for key influence. Once in a while, Egypt has been active in that competition, though not so much right now. And it said that Turkey wants to expand its influence.
After all, this was all Ottoman territory at one point a century ago. And the Turkish interest in Sunni leadership is real but there’s a very specific part to this also which is that the role of the kurds which the turks regard as directly threatening to turkey’s internal stability plays a role because there’s a significant Kurdish population, especially in northeast Syria. And the United States invoked or supported the Kurds to be a fighting force to Turkey’s chagrin. And Turkey got even more militarily involved in Syria, in part to try to shut down what Turkey regards as a first order threat to its internal stability.
And in this case, the U.S. supports the Kurds. Turkey regards the Kurds as almost a terrorist insurgency. And so the two sides, which have been on the same side in Syria of trying to bring down Bashar al-Assad, are in practical terms often on opposite sides in terms of the tactics of what’s happening in Syria. I think it’s fair to say Syria is a playground, if I could put it that way, of regional powers who all play at war, but they kill a lot of people.
So I don’t want to be misunderstood. But they treat Syria as an object, not as a subject of interest. They treat it as a place to pursue their geopolitics rather than a concern of direct well-being for any of these countries. In other words, the US doesn’t care about Syria.
Israel certainly doesn’t care about Syria. Turkey certainly doesn’t care about Syria. Nobody cares about Syria except to fight their battles there.
Jeffrey: Yeah. Do you think that this current flare up is related to the war in Ukraine at all? To start a second front?
Asbed: We are seeing multiple fronts right now suddenly flare up in the last weeks of the Biden administration. So there’s definitely a front in Georgia. There is the front in Ukraine. There is in Syria.
There is the mystery of this failed coup in Korea, which actually has some Ukrainian linkage as well, because the Ukrainian defense minister was in Seoul just a few days ago, and the president of Korea, the one that launched the coup, wanted to make arms shipments to Ukraine, but was blocked by the parliament, the parliament that he tried to overthrow yesterday. So even Ukraine may be a dark part of the story in the Korean case. There’s also unrest in Romania, given the elections. There’s talk of coming unrest again in Moldova.
Generally, This is not a coincidence. We have CIA operations all over the place. They like to turn up the heat on Russia, around Russia’s periphery. They don’t exactly announce what they’re doing.
If you say such a thing, like I just said, oh, everyone jumps up and down. Oh, you’re dreaming, Mr. Sachs. I unfortunately am not dreaming.
I know nightmares can be real. And I believe U.S. foreign policy is such a nightmare most of the time. So I don’t think that these are coincidences, nor do I think that it’s coincidental that it’s happening right now. Russia’s winning on the battlefield in Ukraine and the deep state in the United States and in Europe is very much aware that Trump is coming into office and they’re trying, I think, whatever they can to make it more difficult or impossible for Trump to extricate the US from this war.
And so this surge of regional unrest, again, Georgia, Syria, Moldova, uh romania ukraine korea i don’t think it’s a coincidence i think it’s an end game of the biden administration and the u.s deep state which basically has covert operations in all of those countries pretty extensively and is able to foment unrest on demand. It’s pretty clear this is happening in Georgia, but I think it’s happening more generally.
Hovik: Yeah. And Professor Sachs, the last question on this topic, as you said, it appears that the attack took Russia, Iran, and even the Syrian government by surprise, and Iranian proxy forces are now being committed to help the Syrian regime, and the Russian Air Force is supporting them. While it’s clear that this attack couldn’t have happened without extensive support, preparation from the West and sponsorship by Turkey, after all, all these terrorist groups were clearly trained, there’s a history of them being supported by Turkey…
The readout from a recent phone conversation between Putin and Erdogan stopped short of the Kremlin accusing Turkey and instead underscored the need for cooperation and to normalize the situation, I guess. And Iranian statements were also a little bit diplomatic, especially the foreign ministers’ meeting. Is this a signal, in your opinion, that Russia and Iran are willing to accept a change in the status quo and potentially urge the Syrian government to negotiate and give concessions to Turkey?
Asbed: Of course, we don’t know, and I doubt it in some way, but I do think it is right that… especially in this group, Russia does not want a harsh break with Turkey right now. This is a very delicate moment where Turkey on the whole has been, I’d say, constructive and not simply parroting the US hard line when it comes to the Black Sea and Ukraine. Turkey, after all, was a very legitimate and capable mediator in 2022, and it continues to play the role of open relations with Russia. And we should also, of course, appreciate that Iran has joined the BRICS and Turkey has applied to join the BRICS.
