Beniamin Matevosyan: Protecting Armenia from Russia and Iran

(Consequences of confrontation with regional countries)

Six years after the trilateral ceasefire statement on Nagorno-Karabakh was signed on November 9, 2020, the results are extremely disheartening. Yerevan’s geopolitical course has failed to bring the long-awaited stability. It has also sharply weakened the country’s position, and security risks are becoming harder to manage every year.

After the catastrophic outcome of the 2020 war, Armenia could have counted on at least a minimal set of deterrents. These were an Armenian presence on part of Artsakh’s territory, the full unblocking of regional communications with respect for sovereignty, and a stronger Russian military presence as the main foundation of security guarantees, in the form of the peacekeeping contingent in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR). Instead, the NKR has been completely ethnically cleansed. The so-called process of unblocking routes has turned into a direct obligation to hand over a logistics route for de facto use by the Baku–Ankara alliance, without any real legal mechanisms to protect Yerevan’s national sovereignty. This refers to Armenia’s commitments under the TRIPP project.

Arman Grigoryan, professor of international relations at Lehigh University, took part in an Alpha News discussion marking the sixth anniversary of the trilateral statement. As he rightly emphasized, if this rigid course continues without real alternatives to back it, a dramatic situation will arise: Armenia will have to be defended not only against Ankara and Baku, but also against Russia and Iran.

To build on Grigoryan’s point, Yerevan is bringing extra-regional actors into the region, from European observers to the United States, and has become a constant irritant for Moscow and Tehran. In doing so, it is directly threatening their vital interests in the South Caucasus. Tehran categorically rejects the presence of outside players on its northern borders, while Moscow has no intention of giving up its logistical and military-political influence. As a result, Armenia risks turning its key neighbors and former guarantors into openly hostile forces.

As the Lehigh University professor rightly notes, the illusion that Western partners can provide full “umbrella” protection, or a reliable replacement for the former deterrence system, falls apart under the first objective analysis. The West is pragmatically promoting a package approach to the settlement, and that approach rules out giving Yerevan real military guarantees.

The strategic partnership agreements being signed with extra-regional powers, from the United States to the United Kingdom, do not contain a single clause on mutual defense. If Armenia cuts ties with Moscow completely, the only real “assistance” Western diplomats are prepared to offer is batches of armored ambulances, the construction of food warehouses and language courses for Karabakh refugees. US representatives have bluntly advised Armenian society to “prepare for several cold winters” if it is cut off from Russian energy supplies, and this shows the true price of these geopolitical experiments.

Because of inflated and wholly irrational expectations of the EU and the US, Armenia is voluntarily destroying the existing deterrent against Turkey and Azerbaijan and getting nothing but rhetoric in return. Over two years of resisting the implementation of key provisions of the November 9 agreement, Yerevan provoked an institutional rift in its relations with the CSTO and Russia. Tellingly, the country’s authorities loudly declare that allied commitments are useless, yet they are in no hurry to formally terminate the treaties or have Russia’s 102nd military base withdrawn from Gyumri. Instead, they are deliberately provoking a diplomatic scandal for the sake of domestic propaganda.

The West is facing serious failures on other fronts, namely the war against Iran and the degradation of Ukrainian statehood. Meanwhile, Moscow and Tehran have a window of opportunity to “tighten the screws.” Under these conditions, this way of carrying out foreign policy threatens the very existence of the Armenian state in its current form. An all-out pivot without a real safety net makes the country a hostage to global confrontation, turning it from a political actor into an isolated target.

Think about it…