Beyond symbolism: Building the capacity Armenia requires

I have followed U.S.-Armenian security cooperation for years, both as an observer and through service in a state military structure. The pattern keeps repeating itself. In January 2025 Armenia and the United States signed a Strategic Partnership Charter in Washington. Foreign Minister Mirzoyan and Secretary Blinken put their names on it. The document opened more doors — defense cooperation, border security, cybersecurity and economic resilience. Diaspora commentary treated it as a turning point. Fair enough. It was progress. But I have watched too many hopeful readings of limited tools collapse when the next crisis arrives. The 2025 charter risks becoming the latest example. It creates working groups and consultation mechanisms; it does not commit American forces or automatic assistance in a crisis. Like the Kansas National Guard partnership that has run since 2003, it carefully stops short of mutual defense obligations. Armenia’s real advances in force modernization have come elsewhere. Since 2020 the contracts with India have approached $2 billion dollars. Swathi weapon-locating radars. Pinaka multiple-launch rocket systems, including the guided versions whose first batch left India in January 2026. Akash surface-to-air missiles. ATAGS 155 mm howitzers and related artillery. These are the largest new conventional systems Armenia has acquired from any single non-Russian source since 2020. Deliveries are underway. India has become the largest supplier of new hardware in the post-2020 period, ending the old near-monopoly of Russian equipment. France has moved in the same direction, though on a different timetable. In 2024 alone French export licenses exceeded 2.7 billion euros. Signed contracts by year’s end were more modest — around 278 million euros — but they cover artillery, air defense components and systems that matter in modern conflict. Caesar howitzers remain on the table. These deals share three features the Kansas program and the charter deliberately lack. They transfer major combat systems. They reduce single-source vulnerability. And they change the actual correlation of forces on the ground — something no training rotation or framework document has yet done. None of this is a security guarantee. Neither New Delhi nor Paris has offered one. Both relationships stay transactional and carefully balanced against their own regional interests. Yet the material difference is obvious. A multiyear National Guard partnership improves professional skills and interoperability for peacekeeping. Delivered rocket artillery and air defense systems change the calculations an adversary has to make. I have seen this pattern before with the Kansas partnership. The same optimistic reading is already attaching itself to the charter. When every new framework document is treated as evidence of a Western “pivot,” expectations again outrun what the documents actually say. The charter is useful. It institutionalizes dialogue and signals that Armenia has options. It is not a substitute for the quieter, harder work of rearmament. Armenia’s security still rests on three pillars no partnership text can supply: domestic production and maintenance capacity, multisource procurement that actually arrives and realistic diplomacy that lowers the chance of renewed fighting. India and France have contributed more to the second pillar than any American training program so far. Saying that is not a slight against the United States. It is simply insisting on clarity. In a region where the costs of misjudgment have already been paid in lost territory, lost lives and the displacement of our people, the difference between a signed framework and a delivered rocket system is not semantic. It is the difference between hope and the hard capacity our nation requires. Armenia’s survival has never depended on the warmth of distant statements or the longevity of training partnerships. It has depended on the clarity of our own judgment and the strength we build with our own hands and those of reliable partners. Recognizing the limits of symbolic cooperation is not a lack of faith in Armenia’s cause. It is an act of national responsibility. Sustainable expectations, grounded in reality rather than symbolism, are essential if we are to strengthen Armenia’s sovereignty, preserve what remains and build the genuine defensive capacity our people deserve. Clarity is not a luxury. In this moment, it is a duty. The views expressed by the author are his own and not those of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office or the California Military Department.

Beyond symbolism: Building the capacity Armenia requires

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William Paparian

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William Paparian

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