The Consequences of Being Weak and Desperate

By most accounts, the initial trigger of the event was the fear of an imminent military invasion by Azerbaijan earlier in the spring on southern Armenia, to establish a link between Nakhijevan and Azerbaijan by force, the so-called “Zangezur Corridor.” To preempt such a contingency, a flurry of diplomatic activity took place, spearheaded by US special envoy Steve Witkoff, between the US, Azerbaijan and Armenia. It basically gave Azerbaijan the route it wanted and a lot more, Armenia the removal of the threat of an imminent invasion, and the US a strategic presence in the southern Caucasus.

At the end, no peace agreement was signed, just a memorandum declaring mutual intentions to pursue peace. Azerbaijan got: 1) an agreement to establish the land route between Nakhijevan and Azerbaijan that it wanted, albeit not by the name and format that it had hoped for. The route will be named TRIPP — Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity — to be managed by an American venture, under Armenian law; 2) full de facto normalization of its use of force to accomplish ethnic cleansing in Artsakh; 3) no requirement to withdraw from the 210 sq. km. of highly strategic territory that it continues to occupy in Armenia proper; 4) no requirement to commit to the release of the Armenian POWs and political prisoners illegally held in Baku; 5) an annulment of section 907 prohibiting the sale of military equipment to it from the US; 6) a dissolution of the OCSE Minsk Group, putting the last nail in the coffin of the status of Nagorno Karabakh negotiations; 7) agreement not to have foreign presence in Armenia along the Azerbaijan border; 8) no mention of the right of the population of Artsakh to return — something that has no international support and is not on the radar of the US either, but that too is a consequence of “the weak suffering what they must.”

In return, Armenia got one critical de facto concession, namely a postponement of an otherwise presumed imminent Azerbaijani invasion in the south – i.e., the (temporary?) removal of a threat. Of course, there were other significant sweeteners, largely designed to appeal to Armenian domestic political sensitivities — such as the absence of the term “corridor,” no foreign troops on Armenian soil, no disruption of the Armenia-Iran border, and no extraterritoriality — all of which also represent the removal of potential threats, but not concrete new offers to Armenia which it did not have before August 8. The defenders of the government’s policy claim that Armenia got much more than a temporary deterrent (more on this below), but these are more future hopeful expectations rather than concrete accomplishments.

Thucydides’ words, spoken some 2,500 years ago, ring true today. Had Armenia been strong enough to repel a new Azerbaijani invasion by itself, none of this would have happened, at least not in the way that it did. Any deal would in the very least have included the release of the political prisoners and POWs and the withdrawal of Azerbaijan from occupied Armenian territories. Even after the defeat of the 2020 44-day war, this could still have been achieved if Armenia had done more to strengthen its defenses in the past five years.

We should be very clear on this point: It was the fear of an Azerbaijani aggression, combined with Armenia’s presumed inability to repel it, and the government’s desperation to show progress on its “Peace Agenda” prior to next year’s elections, that enabled the events at the White House on August 8. There was no other compelling rationale or justification for it from Armenia’s perspective. Being weak and scared drove this policy and the US president was willing to play along.

The weak will suffer what they must – no judgment here, just a statement of the way it is. We owe it to ourselves to realize this. Those who glorify these “agreements” are doing as much, if not more harm as those to denounce them offhand, because both, each in its way, are distracting the public from the truth, and, as seriously, from drawing the right lessons from the Armenian condition since the 2020 war.