Armenia at a crossroads: Elections, peace, and the limits of international guarantees

Less than a week remains until Armenia’s parliamentary elections. The campaign is in full swing, political forces are attacking one another in increasingly harsh terms, investigations into hybrid attacks against Armenia appear almost daily, and statements interfering in Armenia’s internal affairs continue to come from Moscow.

The June 7 elections are arguably the most geopolitically significant in Armenia’s modern history. Their outcome will shape the country’s trajectory for years. Campaign narratives suggest that Armenian voters will effectively answer several strategic questions: whether to continue normalization with Azerbaijan and Turkey or revise existing understandings; whether to deepen ties with the EU or strengthen dependence on Russia; whether to continue democratic reforms or return figures associated with the previous political system.

According to an IRI survey conducted in mid-May, Armenians’ top concerns are national security and border issues, the economy and unemployment, and peace. Unsurprisingly, the Armenia–Azerbaijan normalization process has become the central issue of the campaign. Against this backdrop, political and expert circles are again debating the idea of “guaranteed peace” and international security guarantees.

The debate is not new. Since the launch of peace treaty negotiations in 2022, the Armenian government has repeatedly emphasized the need for “international support” and “international legitimacy.” At the time, negotiations were mediated simultaneously by the EU, Russia, and the United States, while Nagorno-Karabakh had not yet been emptied of its Armenian population.

However, after the involuntary displacement of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians amid the inaction of Russian peacekeepers and the weak international response, official Yerevan gradually revised its approach. The idea of external guarantors increasingly appeared unrealistic, and the negotiation process became more bilateral in nature.

Today, the ruling “Civil Contract” party argues that peace has effectively been established and is now entering a phase of institutionalization. According to this view, lasting peace depends less on outside guarantees than on creating a mutually beneficial system between the parties.

Opposition forces, likely to cross the electoral threshold, argue the opposite. Former president Robert Kocharyan has stated: “Peace does not depend on Nikol Pashinyan, Civil Contract members, Robert Kocharyan, Trump, or anyone else. Guaranteed peace means the application of international mechanisms, beyond Aliyev’s will,” Kocharyan stated.

Narek Karapetyan of the “Strong Armenia” party argues: “Our peace treaty must have more than one guarantor. Having more than one guarantor is the only serious guarantee of long-term peace. Paper is a highly variable thing in negotiations with the Turks, while guarantors are constant,” Karapetyan said.

Gagik Tsarukyan, leader of the “Prosperous Armenia” party, has emphasized: “All the preconditions exist. We need to reach agreements with 3–5 powerful states. There must be connections, familiarity, and relationships in order to have guaranteed peace, so that not even a fly can pass through our territory,” Tsarukyan emphasized.

Yet these forces present the idea of “international guarantees” largely without specifics. No detailed roadmap has been proposed explaining how such guarantees would function in practice, what mechanisms would enforce them, or how violations would be punished. In many cases, arguments rely more on references to political connections or negotiating skills than on concrete institutional proposals.

Without entering the election debate itself, the issue of international guarantees nevertheless deserves sober analysis. History offers examples where external guarantees contributed to stabilization and trust-building, such as in Cyprus or Bosnia and Herzegovina. But there are also notable failures — from Srebrenica to Syria. Perhaps the clearest example is the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine surrendered its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances from Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Two decades later, Russia violated those commitments and launched a full-scale war against Ukraine.

Peace agreements do not function in a vacuum. Their durability depends on the broader balance of power and the state of international relations. The key question, therefore, is not whether international guarantees are desirable in theory, but whether they are realistic under current geopolitical conditions.

Several factors complicate the discussion.

First, the post–World War II international order is steadily eroding. Principles such as territorial integrity and the non-use of force have repeatedly been violated without effective collective response — in Armenia, Ukraine, Syria, and elsewhere. Under such conditions, reliance on external guarantees has obvious limits.

Second, advocates of “guaranteed peace” rarely explain how such a system would operate. Under what mandate would guarantors act? What mechanisms would enforce compliance? What happens if guarantors fail to fulfill their commitments? Without answers, discussions about guarantees risk becoming political slogans rather than policy proposals.

Third, the question of potential guarantors remains unresolved. Russia, the United States, the EU, and even China are sometimes mentioned, but involving multiple guarantors is difficult even theoretically amid rising global tensions. There is also a risk of repeating the experience of the OSCE Minsk Group, whose effectiveness was ultimately paralyzed by geopolitical rivalries.

In practice, apart from Russia, no major power has expressed readiness to assume a direct guarantor role in the Armenia–Azerbaijan process. Yet Moscow’s credibility as an impartial guarantor has been seriously undermined by recent developments and by its increasingly visible preference for Azerbaijan, driven by Baku’s greater geopolitical and economic importance.

Finally, one essential reality is often overlooked in Armenian debates: a peace treaty is a bilateral agreement. If Azerbaijan rejects external involvement, international guarantees cannot become a reality. Baku’s recent rhetoric strongly suggests opposition to any third-party role. Moreover, if Armenia attempts after June 7 to reintroduce the issue of guarantors, Azerbaijan may interpret it as an attempt to revise already agreed principles and derail the process itself.

Under current global conditions, the classical model of “international guarantees” functions only in a very limited way. Rather than pursuing externally guaranteed peace, it may be more realistic to focus on confidence-building measures, monitoring mechanisms, and direct reciprocal obligations capable of making renewed conflict increasingly costly for both sides.

Source: Mr Narek Minasyan is an associate expert at the Armenian Council, where he focuses on global and regional security issues.