That’s extremely significant. This means that geopolitically, Turkey absolutely is straddling east and west. It’s a NATO member, after all. But a NATO member that has applied to join the BRICS, it also is in competition with Iran, with the Saudis and so forth.
But on the other side, it wants cooperation with them. So I think when you view this triumvirate of Russia, Iran and Turkey, Their interests are not aligned, but they don’t want to break. These are not enemies. These are jostling pieces on the board, but they are not enemies.
And I don’t think that Russia is about to throw Assad overboard. It seems quite clear that’s not the case.
Jeffrey: Professor Sachs, recently you traveled to Azerbaijan to attend COP29. Your University of Columbia was involved in a number of panels as well at the conference. Also visiting COP29 were US congressmen. For example, Representative Frank Pallone and Ed Markey were there.
But Aliyev outright refused to meet with Pallone, who in fact had to cut his trip short because of the attacks against him. How were your interactions with the Azerbaijani government? Did you have any problems? Were there also opportunities for you to discuss things like the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations with any high-level officials?
Asbed: No, I actually didn’t have any discussions with the the Azerbaijan government during this trip. In fact, I think none at all. I went for COP29. This was not a trip about Azerbaijan issues or Azeri-Armenian issues in any way at all.
I go to every COP. By the way, some of our Armenian students at Columbia objected, why are you there? You shouldn’t be there. And I explained it. wouldn’t even cross my mind, frankly, not to go because this was not an Azerbaijan meeting anyway.
This is a UNFCCC meeting. In other words, it’s a meeting of 196 signatories to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. I go to all of them. They’re always a bit disappointing, by the way, because they don’t accomplish very much.
But you go because they’re a global meeting. This is not going because it’s an Azerbaijan meeting. So just to be clear about that, this is not about regional politics. In the context of the COP29, I, in fact, had no meetings that I can recall.
I’m pretty sure none at all with the Azerbaijan government.
Jeffrey: Right. But I do have a little bit of a beef with that. Not with you, certainly. In fact, I do wish that you had a hand in the negotiations because it would have been beneficial knowing your influence.
Asbed: Well, they don’t want me anywhere close to the negotiations, believe me. Right. Because I would tell them what they really should be doing.
Jeffrey: On the on the cop side, though, Azerbaijan is a, you know, it’s a dictatorship. It suppresses free speech, kills opposition members, journalists. And, you know, we all know it ethnically cleansed all of Nagorno-Arapa from 150,000 of its indigenous people. It’s a petro state.
It’s a mega polluter. I’m just a little surprised that the United Nations is actually willing to consider holding the COP conferences at venues like this. What do you think about this?
Asbed: Yeah, I have a different view. I’m a 25-year veteran at a dollar a year, I have to emphasize. I volunteer my time and I never even saw the 25 bucks of the last 25 years. But basically, I’m a UN veteran. worker and supporter.
And there are 193 countries in the UN and many of them don’t like each other. The distinctions among them are that they all point fingers at each other. The US attacks half the world as dictatorships and so forth. But I know many of the flaws of the United States, so I find myself often regretting that the United States isn’t solving its own problems, but rather just pointing fingers at other countries’ problems.
And I say all of this because To my mind, we have to make the world work. And the UN is not a club of like-minded countries. It actually is the set of world nation states. In fact, I want another one.
I want Palestine to become a nation state as soon as possible to become the 194th member. And so I’m very much against that. the us versus them mentality. All governments are flawed. Almost all governments that I know have a lot of corruption, a lot of hard edges to them.
My own country, I’m a very outspoken critic of US foreign policy because I feel it’s very violent. It’s phony. really dislike our deep state. I dislike regime change operations, color revolutions, intrusions in other countries, politics and so forth. So I don’t believe actually that in the context of the UN, our main job should be don’t have a meeting here or have a meeting here, or that one’s beyond the pale.
This one is the right one. I don’t get involved. They don’t ask me who should host the next meeting and so forth. I’m not involved at all in any of that.
But my general view is that we really at a climate change meeting should talk about climate change and that that is the agenda. I’m a big supporter that meetings like this are basically run by the secretariat of the treaty. They’re not really run by the host country, though. The host is the chair of the conference.
The meeting properly should be run by a secretariat that has on its board 196 signatories, by the way, in essence. And that’s how I view how I view events like this.
