By Andranik Aboyan
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s recent appeal to Washington, framed as a plea for American intervention in securing regional “stability,” exposes the opportunism and strategic incoherence of his administration’s foreign policy. Speaking at the Atlantic Council, Pashinyan invoked Donald Trump’s nebulous “peace agenda” to solicit U.S. engagement in Armenia’s negotiations with Azerbaijan—a gambit emblematic of Civil Contract’s pivot toward Western patrons, even as it abandons firm resistance to Azerbaijani revanchism.
The contradictions are glaring. Pashinyan’s government, while posturing as a champion of “diversified” alliances, has reduced Armenian statecraft to a series of performative overtures—begging for scraps of attention from foreign powers whose interests do not align with Armenia’s sovereignty. His trip to Washington, ostensibly focused on religious freedom, culminated in no substantive meetings with Trump administration officials, no security guarantees, and no rebuke of Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing of Artsakh’s Armenians. Instead, Pashinyan peddled hollow optimism, declaring that “real efforts” by the U.S. could deliver peace—an illusion that places faith in external mediation rather than national agency.
Civil Contract’s foreign policy pivot, marketed as pragmatic realignment, reeks of political opportunism disguised as progress. By discarding demands for accountability—Azerbaijan’s occupation of Armenian territories, its imprisonment of political hostages, its erasure of Christian heritage—Pashinyan’s administration tacitly legitimizes Baku’s expansionism. John Eibner of Christian Solidarity International warns: “Further aggression against the Armenian state and nation… will be invited should Yerevan drop all efforts to hold Azerbaijan accountable.” Yet Pashinyan’s government, fixated on securing Western favor, has done precisely that: prioritizing photo-ops at summits over concrete strategies to counter regional threats.
The so-called “strategic partnership” signed with the U.S. days before Trump’s inauguration epitomizes this bankruptcy. Framed as a “framework for cooperation,” the agreement lacks substance, offering neither military assurances nor sanctions against Azerbaijan. Instead, it serves as a symbolic gesture masking deeper concessions—a maneuver that sacrifices Armenia’s long-term security for the illusion of diplomatic success.
Pashinyan’s strategic drift—from Moscow to Brussels to Washington—reveals not a coherent doctrine, but a regime adrift, willing to barter national dignity for fleeting geopolitical relevance. His rhetoric of “peace” obscures a deeper failure: the abandonment of a foreign policy centered on self-determination and resistance to external coercion. Such maneuvers do not serve the broader Armenian public but instead cater to a political elite eager to align with foreign interests at the expense of national stability.
Armenia’s leadership, in its desperation to escape Russian hegemony, has embraced a farce of “neutrality”—one that, in practice, subordinates Armenian sovereignty to the whims of competing global powers. The result? A nation stripped of agency, its leadership reduced to supplicants at the altar of American indifference.
Until Yerevan rejects its subservience to great power politics and refocuses on a foreign policy that prioritizes national resilience, Armenia’s sovereignty will remain a pawn in a game it cannot control.
