Strategic Depth and National Security: Is Armenia Headed in the Right Direction?

By Vahan Zanoyan

Strategic depth is a measure of a country’s ability to absorb, repel and recover from an invasion. Traditionally, it has mainly referred to geographic or territorial depth. The defensibility of a country depends, among other things, on the distance between its vulnerable borders and its critical nerve centers, such as economic, military, demographic and logistical centers of gravity. Geographic depth, which in its core is a notion of “space,” is closely and directly correlated with the notion of “time,” because the larger the space from a border to a central nerve center, the more time the invaded party will have to organize and respond.

Over time, the concept of strategic depth has evolved significantly, partly due to changes in warfare technology, and partly due to attempts to make it more relevant and applicable to countries of different sizes and resources. In modern security conditions, technology, especially long-range precision targeting, and speed, materially change the notion of space and time in defense strategy.

Regional and country-specific discussions are also interesting to understand and analyze the case of Armenia. What the discourse by military theorists and practitioners focuses on is basically the expansion of the concept of strategic depth into several layers.

The most relevant of these for Armenia today include the following:

• Geographic depth: The distance between a country’s vital centers and potential points of attack. Greater distance can provide time to mobilize and defend.
• Military depth: The ability to maintain multiple layers of defense, preserve and mobilize reserve as needed, disperse forces, and continue operations even, and especially after, initial setbacks.
• Societal depth: The resilience of both the political leadership and the Armenian public, the will to struggle, resilience of institutions to withstand disruption, casualties, economic pressure, disinformation, and other forms of coercion. In the case of Armenia, closely related to societal depth is—
  • depth of sense of national identity. Aside from military discipline and carrying out orders, a soldier needs to know what he or she is fighting for and defending in order to sustain his or her resilience, especially in distressed circumstances.
• Institutional depth: especially in the armed forces and the military establishment, to remain functional and cohesive under attack, and the State’s capacity to continue to function under attack.
• Logistical depth: Alternative roads, railways, supply routes, fuel sources, ammunition production. In Armenia, this is intimately tied to geographic depth.
• Temporal depth: How much warning and decision time/mobilization time Armenia has before an adversary can create a strategic fait accompli. i.e., The amount of time available to detect a threat, mobilize resources, adapt, and make decisions before the threat becomes decisive.
• Economic/industrial depth: The capacity to sustain a prolonged conflict by financing operations, maintaining supply chains, and absorbing economic disruption.
• Geopolitical and diplomatic depth: Alliances, international support, diplomatic options and avoidance of strategic isolation. This can be also viewed as strategic breadth, if it involves military assistance, albeit without security guarantees.

Armenia’s scorecard on these measures

Armenia scores concerningly poor in all these measures. The latest and deadliest blow to its geographic depth came with the loss of Artsakh in September of 2023. (It is noteworthy that a similar blow had also come pre-Independence, with the loss of Nakhijevan, which, like Artsakh, had its origins in Soviet era decisions in the early 1920s).

Consequently, today, Armenia has virtually no geographic depth, even without surrendering the so-called enclaves (Tigranashen, Verin Voskepar, Sofulu and Barkhudarlu).  Geographically, it is one of the “shallowest” of the small countries in the world, landlocked and surrounded by two strategically aligned enemies. Surrendering the “enclaves,” especially Tigranashen, will be a new and fatal blow to the geographic depth of Armenia (more on this below).

The same is true for military depth. Despite a number of new military cooperation agreements and purchases of weapons systems, Armenia’s military capabilities have not improved sufficiently since the 2020 war, and some of the institutional cohesion within the armed forces has even deteriorated. Institutional depth, both in the armed forces and in the government apparatus in general has not improved and is certainly not “war ready.”

