As the U.S. election campaign enters its decisive home stretch, with the candidates now nominated, there will be much focus on how the outcome will impact the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. We’d like to point out that the volatile South Caucasus may be affected no less by a return to a transactional approach that views Vladimir Putin favorably.

That’s because the region is currently being reshaped by a below-the-radar geopolitical shift: Armenia’s strategic tilt away from Russia and toward the West. This coincided with Armenia’s hostile neighbor Azerbaijan deepening its ties with Russia, with Vladimir Putin visiting Baku on August 18 for meetings with President Ilham Aliyev. Azerbaijan’s latest wave of purging and arresting peace activists, scholars, and a few civil society actors makes Armenia’s tilt away from Russia strategically significant for U.S. policies in South Caucasus and Central Asia.

Should Donald Trump emerge victorious in November, a basic assumption of Armenia—that the United States would reward the move and welcome an ally that is an emerging democracy on the basis of shared values—will be upended. The result could be a more aggressive and revisionist Azerbaijan and a new war. Should Kamala Harris win, there will be greater continuity and perhaps deepening of relations with Armenia, even if the United States does not abandon Azerbaijan.

So, it is worth examining the events that led to this point. Armenia’s 2018 Velvet Revolution, unlike other democratic “color revolutions,” lacked a geopolitical pivot to the West. Armenia’s “Velvet Revolution” was not a “color” revolution. The geopolitical vector did not emerge in Armenia’s domestic politics until 2021, with the Kremlin as key in catalyzing Armenia’s drive for diversified security policies. 

So Armenia’s security system is now decoupling from Russia. It has been tilting toward the United States—a change most clearly reflected in the June 11 upgrade by the United States of its relations with Armenia to a strategic partnership. This move aims to enhance Armenia’s resilience in areas ranging from economic growth and energy to military security and law enforcement reforms. 

This followed the April 5 joint U.S.-EU-Armenia meeting, at which Washington and Brussels pledged similar support for Armenia’s participation in NATO’s seventy-fifth-anniversary summit and Eagle Partner joint military exercises with the U.S. army. In July, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved $65 million in assistance to Armenia to advance “reform efforts and Euro-Atlantic integration.” This has extended to key elements of the Euro-Atlantic partnership, as the European Council, for the first time, provided military assistance to Armenia through the European Peace Facility while already having a European monitoring presence on Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan.

These unprecedented developments amount to a dramatic departure from centuries of Armenian dependence on Russia, its former colonial power.

For the moment, at least, it amounts to a diversification of foreign relations and a pivot on security issues more than a total break with Russia, as Armenia continues its economic entanglement with and relative energy dependence on Russia. This not-unfamiliar situation is known as “minilateralism”—with “issue splitting” along areas such as security, economy, energy, and technology, yielding a more complex and targeted discrete alliances rather than an all-encompassing attachment to (and reliance on) a single bloc.

Nonetheless, by diluting its asymmetric dependence on Russia, Armenia emerges as a small state in the world system, with the risks and rewards this entails. By implementing a strategic shift away from Russia’s security and political patronage, Armenia hopes to withstand the insidious neo-imperial geopolitics that Moscow has been exercising in its post-Soviet peripheries since the Soviet collapse.

Pax Russica No More

To a considerable degree, the Westward security shift has been spurred by Russia’s deepening coordination with Azerbaijan—an alliance of the authoritarians. 

After Azerbaijan’s partially successful 2020 offensive against the disputed and Armenia-backed Nagorno-Karabakh entity, Russia’s brokering of a cease-fire ended a forty-four-day war and resulted in the deployment of Russian peacekeepers to the area. Even though Armenia’s security arrangements with Russia did not extend to conflicts outside of Armenia’s internationally recognized territory, Russia failed to implement the very cease-fire agreement it brokered or to provide even basic security in the fragile post-war setting.

The Russian peacekeepers stood by as Azerbaijan blockaded the self-governing entity throughout 2023 and then attacked on September 18-19, 2023, causing the mass exodus of its 120,000 ethnic Armenians. Whether this reflected impotence, indifference, or collusion, it badly eroded Armenia’s trust in Moscow as a strategic ally, indeed driving a discourse in Yerevan that Russia was more of a risk than a resource. A recent poll found that 40 percent of Armenians consider Russia a political threat, with another 51 percent viewing it as an economic threat, while a staggering 66 percent characterize relations with Russia as “negative.”

