March 24, 2025

Report by BEARR Trustee Sam Thorne – March 12, 2025

Talk topic: The Small States Club: How Small Smart Powers Can Save the World

Speaker: Dr Armen Sarkissian

Followed by a Q&A discussion chaired by Helen Goodman, BEARR Trustee

The BEARR Trust was pleased to host a talk this spring by Dr Armen Sarkissian, former President of Armenia, who presented his recently published book The Small States Club: How Small Smart Powers Can Save the World and discussed the challenges and opportunities for small states in a rapidly changing world.

Dr Sarkissian gave a fascinating talk that ranged from quantum physics to ‘quantum politics’, the impacts of rapid technological change, Soviet jokes and his long-standing connections with the United Kingdom, including an early 1990s encounter with The BEARR Trust.

The BEARR Trustees were very grateful to Lord Tyrie for sponsoring and hosting the event at the House of Lords, which Dr Sarkissian said that he had first visited in 1984 and was always glad to return to. Thanks also to BEARR Trustee Helen Goodman and Information Officer Valdone Sniukaite for organising the event.

Around 50 people attended the event in person or online, with all proceeds contributing to the ongoing work of BEARR and our partners. A recording is available to watch on BEARR’s YouTube channel here.

Dr Sarkissian began his talk by reflecting on his long association with the UK, which he first visited in the 1980s as a researcher in theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge. Later, Dr Sarkissian served on three separate occasions as Armenian Ambassador to the UK – at the time making him the ‘champion’ in this particular field: the only person to have done that job for his country three times. ‘Not you again,’ he quoted the late Queen as saying, when he turned up to Buckingham Palace for the third time.

Dr Sarkissian also explained that he had been aware of The BEARR Trust almost since its foundation in 1992. This arose from a visit to Armenia by Britain’s last ambassador to the Soviet Union, Sir Rodric Braithwaite, and his wife Jill Braithwaite, who co-founded BEARR in Moscow and told Dr Sarkissian about their work.

As well as being an eminent scientist and diplomat, Dr Sarkissian is a successful businessman and politician. In the late 1980s, he co-developed and sold a Tetris-inspired game called Wordtris, which became a global hit in the early 1990s. He also served as Armenian Prime Minister in 1996–97 and as President of Armenia from 2018 to 2022. He has since retired from frontline politics and prefers not to comment on current affairs in Armenia, so as not to interfere with the political situation there.

Dr Sarkissian gave a brief summary of his book, The Small States Club, which explores nine examples of successful small states and is reviewed on the BEARR website here. He explained that the book aims to convey his impressions of states that he has visited and been impressed by, and his reflections on the sources of their success. Having a strong national identity is one common feature of these states, along with a pragmatic approach to political and economic development, and international diplomacy.

Dr Sarkissian argued that small states are becoming more and more important in a rapidly evolving world. Technological change has been a key enabler for small states, enabling them to become world leaders in areas that would previously have been beyond their capabilities, such as space exploration and artificial intelligence. Small states can also play a vital role in addressing the challenges of this unpredictable new world, as has been seen recently in the mediating role that Arab states have played in resolving major power conflicts.

Dr Sarkissian compared the state of the world today to that of physics in the early twentieth century. At that time, scientists such as Albert Einstein were grappling with a failure of classical Newtonian physics to explain various phenomena at an atomic and subatomic scale. This led to the emergence of ‘quantum physics’, which delved into the unpredictable behaviours of subatomic particles, relying on probabilities rather than certainties. Dr Sarkissian described the world today as a ‘quantum world’, defined by its unpredictability and requiring new styles of politics and politicians – the subject of his next book, Quantum Politics.

In hindsight, the fall of the Soviet Union could be seen, in his view, as the beginning of the end of classical understandings of how the world worked. The historian Francis Fukuyama’s famous assertion that the triumph of liberal democracy signified an ‘end of history’ turned out to be almost 180 degrees wide of the mark. Where Russia, for example, might have been expected to follow a linear trajectory from capitalism to democracy, instead it developed ‘mutant’ forms of capitalism and democracy, culminating in Putin’s Russia today.

Dr Sarkissian cited Donald Trump as an example of a ‘quantum politician’, analogous to a powerful particle capable of causing unpredictable chain reactions when it strikes other particles. He argued that in this unpredictable world, when institutions such as the United Nations are no longer effective, it is small states that can act as a necessary counterbalance to major powers and a positive enabler for global development.  

At the end of the talk and subsequent Q&A discussion, BEARR Chairman Ross Gill thanked Dr Sarkissian for his time and insights. Ross suggested that Dr Sarkissian’s belief in the value of small states chimed in some ways with BEARR’s philosophy of working with small, grassroots partners. Dr Sarkissian concluded by offering to explore potential opportunities to work with BEARR on projects in Armenia. We hope to report on these in future.