Societal depth, as defined above, has improved in certain areas. Armenia’s economic and industrial depth has registered a marked improvement, and the prospects are good for further advances in this area. Furthermore, in certain areas, forms of disinformation have been exposed, even though Azerbaijani influence in forming Armenian public opinion remains a major concern.  However, Armenia has suffered a major blow in its will to struggle and fight for a just cause. Armenian society displayed a much higher degree of resilience at the beginning of the 2020 war than in its aftermath. Defeatism and fear of further war permeated society, largely preached and encouraged by the government itself. There has also been considerable doubt and confusion spread about Armenian national identity, largely through driving a wedge between the Armenian Republic and the Armenian nation at large, and through marginalizing the significance of historic Armenia in the “Real Armenia Ideology” propagated by the Administration.

Logistical depth has suffered in conjunction with geographic depth and will suffer further to critical levels if the so-called enclaves are surrendered. By the same token, temporal depth is virtually non-existent in Armenia.

Finally, geopolitical and diplomatic depth has improved. The diversification of Armenia’s foreign relations through an accord with Europe and the USA is a welcome development, for economic and trade reasons, as well as some of the security cooperation agreements. It is also commendable in that this was done without burning bridges with Iran, even though the deterioration of relations with Russia was not avoided. The economic and trade consequences of that deterioration have not yet fully materialized.

Armenia’s current course

The course that the Armenian government has charted since 2023 can be described as an attempt to compensate for the loss of geographic depth with gains in political and diplomatic depth. Giving up Artsakh entirely, even refusing to talk about the right of return of the Artsakh population, and tolerating the many Azerbaijani transgressions, from the occupied territories inside Armenia to the illegal political prisoners in Baku, to the often humiliating official discourse from Baku, to the re-writing of history in Artsakh for the benefit of foreign diplomats, has been viewed as the price of keeping even a tenuous peace process alive, and consequently being more easily acceptable by Europe and the US.  But peace has not yet been achieved, and there is no evidence so far that American and European interest in achieving peace in the southern Caucasus is a long-term strategic objective, or just a tactical move aimed at reducing Russia’s role as arbiter and power broker in the region.  Nevertheless, August 8, 2025, and TRIPP became a major trump card that the Administration used to sell the idea that it had delivered peace to a war-weary public during the June 7 elections of this year.

The next potential blow to strategic depth in Armenia is tied to the issue of the so-called enclaves. According to cartologist Rouben Galichian, it was a deliberate Soviet policy to give control of critical Armenian transportation routes to Azerbaijan, by establishing “enclaves” such as Tigranashen, which sits right over the critical M2 route on the North-South freeway. The other enclaves also serve that purpose. Galichian, who questions the legality of the claim that Armenia’s legal area is 29,743 sq.kms., views these enclaves as arbitrarily and illegally created zones by the Soviet command, with no due process even by Soviet standards. So, to surrender the enclaves today is to reinforce both the diminishing state of geographic depth as well as abdicating any tangible capacity of developing logistical depth

Armenia will not achieve the peace that it seeks by continuously acting weak and desperate for peace. As I have argued in the past, the August 8, 2025, White House event was triggered by a presumed imminent Azerbaijani invasion of Syunik in the spring of 2025, and the Armenian government’s presumed inability to repel such an invasion. Had Armenia been in a position to repel such an invasion, August 8 may either not have happened, or it would have brought much more tangible and positive gains to Armenia than merely the removal of a threat.

Mitigating the loss of strategic depth will be extremely difficult for Armenia. The country will never fully recover from the loss of Artsakh. Surrendering the so-called enclaves, especially Tigranashen, will create further critical erosion in the country’s logistical, military and temporal depth, from which it will not be able to recover in the foreseeable future. Alternative routes may address the transportation setbacks of that surrender, but they will not resolve the strategic depth issue, because it will in effect mean giving Azerbaijan a base north of Nakhijevan inside Armenia.

The Armenian government is counting on the improvement in its diplomatic/geopolitical depth to compensate for all the other losses. But, at best, that can serve as a short-term and temporary deterrent for Armenia’s enemies, and not as a defense architecture or a security guarantee.

