“Peace” at the Cost of National Identity

By Armen Harutyunyan

Doctor of Law

Former Judge at the European Court of Human Rights (2015–2025)

 

Every nation develops a system of symbols, values, and collective memory rooted in its historical and cultural experience. These elements form national identity. History clearly shows that identity (not territory alone) is the decisive condition of a people’s survival. A state may strengthen identity, but even without a state a people can endure. Without identity, it cannot.

An objective assessment of the rhetoric and policies of the Azerbaijani leadership leaves no room for ambiguity: their strategic objective is not reconciliation, but the systematic destruction of Armenian national subjectivity.

Against this background, certain current policies in Armenia increasingly resemble a gradual retreat from fundamental historical, cultural, and spiritual foundations. Whatever the political justifications, such a course objectively weakens identity, erodes collective memory, and undermines national resilience. Tensions with the Armenian Apostolic Church, the devaluation of cultural heritage, and the deepening fragmentation of the diaspora all accelerate this erosion.

If this trajectory continues, Armenia risks being deprived of the very foundations that sustain its statehood and civilizational continuity. Peace cannot be built on the denial or dilution of national identity. It can be durable only if it rests on historical truth, memory, dignity, and legal equality.

A weakened Armenia can be forced into accepting a dictated “peace” on any terms—territorial, ideological, or political—once it loses the capacity to think and act within its own historical framework.

This weakening already appears in clearly identifiable developments:

• The gradual abandonment of historical and cultural truth, including attempts to equate “Western Armenia” with the fabricated notion of “Western Azerbaijan.”

• The distancing from unifying national symbols such as Mount Ararat.

• Intensifying conflict with institutions of historical continuity, especially the Armenian Apostolic Church.

• The systematic weakening of ties between Armenia and the diaspora.

• The growing tolerance of externally imposed narratives on Nagorno-Karabakh that erase Armenian legal and historical claims.

• The marginalization of the Armenian Genocide in public discourse and the creeping legalization of Turkish denialist narratives.

• The erosion of the ideological continuity of Armenian statehood itself.

Azerbaijan’s policy toward Armenians is not a product of momentary hostility, it is a state ideology. Armenophobia is embedded in education, media, political rhetoric, and state-sponsored propaganda. The construction of the Armenian as an existential enemy is not incidental; it is foundational to the regime’s internal legitimacy.

The Azerbaijani political system relies on permanent mobilization through hatred. The regime sustains itself by cultivating fear, resentment, and dehumanization of Armenians. This is why genuine peace is structurally incompatible with the nature of that regime: peace would deprive it of its central tool of domestic control.

This is also why the Azerbaijani state openly finances the so-called “Community of Western Azerbaijan” and advances territorial claims disguised as “return.” These actions are not symbolic—they are part of a long-term revisionist strategy aimed at delegitimizing Armenian historical existence.

In such a system, war is not a failure of policy. It is an instrument of governance.

A policy based on unilateral concessions does not produce stability. It produces new demands. Every act of appeasement is interpreted not as goodwill, but as weakness—and weakness invites aggression.

When one side systematically dismantles its own symbolic, institutional, and legal defenses while the other side radicalizes, militarizes, and indoctrinates, the result is not peace. It is strategic imbalance.

Appeasing an authoritarian regime built on ethnic hatred does not neutralize conflict; it fuels it. History contains no example where concessions to institutionalized chauvinism produced lasting peace.

The collapse of serious public debate, the fragmentation of society, and the normalization of cynicism divert public attention from existential questions of security, sovereignty, and national survival. Political apathy follows naturally.

The recent municipal elections, in which nearly 70% of citizens abstained, reflect not political stability but deep civic alienation. Power under such conditions rests not on democratic consent, but on administrative control exercised over a disengaged society.

This domestic exhaustion serves only the strategic interests of external pressure.

A bad peace may indeed be preferable to war. But a peace built on the destruction of identity, historical truth, and national dignity is not peace—it is delayed capitulation.

The fundamental task today is not the distribution of political blame. It is the preservation of Armenia’s spiritual, cultural, and historical sovereignty as a precondition for any just and lasting peace.

 

Peace that demands national amnesia is not peace.

Peace that rewards hatred is not stability.

Peace without truth and dignity is only surrender under another name.

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Doctor of Law

Former Judge at the European Court of Human Rights (2015–2025)