Jeffrey: No, yeah, we were really disappointed because last year when Armenia withdrew its veto about holding the COP29 in Baku, the hopes were that it would advance some level of trust and goodwill between the countries and, you know, maybe that would advance the so-called negotiations. That didn’t happen. You know, I think we got, Hobi, correct me, we got, what, five or six prisoners of war that came back?
Hovik: There were still like hostages being held in Baku.
Jeffrey: People who should have been sent back in 2020. But let me move on because I know we have Professor Sachs for so little time. From Baku, Professor, you went to Yerevan to talk with the students at the AUA. We’ll include all these links, by the way, in our show notes for people who want to see that interview.
We’ll put them in the show notes. So what was the purpose of your brief visit to Armenia? And also the same question, did you have any interactions with the Armenian government about anything, including climate talks?
Asbed: Yeah, the purpose was that for far too long, I had never visited Armenia. And so when we were going to Baku, I said to my wife… let’s visit Armenia. And then came a wonderful invitation to come, and so we made it work. I have to say, because it violates my economist’s sense of efficiency, to get from Baku to Yerevan, as everybody knows, is not easy.
We flew I think 10 or 11 hours of flight plus layover to go to the Emirates and then fly back instead of the one hour that it should be. Of course, I’m not naive to the geopolitics, but This is one of the costs of the geopolitics, that neighbors aren’t connected other than by war, distrust, even hatred right now. And a flight that should be a neighborhood flight in a completely routine way several times a day is actually a big ordeal of flying all the way to the Middle East and then flying all the way back. But we did it because we wanted to be in Yerevan.
And so we had a wonderful three days, met a lot of students. I met the UN country team, which I always do when I travel. I don’t remember, I should remember, but I don’t remember exactly whom I did or did not meet. I didn’t have any meetings with ministers or with the head of state or anything like that.
Jeffrey: So there was not a prior agenda of a bunch of meetings or anything?
Asbed: No, no, not at all. And in fact, this really was at the invitation of students in a public group and then a little bit of public discussion, which I like to do, and then the chance to be a tourist, which is really, really the aim. And of course, Armenia is a beautiful country. We just saw the beginning of it.
But we left with the idea of how we’re going to return so that we can see more.
Jeffrey: We were very pleased to see your interview at the AUA because it was, I think, with Suren Sargsyan and Professor Khachigyan, both of whom are friends of this podcast, by the way. Yeah, that’s great.
Asbed: Well, Arthur was the person who invited us. He’s absolutely wonderful and very impressive. And so I was really delighted.
Jeffrey: Yeah.
Hovik: So, Professor Sachs, Armenia is caught in this proxy war between the West and Russia, and both sides seem to be pushing Armenia into compromises that would undermine its national security to the benefit of their respective side. But with Nagorno-Karabakh depopulated, or what we call Artsakh, Nagorno-Karabakh depopulated, the pro-Western Armenian government is now interested in breaking out of the traditional Russian orbit. It is also approaching relations with Iran very cautiously and judiciously. Given Armenia’s geopolitical pivot, in your interviews in Armenian media, your message was to not pin hopes on the US and the West.
Can you elaborate on this? And what do you think would be a mutually beneficial US policy towards Armenia instead?
Asbed: In general, my advice always, this is over many decades, is look at the map and try to have good relations with your neighbors. This I say to any country, even that means with Azerbaijan, as unlikely as that seems at the moment, given what’s happened and the sentiments. It means with Russia. It means with Turkey.
It means with with Iran. It means with Georgia, of course. The point is, it’s the neighborhood where you’re threatened. It’s the neighbors that can attack.
It is the neighborhood where you would trade. It’s the neighborhood that constitutes the supply lines, the transport routes, the ecological zones, the shared climate crises. In other words, we live in our neighborhoods. And if you’re feeling that your neighborhood is hostile and you say, therefore, I’ll make a friend halfway around the world, you’re likely to become very disappointed.
And of course, there is a kind of myth. I understand it. The U.S. will save us. And I, of course, have experienced that myth all over the world.
I know that the United States will never save Armenia, not because it has anything against Armenia, but because 99% of Americans don’t know where Armenia is and don’t care. And I’m not meaning to be cruel, I’m just meaning to be factual. And I’ve seen all my life countries side with the U.S. on the expectation that wonderful things will happen and then nothing good comes of it. In fact, often something very bad comes of it.