The largest fly in the ointment of Armenia’s improved diplomatic relations with the West lies in the fact that the success of that policy depends much less on the West itself and much more on the “good faith” of Azerbaijan to achieve peace. And so far, Azerbaijan has not only failed to display that good faith, but it has done everything in the opposite direction. Baku’s “Western Azerbaijan” rhetoric, its denial of the millennia old Armenian presence in the south Caucasus as the region’s indigenous people, its refusal to reciprocate every concession made by Armenia (for example, while the Prime Minister of Armenia publicly called the enclaves by their Azerbaijani names, Aliyev is yet to call Artsvashen by its Armenian name and acknowledge that it is not part of Azerbaijan), its violation of every tenet of the November 9, 2020 ceasefire agreement, including the release of all POWs, which Armenia did right away, are all the moral equivalent of a declaration of war.

Thus, it has been Armenia’s one-sided and unconditional compliance and patience that has kept the “peace process” alive. Peace with Armenia is not on Ilham Aliyev’s agenda. Furthermore, a strong and prosperous Armenia is not part of either Turkey’s or Azerbaijan’s vision of the future of the southern Caucasus.

The Administration in Yerevan acts as if the slightest pushback would give Azerbaijan plausible cause to resume hostilities, which emboldens Baku even more, since has its reasons to retard Armenia’s growth. The expansion of diplomatic/geopolitical depth through better diplomatic and economic relations with Europe and the United States is not a reliable long-term deterrent, because, without the proactive push-back from the Armenian government itself, it alone will not be able to counter the threat of an emboldened Azerbaijan.

All this should be understood in the context of the changing global order. We have already moved from a post-Cold War unipolar world (when a country was either closely aligned with the United States or it was not), to a multipolar, highly networked international system, in which states cooperate in some areas, compete in others, and avoid becoming dependent on any single power. In this world, the same country can simultaneously have good working relations with Russia, the USA, China and European countries. Countries as small as the Arab States in the Persian Gulf and as large as India have successfully followed this path.

In this world, dependence itself can be, and often is, used as a weapon, and preserving strategic autonomy in a highly complex networked system has become a preferred geostrategic goal.

The need to change course

This is particularly relevant for small countries like Armenia. Invulnerability is not a realistic option for Armenia. Armenia is vulnerable, period. And, as stressed above, with virtually no strategic depth. The strategic goal therefore should be resilience, not invulnerability. I.e., to become very difficult to coerce.

This entails building multiple layers of defense, with the intention of making an invasion prohibitively expensive. Aside from the classic and well-known remedies, such as air defense, drones, mines, coastal defense, cyber capabilities, dispersed logistics and hardened infrastructure which act as a deterrent, this means using the new diplomatic relationships with Europe and the US to the fullest to find effective support in avoiding further territorial concessions such as surrendering the enclaves. Otherwise, those relationships have little tangible strategic benefit.

It also involves reversing the severe erosion in societal resilience since the 2020 war, which, first and foremost, starts with a fundamental change in the government’s own approach and rhetoric. The government must realize a complete reversal of its policy of the past 6 years by casting aside the policy of fear and fear-based negotiations with an enemy who has shown no good faith whatsoever in the pursuit peace. It also means distancing itself from most of the tenets of the widely publicized “Real Armenia Ideology,” which in essence is little more than a retrospective attempt to justify the losses of the past six years.  Otherwise, to repeat, the expansion of the diplomatic/political depth would have no practical significance.

One direct and immediate implication of this is to make full use of international courts like the International Criminal Court (ICC), International Court of Justice (ICJ) and The European Court of Human Right (ECHR).  The cases that Armenia has at the ICJ and ECHR are not being pursued with any meaningful rigor. In fact, the top lawyer representing Armenian interests at these courts, Mr. Yeghishe Kirakosian, resigned last year, after the Prime Minister offered to withdraw the cases as part of the peace process. Even though the cases have not yet been withdrawn, they are not being pursued either. Reversal of this policy and even filing new cases against Azerbaijan’s “Western Azerbaijan” rhetoric, is a perfect example of non-violent pushback that the Armenian government can exercise.

