ARMENIA 2022: LOOKING FOR A WAY OUT OF THE NAGORNO-KARABAKH IMPASSE

Abstract

In 2022, the Republic of Armenia struggled with a complex set of challenges and opportunities; a by-product of the precarious path towards a peace agreement with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, following the 2020 escalation, and from the reverberations of the war in Ukraine. Yerevan faced Baku’s coercive bargaining strategies coupled with Russia’s partial yet significant misalignment from a bilateral alliance that dictates Armenia’s national security. As a result, security considerations were front and centre of Armenia’s strategic thinking. However, the rapidly changing parameters of regional politics and the re-engagement of Euro-Atlantic actors in the Southern Caucasus have also widened Yerevan’s diplomatic leeway and led the way to a new understanding of security policy. Hence Yerevan’s more pragmatic approach to conflict resolution and its more realistic assessment of the limitations of the Armenian-Russian alliance. Accordingly, Armenia pursued its own security interests through diplomatic engagement with multiple partners. It was consistent with the country’s Armenia-centred foreign policy vision, which focuses on its developmental prospects rather than existential threats coming from irreconcilable enemies. Looking for a way out of the Nagorno-Karabakh impasse seems to have led Yerevan to a foreign policy paradigm shift based upon a new conception of national interest.