March 24, 2025

The Small States Club is partly a memoir and in larger part a manifesto arguing that small, ‘smart’ states have a vital role to play in addressing the complex global challenges of the twenty-first century – or ‘saving the world’, as the title puts it. The author, Dr Armen Sarkissian, draws on an impressive breadth of personal experience – as a scientist, businessman, diplomat, politician and former President of Armenia – to make his case.

For BEARR newsletter readers, who may be primarily interested in the countries where BEARR operates, the most engaging sections are likely to be those about Dr Sarkissian’s life and career and his reflections on Armenia, his beloved homeland. These sections comprise about a quarter of the book. The majority of the book is taken up with case studies of nine other small states that Dr Sarkissian deems to be successful and which therefore support his arguments. Estonia is the only other former Soviet state discussed, the others are Singapore, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Switzerland, the Republic of Ireland, Botswana and Jordan, in that order (although they can be read in any order).

The Small States Club was first published in 2023, a year after Dr Sarkissian resigned as president. He describes it as ‘not a scholarly book; it is a collection of reflections stemming from my experiences’. He therefore does not attempt to create a theoretical framework by which to define small states or systematically analyse the factors that make them successful. His concept of a small state is fairly loose: countries with a population of 15 million people or less, ‘often (but not always) without many or few resources’ and ‘locked into conflict or surrounded by hostile powers’. Given the threat of being subsumed or otherwise dominated by larger, predatory powers, small states must prioritise survival above all else. To survive and thrive, Dr Sarkissian argues, small states must be ‘agile, adaptable and adroit’.

The same formula might be applied to the citizens of small states. Dr Sarkissian points to Aristotle, who advised ancient Greek city-states to ‘train their populations to be “jacks-of-all-trades”’. Dr Sarkissian is a prime example, although to describe him as only a ‘jack’ of his various trades would be an understatement.

Dr Sarkissian was born in Soviet Armenia in 1953, meaning that he spent around half his life as an ‘ordinary citizen of an immense power’ and the second half as a senior diplomat and politician of independent Armenia. As a child in the Soviet Union, Dr Sarkissian viewed education as ‘the arena in which I could compete best’. At Yerevan State University, he specialised in theoretical physics and astrophysics, making enough of a name for himself that he was invited to continue his research at the University of Cambridge in the 1980s. He describes Cambridge as a transformative experience, a place where he could breathe freely for the first time and mix convivially with giants in his field such as Stephen Hawking. ‘The equality Moscow praised in theory,’ he writes, ‘was put into practice at Cambridge’.

While working as a theoretical physicist, Dr Sarkissian also found time to co-develop a computer game called Wordtris, with a similar design to Tetris, only based around words instead of shapes. Having seen the developer of Tetris lose the rights to his game for a song, Dr Sarkissian and his partners avoided making the same mistake by negotiating a sale to a US company that ‘emancipated us financially’ and led to the game becoming a global hit in the early 1990s.

Dr Sarkissian’s time in the West also exposed him to the worlds of politics and diplomacy. While at Cambridge, Dr Sarkissian was invited to a reception at the Soviet Embassy in London, where he met the then British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher put him on the spot by asking, in front of a Kremlin delegation, ‘Young man, do you feel Armenian or do you feel “Soviet”?’ ‘I am of course Armenian,’ Dr Sarkissian replied, before ‘hastily’ expressing his gratitude also to the Soviet Union for his excellent education.

Dr Sarkissian’s diplomatic skills were put to extensive use after Armenia declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The new Armenian president quickly charged him with setting up Armenia’s first diplomatic mission in London and he thus became the ‘first person from a post-Soviet state’ to present his credentials to an unsuspecting Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Over the next few years, he organised openings of further Armenian embassies in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Athens and Rome.

His diplomatic successes led to him becoming Prime Minister of Armenia in 1996. Sadly, he was unable to fully implement an ambitious programme of reforms, after being diagnosed with cancer and having to resign to recover his health. Dr Sarkissian therefore describes becoming President of Armenia in 2018 as a ‘second chance’ to do some of the things that he had been thwarted from doing a quarter of a century before.

