Conventional wisdom holds that a country guards its independence by holding its ground, and that to surrender a claim to a part of its imagined territory, even one outside its control, is to surrender a part of its sovereignty. This attitude helps to explain the dozens of ongoing territorial disputes across the world—Venezuela’s desire for the Essequibo region of Guyana, dueling Indian and Pakistani claims to Kashmir, and the controversy around China’s “nine-dash line” in the South China Sea, among others—and why they are so intractable.
Armenia is no stranger to this view. For decades, it vigorously defended its claim to the Nagorno-Karabakhregion, an ethnic Armenian enclave within the internationally-recognized territory of Azerbaijan. Even after the enclave, known as the Republic of Artsakh, fell to an Azerbaijani offensive in 2023, Armenian politicians railed against Azerbaijan and vowed to liberate the territory from Baku’s control in a future conflict.
But this attitude has its limits. After Armenia lost the war, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan recognized that for Armenia—a small state wedged between far larger powers—an unwinnable claim could also become the mechanism by which his nation’s sovereignty was lost, and sought to win long-term peace in the south Caucasus by giving up Armenia’s claim to Nagorno-Karabakh. The deeper meaning of Pashinyan’s reelection on June 7 is a vote of confidence from the Armenian people in this approach—and a reward for Pashinyan’s remarkable personal courage in pursuing it.
Read the full article on The National Interest.
Joseph Epstein is Director of the Turan Research Center.