Whereas your neighborhood doesn’t change. Your neighborhood is your reality. It’s amazing to me, by the way, Armenia, I don’t have to tell you, has been invaded by every empire just about that’s ever existed in history. It’s a tough neighborhood.
The collection is absolutely astounding because Armenia is literally on every crossroad imaginable. North and South, East and West, religious, ethnic, linguistic, cultural. It’s phenomenally fascinating and it’s a great tribute to the people of Armenia that Armenia has been a recognized people for more than 2,600 years and counting.
And that is unique in its way in the world of course there are a few places like that but not very many um and so and every place has invaded as you know it’s the the history of it if you know the timing of the invasions of armenia you know almost all of world history actually because almost every big empire has had its hand in armenia’s fate at some point but somehow the armenian people have continued to to survive in all of this Now, my view is you’re not going to be saved by the US from that. And I can tell you a story that is very relevant since I give this little speech all over the world for decades.
In 2008, I was invited to our neighborhood organization called the Council on Foreign Relations, which is the foreign policy establishment of the United States. I happen to be a member, not exactly the high society members that are there, but I am in there as an academic. And I was invited to a talk by Mr. Saakashvili, then leader of Georgia.
And so I thought, I’m curious. I’m going to go hear what he has to say. This was the spring of 2008. And he gave a rousing speech, said Georgia is the middle of Europe.
We’re the center of Europe. We’re a European country. We’re going to be members of NATO. We’re going to be members of the European Union.
We’re Europe, Europe, Europe. Now, I walked out. of East 68th Street across the park where I live. And I called my wife and I said, that man is crazy. He’s going to get his country destroyed.
And I regaled my wife with what he said. And by the way, every time he said this, big cheers by the New York bankers. Everyone’s happy. So happy to have Mr.
Saakashvili in their midst. And then, of course, the war broke out about three weeks later. And where were all those New York bankers? Well, they were in Long Island, Southampton and their resorts.
They were not exactly in Tbilisi or doing anything to save Georgia. And this, for me, was completely predictable. I literally predicted it, not the timing, but I literally called my wife and said, this guy is crazy. He’s going to get his country wrecked.
Because you cannot say these things except in a fantasy land. What you can say is Georgia’s in the South Caucasus, Russia, Turkey, Iran. Oh, we better be careful. This is a difficult neighborhood.
It’s complicated. What are we going to do? But to talk about we’re the center of Europe and NATO and all this. Well, you know, unfortunately, got his head handed to him and not surprisingly.
And why? Well, we have to understand, where did this whole idea of NATO coming to Georgia come from? Believe me, it did not come from any single American that could give the least concern about Georgia. It came from a game that American elites are playing.
Let’s surround Russia in the Black Sea. That’s the game. It’s a game that Lord Palmerston started in 1853. uh this is a this is basically the second crimean war that we’re fighting right now the british and the russians have been going at it for 200 years the the brits to my mind are the most imperialistic mentality and may in certainly in the world because they did it for so long uh they’re crazy in my view because they keep doing it even though they have no empire anymore in any event uh The idea literally was the same idea of Palmerston and Napoleon III in 1853, which is, let’s get Russia out of the Black Sea. Well, fat chance.
Look at a map. Think about Russia. Think about 6,000 nuclear warheads. You know, it’s not a great idea.
Okay, but it was Zbigniew Brzezinski’s idea in 1997, and he wrote a book about it, and he explained- The Grand Chessboard. Yeah, exactly. He explained why this would make Russia second rate or third rate power. And he explained everything in detail except the books all wrong.
He explained why Russia would agree to this. They’d have no alternative. The one thing they never do was form an alliance with China, blah, blah, blah. In any event, so much for theory.
But be careful. This is my my my answer. And and the truth is, The economics, people want to have a livelihood. They want to make money.
They want to be able to survive. That depends on local economies. That depends actually on this north-south corridor and this east-west corridor. My advice on the east-west corridor is, of course, don’t cede land, don’t cede territorial rights, don’t make this extra territorial.
God forbid, by the way, you have a corridor that is not yours. Don’t do that for sure. That would be awful. But on the other hand, having uh having transit to go through the country and charging uh some rents on that is
Hovik: absolutely a very good idea and in all fairness uh for those who may not be familiar i think that 99 of the army is would be okay with that it’s just that we’re being pressed for some more concessions and yeah don’t make the concessions
Asbed: don’t make the concessions and say to the government come on have a backbone and don’t don’t go for unrealistic or crazy promises from the United States. And think about it, Mr. Trump, you think he’s going to come save Armenia? He’s not even going to come save New York City, much less Armenia.
