Don't mention the Genocide...
JD Vance nearly TRIPPs up in Yerevan
Note to subs: This is not my usual in-depth dive; it was an attempt to get a short piece published on the hypocrisy of the Vance visit. I thought you may as well read it. Don’t mention the censorship…
US Vice President Vance, fresh from being welcomed at the Winter Olympics, is currently in the South Caucasus, where the ‘peace’ deal outlined between Armenia and Azerbaijan was outlined in the last year’s White House visit. Vance - the most senior US official to visit Armenia since independence - paid the customary respects of visiting dignitaries at the Armenian Genocide Memorial.
Whoever was running his official X account did not get the diplomatic briefing. An initial post, referring to the Second Couple 'honor[ing] the victims of the 1915 Genocide’ was rapidly removed. The remembrance book was signed with an anodyne reference to the ‘lives lost’. Turkish sensibilities matter.
The Second Couple at Tsitsernakaberd
America, of course, does not officially recognise the Genocide, and diplomatic faux pas happen; but the response says much about the US’s interests in the peace deal. Ostensibly, the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) is a deal to facilitate transport connections with Azerbaijan’s exclave of Nakhichevan, along Armenia’s southern Syunik province along the border with Iran. The idea is that the corridor will be run by an American company, for 50 years, with only a minority stake (26%) held by Armenia. Much detail remains to be negotiated as to how this will work in practice.
Even though the ‘peace’ deal is far from finalised, Western interests are taking advantage. Vance’s trip has seen an agreement to replace Armenia’s Soviet-era nuclear plant Metsamor (which supplies more than a third of its electricity) with an American solution. Whatever the technical or geostrategic arguments, the cost to Armenia will be vast - estimated at $9 billion. And Russian gas (like all former Soviet states, sold at a generously discounted price) is in the early stages of being replaced by Azeri supplies. Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan is negotiating a Carthaginian peace.
Vance was full of praise for Pashinyan in his public statements, ‘a guy who can build a the long-term partnership, to make this kind of a thing stick’. Quite some words, given that elections are due in June.
He went on: ‘As a devout Christian myself, I know the meaning of this country to the entire world’. What he didn't mention is that Pashinyan is undertaking an unprecedented attack on the Armenian church. Four Archbishops have been arrested, three under rolling ‘pre-trial detention’, the other convicted in what amounts to a show trial. Pashinyan is seeking to overthrow the Catholicos himself. In an embarrassing episode last year, Pashinyan even threatened to expose his intact foreskin on camera in front of the Catholicos, to prove his faith (for which read: not Muslim).
Neither did Vance mention the 120,00 Armenians driven out of Artsakh after Azerbaijan’s nine-month blockade of the territory in 2023. Or the risk the region’s Christian heritage - including Amaras monastery, founded in in 4th century and where Mesrop Mashtots created the Armenian alphabet. Armenians rightly fear that they will meet the same fate as the Christian heritage of Nakhichevan.
This year’s election will take place in a country where the Pashinyan regime is consolidating power through non-democratic means. Prominent businessman and supporter of the Church, Samvel Karapetyan, is also under pre-trial detention, and the country’s electricity distribution network (owned by his Tashir Group) is being ‘nationalised’. From the mayor of the second city Gyumri (arrested on bribery charges) to minor podcasters, opposition figures are persecuted.
Yerevan is one of the safest cities in the world, but Pashinyan’s security state crackdown will only be increased by the adoption of facial recognition technology.
Like Kaja Kallas before him, Vance (despite his overt Christian pronouncements) has been silent. One man’s Democracy Shield is another man’s Democratic Backsliding. Realism is the only game in town.
Vance now heads to Baku, where he has undertaken to raise the issue of Armenian prisoners held after the war ended. Conveniently, Azerbaijan sentenced most to life imprisonment in time for the VP’s helicopter to land.
Azerbaijan still occupies nearly 250 sq km of Armenian territory, mostly taken since the 2020 war. And Aliyev himself promotes the narrative of ‘Western Azerbaijan’ - the current Republic of Armenia, not the actual province of Iran of that name - as Azeri land, and pressing a ‘right of return’ of ‘displaced’ Azeris.
Like all of Trump's claimed peace deals, that in the South Caucasus is far from it. Vance’s swift retraction of a direct reference to the Genocide is more than a diplomatic nicety; it is a sign that his Christian rhetoric is for his domestic audience.