When Nikol Pashinyan swept to power in Armenia’s 2018 Velvet Revolution, replacing the entrenched post-Soviet order that had dominated the country for decades, the Armenian American community rejoiced. In breach of my own “no slogans on clothing” rule, I proudly wore a baseball cap labeled “Duxov” — Armenian for “with courage,” and a catchphrase of support for Pashinyan — convinced the country had finally entered a genuinely democratic era. As with so many diasporas, the fate of a country thousands of miles away felt intensely personal. We swelled with pride when The Economist named Armenia its “Country of the Year” in 2018, praising the country’s “chance of democracy and renewal.”
Today, in the wake of the country’s June parliamentary elections, that optimism feels increasingly distant. Under the dominance of Pashinyan’s ruling Civil Contract party, Armenia has experienced a gradual but unmistakable erosion of democratic norms.
Over the past year, and with growing intensity in recent months, Armenian authorities have detained a leading opposition figure, Samvel Karapetyan on politically motivated allegations of attempting to overthrow the government. Journalists, lawyers, judges and government critics have likewise faced prosecutions and investigations increasingly viewed as intended to narrow political space ahead of the elections.
The government has also escalated an extraordinary confrontation with the Armenian Apostolic Church, one of the central institutions of Armenian national identity for centuries. Senior clergy who criticized Pashinyan’s handling of negotiations with Azerbaijan and the government’s political direction have faced arrests and been charged with trying to destabilize the state. Pashinyan himself has publicly called for the removal of Catholicos Karekin II, an unprecedented intervention by a modern Armenian leader into the internal affairs of the church.
Meanwhile, the government has increasingly blurred the line between party and state, deploying state resources to benefit the ruling party, reportedly using intelligence services to surveil political opponents and, most recently, rushing through controversial amendments to Armenia’s electoral law with minimal parliamentary scrutiny only a month before the vote.
One would expect that the European Union, if not the Trump administration, to express concern over these developments. Armenia, after all, has long been celebrated as a rare democratic success story in a region dominated by authoritarianism. The EU has repeatedly said maintaining democratic systems around the world is an existential priority. Instead, Brussels and Washington have largely treated the country’s democratic backsliding as an inconvenience best ignored in favor of a larger geopolitical objective: pulling Armenia decisively out of Russia’s orbit and into the West’s.
That posture was on full display at this month’s European Political Community summit in Yerevan, where dozens of European leaders arrived to deepen ties with the country. Not one publicly raised concerns about the Armenian government’s increasingly coercive domestic policies. Instead, they heralded new financial assistance, defense cooperation and closer integration with Europe, dangling the distant possibility of EU membership. Their only public criticism concerned Azerbaijan’s continued detention of Armenian political prisoners, including philanthropist Ruben Vardanyan, an issue Pashinyan explicitly refused to raise at the summit.
Armenia’s government has taken full advantage of the West’s rivalry with Russia, portraying nearly all who challenge its authority as agents of “foreign interference.” Most recently, Armenian intelligence services claimed pro-Russian groups were preparing to fly tens of thousands of Armenians from Russia to vote in the elections, allegations that were widely publicized in pro-government media despite little evidence. The European Union has reinforced this narrative, recently allocating millions of euros to Armenia specifically to combat “foreign election interference.”
European and American officials now speak incessantly about the dangers of election meddling, invariably meaning Moscow’s. Yet Western leaders themselves increasingly insert themselves into Armenian politics in ways that unmistakably signal their sympathies. French President Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly embraced Pashinyan as the face of Armenia’s European future. During his February visit to Yerevan, Vice President JD Vance publicly endorsed Pashinyan, leaving little ambiguity about Washington’s preferred outcome. Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Yerevan yesterday in a deliberately timed display of support for the government under a still-to-be-detailed “Charter on Comprehensive and Strategic Partnership.” The message to Armenian voters is hardly subtle: The health of their country’s democracy matters less than its geopolitical orientation.
Pushing Armenia to pick sides in the contest with Russia is also reckless and dangerous. Landlocked, resource-poor and economically fragile, the country exists under pressures that would test even long-established democracies. It remains inescapably tied to Russia and Iran for trade, energy and transit while living under the permanent shadow of conflict with Azerbaijan and Turkey. The trauma of military defeat, the displacement of more than 120,000 Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh and the insecurity of the wider region have only intensified the pressures on the country, making it increasingly vulnerable to authoritarian drift.
That is precisely why preserving political freedoms and pluralism there matters so profoundly. At a moment of global democratic erosion, the success or failure of vulnerable democracies cannot be treated as incidental. Their survival matters not because they align with one bloc or another, but because each democratic system that falters further narrows the already shrinking space for political freedom worldwide.