With such a rich autobiography, Dr Sarkissian could easily have filled a book just about his own life. However, his aims in this book are less about reflecting on his personal journey than advocating for small states like Armenia and articulating his idea for a ‘small states club’, which would enable such states to collaborate and amplify their voices.

Dr Sarkissian’s arguments rest on a premise that small states ‘thrive on stability, security, peace and sustained development’. Their success therefore relies on factors such as making the most of limited resources and deftly navigating an independent course through the diplomatic minefields laid by competing major powers. As such, small states can help to oil the wheels of international diplomacy, defuse tensions, provide positive examples to others and thereby act as ‘potential saviours of our dangerously polarised world’.

The nine states that Dr Sarkissian examines are only a small minority of the approximately 150 small states currently in existence. This leaves an unanswered question as to whether the chosen states are emblematic or not of the other 140. In themselves, they are an eclectic bunch, and Dr Sarkissian does not evaluate them by a consistent set of parameters. Broadly, he focuses on their economic success, often from unpromising positions – for example, emerging from British rule in the mid-twentieth century or from Soviet rule after 1991. Stable, enlightened leadership, serving the interests and prosperity of the people, as well as the elite, is perhaps the common ingredient that these states share – under various forms of government, from absolute monarchy to democracy.  

Each state is afforded a chapter of about fifteen to twenty pages. Readers without a specific interest in the states covered, or without a strong interest in politics or economics, may find these accounts rather dry – despite a sprinkling of anecdotes here and there about Dr Sarkissian’s meetings with the various state leaders. The accounts are almost entirely complimentary and steer clear of potentially controversial topics. The content and tone are diplomatic, in other words.

The exception is a longer chapter on Armenia, which also stands out for being the one small state in this book that Dr Sarkissian does not rate as wholly successful. Writing on Armenia, Dr Sarkissian goes beyond politics and economics to discuss its people, language, religion and culture, and he enriches the account with his own family history, personal experiences and opinions.

Dr Sarkissian characterises Armenia’s three and a half decades of independence as a wasted opportunity. He acknowledges his part in Armenia’s failures as well as its successes, though it is hard to imagine what more he could have contributed personally. As president, for example, he played an integral role in defusing a major political crisis in 2018, going out to talk to protesters on the street and mediating a resolution with political leaders. In 2020, he had to navigate another crisis when war broke out in Nagorno-Karabakh, or Artsakh, as the region is known in Armenia. Afterwards, he pushed for constitutional reforms, only to resign in 2022 when it became clear that the change would not happen.

In a concluding section, Dr Sarkissian emphasises the importance of strong leadership, vision and strategic planning for small states to be successful. He mentions other factors as well, although overall it is difficult to discern common patterns across the nine states. For example, some states have thrived off the back of rich resources (oil, gas, diamonds), others from exploiting their influential diasporas. Some factors he emphasises consistently, such as investment in education, research and technology. Others, he tends to underplay, such as the importance of geography and membership of transnational organisations such as the European Union and NATO, or the influence of Russia on Armenia and Estonia.

Dr Sarkissian’s idea of a ‘small states club’ – or more precisely a ‘small, smart states club’ – would also have benefited from more explanation of what the membership criteria and benefits would be, and how the club would be organised. He mentions floating the idea with various leaders of small states, though not how they reacted or whether the club is still a live proposition or just an idea on the pages of this book. Given its mixture of memoir and manifesto, and the eclecticism of the case studies, The Small States Club feels disjointed in places, with different sections possibly appealing to different audiences. The memoir sections deserve their own book, while the manifesto is also worthy of being further developed and expanded. On the other hand, the book as it stands is eminently readable and can be dipped in and out of, rather than needing to be read sequentially. Most importantly, it shines a light on small states that often do not receive as much consideration as they should, either individually or collectively. The changes that have happened in the world since the book’s publication only reinforce Dr Sarkissian’s message that the world needs small, smart states as a counterweight and corrective to the ways of thinking and behaving exhibited by larger powers.