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Elnur Enveroglu

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Sometimes seeing with one’s own eyes is not enough to grasp the truth. What the eyes witness, the ears refute. For when inner doubt grows stronger, even the truth itself is turned into falsehood.

Former Armenian Foreign Minister Ara Ayvazyan’s recent statement, published by Russian media, provides a revealing glimpse into why Armenia has so often failed to break free from the shackles of its past. His argument, dressed in the language of national security and sovereignty, is in reality nothing more than a recycled version of the same old narrative that has repeatedly dragged Armenia into isolation and conflict. Instead of helping his nation seize the opportunity for peace and regional reintegration, Ayvazyan’s rhetoric portrays compromise as weakness and reconciliation as surrender. This thinking does not safeguard Armenia’s future, but it undermines it.

At the core of Ayvazyan’s piece is the claim that peace cannot be built on declarations, treaties, or goodwill, because, in his view, power politics dominate the modern world. According to him, Azerbaijan and Türkiye interpret Yerevan’s peace agenda as fragility, responding with greater pressure rather than moderation. He dismisses Armenia’s pursuit of peace under Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan as “strategic vulnerability.” In other words, Ayvazyan argues that Armenia can only survive by clinging to the same militarised posture and historical illusions that brought it to its knees in 2020 and again in 2023.

This line of reasoning is not only flawed but dangerous. It reflects an inability, or perhaps an unwillingness, to learn from history. Armenia’s reliance on maximalist claims, its obsession with “historical Armenia,” and its readiness to gamble on outside powers for protection all failed disastrously. The promise of great power support turned out to be hollow. The pursuit of “legends and hopes” left the country weakened and defeated. And yet, Ayvazyan still calls for a return to those very same strategies, as though repeating mistakes is a substitute for vision.

By contrast, the current Armenian government has taken tentative yet important steps towards realism. Prime Minister Pashinyan’s “Real Armenia” doctrine recognises that the country’s survival depends not on reviving myths of empire, but on building a state capable of coexisting peacefully with its neighbours. This shift is not a humiliation, as Ayvazyan would have Armenians believe; it is a necessary sobering up. For decades, Yerevan was locked in confrontation, unable to see beyond territorial obsession and nationalist nostalgia. The outcome of that path is plain to see: defeat, emigration, and stagnation. To describe the move towards peace as “vulnerability” is to deny reality itself.

It is also striking how Ayvazyan still appeals to the idea of “strategic guarantors.” He laments that Armenia has been left without them, as if salvation can only come from external patrons. This reveals perhaps the most corrosive habit of Armenia’s old elite: the tendency to beg and plead before greater powers, hoping someone else will secure what the country cannot secure itself. But the international environment has changed. No outside force will fight Armenia’s battles or return it to a lost “golden age.” The only way forward is through regional integration, pragmatic cooperation, and peace. Anything else leaves Armenia stuck between closed doors, clinging to memories and appealing to powers who have little interest in its fate.

Ayvazyan’s narrative is not just backwards-looking; it is deeply cynical. He suggests that peace will strip Armenia of its values, that reconciliation with neighbours means abandoning identity. This is a false choice. Peace does not mean erasing national culture or surrendering dignity. On the contrary, peace gives Armenia the stability it needs to preserve and develop its culture in a modern world. What truly endangers Armenian identity is not cooperation with Azerbaijan, but poverty, isolation, and the continued haemorrhaging of its population through emigration. If anything, Ayvazyan’s formula of permanent confrontation is a sure recipe for national decline.

The irony is that the former diplomat claims to be defending sovereignty while advocating a course that undermines it. Sovereignty is not measured by the size of an army or the stubbornness of rhetoric. It is measured by a state’s capacity to govern itself effectively, secure prosperity for its citizens, and maintain stable relations with neighbours. Armenia will not achieve this by imagining that force alone guarantees security. It will achieve it by building networks of cooperation that anchor it in the region and the wider world.

To be clear, advocating peace is not a threat to Armenia. No one is demanding submission or humiliation. Rather, peace is the only chance Armenia has to achieve what it could not secure through decades of confrontation: a functioning economy, open borders, and a place in regional projects that connect the South Caucasus to Europe and Asia. If Ayvazyan and his ilk cannot see this, it is because they are blinded by nostalgia for an era that has already passed.

Indeed, one cannot help but notice how deeply his words are soaked in fear of “realism.” He derides Pashinyan’s rejection of “historical Armenia” as a tragedy. But it was precisely this fixation on “historical Armenia” that dragged the country into repeated disasters. Legends did not protect Armenia. Dreams did not feed its people. Old maps did not prevent its defeats. Yet Ayvazyan urges Armenians to keep clutching at these illusions, as if clinging to the past can secure the future.

The truth is that former officials like Ayvazyan are part of the reason Armenia struggles to move forward. They are so steeped in their old ideas, so rusted in their outdated worldview, that they cannot recognise reality when it stares them in the face. They see peace not as an opening, but as an existential danger. They mistake humility for humiliation, compromise for collapse. In doing so, they drag Armenia back into the cycle of grievance and dependency from which it desperately needs to escape.

Armenia now stands at a crossroads. It can choose to follow the path of those like Ayvazyan, defined by fear, nostalgia, and an endless waiting game for outside guarantors. Or it can embrace the more difficult, but far more rewarding, path of reconciliation, integration, and modernisation. The latter is not easy. It requires courage, honesty, and the willingness to break with myths. But it is the only way out of the cul-de-sac in which Armenia has been trapped for decades.

Ayvazyan may speak of defending the “real” Armenia, but his “realism” is in fact delusion. It promises nothing but closed doors and a life spent begging for help from powers that will never deliver. The true realism is the recognition that Armenia’s only hope lies in peace, i.e. peace with Azerbaijan, peace with Türkiye, peace within the region. Only through this path can Armenia open the doors to the world and secure a dignified future for its people.

Former diplomats like Ayvazyan may cling to their old ideals, but they cannot escape the judgment of history. And history has already shown where their road leads: defeat, decline, and despair. The choice before Armenia today is stark: either listen to voices like his, and remain trapped in the ruins of yesterday, or embrace peace as the only viable strategy for tomorrow. The answer should be clear.