Economic diversification is another component of this strategy—from avoiding reliance on a single supplier for imports and single market for exports, to building significant strategic reserves of all essential products, including food, fuel and ammunition.

Cyber resilience is another key component of the strategy, especially applicable to small countries like Armenia, where digital defense could be a more viable security strategy than conventional defense.

The capacity to quickly import, absorb and adapt to the latest military technologies is another dimension of the same overall defense strategy.

A small country like Armenia must also learn how to matter. Today, given the Strategic Partnership with the US, with the EU opening its markets to Armenia, with Armenia on its way to become an AI hub in the region and with new access to advanced US technology, Armenia is on its way to matter more. But that position needs to be turned into a more binding relationship. To matter in a binding way, aside from being confident and independent, Armenia must above all be useful. It must learn to position itself in such a way that it solves problems for larger countries—as a diplomatic intermediary or mediator, logistical hub, technology center and provider, key loop in a supply chain, intelligence partner, and host for foreign investments. All these factors imply a much higher and more engaged level of connectivity than what Armenia has today. The kind of connectivity that it builds and controls and that transcends geographic borders and can at least partially mitigate the lack of geographic depth of the country.

An important change that must enter the mindset of both the Armenian government and the Armenian public is in the perception of the long-term relative strengths and weaknesses of Azerbaijan and Armenia. Armenians spent 26 years (from the 1994 Bishkek Ceasefire agreement to the 2020 war), overestimating their own strength and largely oblivious to how Azerbaijan was changing. Today, Armenians risk the opposite miscalculation, namely, overestimating Azerbaijan’s long-term strength and underestimating their own potential. Both miscalculations are very costly. The former’s costs are now obvious. The latter’s costs are already materializing and will increase further due to irreversible, unnecessary and largely futile concessions made by Yerevan to keep the peace process alive.

As political analyst Eric Hacopian has often stressed, Azerbaijan, as we know it today, has an “expiration date.” In the long-term—15-20 years— today’s Azerbaijan will be a different State. Neither its existing political system nor its current economic and financial foundations are sustainable. A brutal, family-run dictatorship, with declining oil and gas revenues and per capita incomes, is not sustainable. World Bank projections show that Armenia’s economy will continue to grow much faster than that of Azerbaijan. The IMF has similar projections, where Armenia’s real per capita GDP growth through 2031 is projected to be 5.3 percent per year, while Azerbaijan’s only 2.5 percent per year. In a decade or two, Azerbaijan will be considerably weaker economically; and, hopefully, for the sake of both the Azerbaijani people and the stability of the region, it will also be more a democratic and peaceful country.

Of course, Baku knows this, and it will do its best to prevent Armenia from getting stronger in this period. That in part explains the constant demands for additional concessions from Yerevan and the pre-conditions before signing a peace agreement.

This is further reason why Armenia should change its overly conciliatory policy in pursuit of an elusive peace. For Armenia, a strategy of surviving the short-term with the assumption that Azerbaijan will indefinitely be stronger is fundamentally different from a strategy of surviving the short-term while recognizing today’s Azerbaijan’s expiration date. The former is a strategy of perpetual defeat. The latter is a calculated waiting strategy, without surrender and without unnecessary concessions. The most dangerous aspect of the former is that it will cause irreversible damage to the Armenian’s strategic position both in the world and in the region. As stated above, the demands for concessions on Armenia intend to cause that irreversible damage. The strategy of perpetual defeat cannot possibly lead to a stronger Armenia in any time frame.

Finally, we should never lose sight of the fact that the ultimate virtual strategic depth of the Armenian State is the Armenian Nation. There can be no Armenian Republic (either Third or “Fourth”), without the Armenian Nation. Thus, de-nationalizing the State agenda, which is the basic accomplishment of the “Real Armenia Ideology,” is in effect neutralizing its most important virtual strategic depth. That realization alone should provide adequate reason to revise both the mindset and the policy.