So I mean, he probably wouldn’t be able to find it on the map. Well, that is. But by the way, I have a principle for American foreign policy, which is you’re not allowed to bomb any country in which at least Half or more Americans cannot name two cities. Now, this would certainly apply for the South Caucasus region.
It applies for almost every country in the world. We would be the most peace loving country in the world if Americans had to know the names of two cities in another country. It couldn’t be done.
Jeffrey: On our agenda, we actually had a question to you about advice for Armenia, how to navigate these turbulent times. And this is as good advice as we could have gotten.
Asbed: Well, let me just say in all seriousness, what’s missing in the world, in my experience, is diplomacy. And diplomacy actually means sitting down and talking with others. And usually there are at least two tracks of diplomacy. There’s the formal government diplomacy, and then there’s track two diplomacy.
I’m inevitably involved in track two diplomacy, meaning scholars talking with each other, academics, and so forth. This is incredibly important in my view, especially in your region. You’ve got three small countries packed together and packed with history, and I mean Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, and surrounded by three much larger powers, Turkey, which was the Ottoman Empire after all, Iran, which is one of the great empires of history, Persia in multiple stages throughout history, and Russia, which is geographically the largest country in the world by far. Now, What are you going to do in that?
My view is the six countries should be talking with each other systematically and actually discussing these issues and being careful and not having the U.S. say, no, no, no, no, don’t sit down with them. They’re the enemy. No, these are your neighbors. Of course, don’t trust your neighbors exactly any more than you would trust your neighbors in leaving your garage door or your back door open.
Be prudent, of course, but discuss what could be done. What are our options for trade? Look at the BRICS process. Very important for Armenia because the BRICS now includes Iran.
It includes the United Arab Emirates. It includes Egypt. It includes Russia. It includes India.
These are all relevant countries for Armenia, economically and geopolitically as well. So I… am very much interested in, you could call it the three plus three, but you have three major powers and three local countries trying to survive in the midst of all of this. It seems logical. Yes, and that’s what I would like to see No guarantee of success, but a lot better than saying NATO is going to save us.
That isn’t going to work. What could work is finding the mutual benefits for your unique part of the world and very beautiful part of the world.
Jeffrey: All right. Good advice. We’ll leave it there for today. Thank you so much.
Asbed: Great to be with you. Thanks so much.
Hovik: Thank you, Professor Sachs.
Asbed: Bye-bye.
Jeffrey: Well, that was one of our most interesting interviews. We certainly heard an earful. Hovig, thoughts?
Hovik: Yeah, that was, I mean, 40 minutes, but it went by so quickly. I wish we had more time with Professor Sachs, and we hope that he will join us in the future. But I certainly hope our policymakers and so-called armchair pundits on Twitter can also listen to this and provide their feedback.
Jeffrey: Yeah. Yeah, I was stressed most of the time that we were going to run out of time. And he was going to say, sorry, I got to go.
Hovik: Well, we initially had 25 minutes. And for those listening, we had scheduled this interview about six months in advance or something like that. And we were hoping to have the scoop on this Professor Sachs in the Armenian world, at least. But we’re glad that he had numerous other discussions and numerous other public speeches.
So it gave us an opportunity to dive deeper into some of the areas.
Jeffrey: Pretty much all of our topics changed, by the way, in the last two weeks.
Hovik: Yeah, we rewrote our list of questions multiple times.
Jeffrey: Well, so this episode was recorded on December 4th, 2024. And as you know, we’ve been talking with Professor Jeffrey Sachs, who is the president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He is the author of many bestselling books, including The End of Poverty and the Ages of Globalization. Now, the credentials for Professor Sachs are very long.
He’s had a very long career and very, very busy man. Please take a look at his bio through our pages, our show notes, podcasts.groong.org slash episode number. Thank you for listening.
Hovik: Folks, before we go, please don’t forget to subscribe. Add a comment, drop a comment, let us know how we’re doing, and share our show with your friends. It really helps us. We are doing this for you.
We’re doing this to have Armenian issues reach a wider audience, and anything you can do in that regard would be much appreciated.
Jeffrey: Absolutely. Well, I’m Asbed Bedrosyan.
Hovik: And I’m Hovik Manucharyan.
Jeffrey: So please find us on social media and follow us everywhere you get your Armenian news. The links are in the show notes. Thanks for listening. And goodbye.