Furthering this was a lack of Russian backing on several occasions when Azerbaijan staged incursions into Armenia proper as well: a limited incursion in May 2021 (amid Armenia’s parliamentary elections) and a more extensive incursion into central and southern Armenia in September 2022, which was stopped after three days of intense fighting and intense U.S. pressure on Baku.

Azerbaijan’s aggression and direct invasion into Armenia should have triggered Armenia’s 1996 bilateral defense treaty with Russia, as well as multilateral CSTO security obligations—yet Russia categorically refused to meet either of its treaty obligations and dismissed the events as border clashes, effectively blessing Azerbaijan’s aggression. By contrast, France, the EU, and the United States quickly recognized the breach of Armenia’s international borders, unlike Russia, to deny an opening for Baku to keep aggression on the table.

Azerbaijan continued to arm itself while Russia failed to fulfill its contractual obligations to supply Armenia with necessary weaponry. As a member of the CSTO, Armenia was also unable to access Western arms markets. Meanwhile, Russia permitted Belarus, another CSTO member, to supply Azerbaijan with advanced weapons. Left with no choice, Armenia relied on limited purchases from India. This occurred amid aggressive expansionist rhetoric from Azerbaijan’s government, including from its bellicose president, Ilham Aliyev.

Moscow’s abdication of security commitments to Armenia, in coordination with Azerbaijan, was partly aimed at undermining international norms on territorial integrity, non-aggression, and inviolability of international borders. This, obviously, was aligned with Moscow’s own violation of these norms in its assault on Ukraine. The Russia-Azerbaijan coordination on aggression against Armenia is the unrecognized second theater in Russia’s battle against the West.

To address this conundrum, Armenia froze its membership in the CSTO as it pursued deepening security relations with Western powers, including the United States. Additionally, Armenia removed Russian officers from its airport and customs inspections and requested the removal of FSB troops from border positions in southern and central Armenia.

The Big Geopolitics Emerging from Armenia’s “Minilateralism”

The resulting Western and American support has been vital to advancing Armenia’s military. This included the appointment of a resident advisor, growing collaboration between U.S. European Command and Armenia’s Defense Ministry, support through advisory programs in cybersecurity capabilities, intelligence service reform, military-to-military contact activities, and more. Washington has also supported Armenia’s security collaboration with various NATO members, most importantly France, but also involving military-technical cooperation with Greece, the United States, Italy, Czechia, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Germany. Currently, India and France are Armenia’s largest defense suppliers. It is a monumental shift from decades-long, near-total dependence on Russia for military purchases.

The enhanced military cooperation has led to stronger governmental networks. A notable example is the visit by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard R. Verma, Special Representative Nina Hachigian, and state and local officials from California, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, and Pennsylvania.

The shift enjoys broad public support. Nearly nine in ten Armenians have a positive view of relations with the United States and EU—a virtuous cycle that enables and encourages further partnership.

Deepening U.S. engagement with Armenia reduces Russian influence over Eurasia by weakening Russia’s multi-regional power projection from Eastern Europe and the Caucasus to Central Asia. Strengthening U.S.-Armenia relations and achieving border stability with Azerbaijan enhances the U.S. goal of Western transit and connectivity with Central Asia, which is crucial for maintaining influence in the global economy and countering China’s presence in the region. Additionally, supporting Armenia, a stronger democracy than Georgia, helps the United States bolster democracy in the South Caucasus, benefiting both the European Union and Euro-Atlantic integration.

Critically, sustained support for border stability reduces the threat of aggression, creating conditions for democratic expansion in the region and the possible eventual political liberalization of Azerbaijan.

Dr. Nerses Kopalyan is an Associate Professor-in-Residence of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His fields of specialization include international security, geopolitics, political theory, and philosophy of science. He has conducted extensive research on polarity, superpower relations, and security studies. He is the author of World Political Systems After Polarity (Routledge, 2017), the co-author of Sex, Power, and Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and co-author of Latinos in Nevada: A Political, Social, and Economic Profile (2021, Nevada University Press), and the upcoming Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War (2025, Routledge)