Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is pushing for an ideological transformation to establish what he calls “real Armenia.” To succeed, he will have to win a three-front fight to overcome opposition from Azerbaijan, Russia and a powerful bloc of domestic critics.
Having returned from a foreign tour that took him to Washington and Paris, Pashinyan answered questions in parliament on February 12 about his “Real Armenia” vision. The tenets of the ideology are still being fleshed out, he explained. But the broad outline is the promotion of a Westernized, democratized nation that has drawn a line on the past and is firmly fixed on forging a prosperous future.
The prime minister stated that a written platform for the Real Armenia concept would be finalized and published soon. Once published, he added, the government would launch an effort to sell the vision to the electorate. “From that point,” Pashinyan stated, referring to publication of the platform, “we must begin the formation and formulation of a consensus around the concept of ‘real Armenia.’”
Pashinyan told MPs that he has received assurances of support from US and French officials for what he is trying to accomplish, describing an impromptu meeting with US Vice President JD Vance in Washington in early February as “very important and very productive.”
Parliament took immediate action on the real Armenia vision February 12, approving in its first reading a bill authorizing the government to seek European Union membership, a process that could take decades to accomplish.
The prime minister’s efforts to achieve an identity makeover for Armenia is rooted in the country’s decisive defeat to Azerbaijan in the Second Karabakh War in late 2023. The military disaster prompted the collapse of the country’s traditional strategic partnership with Russia, which many Armenians believe failed to fulfill security commitments to defend Armenian sovereignty. Since then, Pashinyan has sought to strengthen ties to US and European political, economic and security institutions, while striving to conclude a peace deal with Azerbaijan. Peace, Pashinyan holds, is a prerequisite for the formation of a prosperous domestic economy. The real Armenia concept seeks to tie all its policy goals together.
Pashinyan may have the backing of the United States and France, as well as many MPs, but how far he gets in pursuit of the real Armenia project is uncertain given the scope of opposition he faces from three directions.
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