Armenia Post-2020: From the Bridge to the Hub?

ABSTRACT

This article delves into the impact of the 2020 war against Azerbaijan on Armenia’s agency as an in-between country, using the lens of liminality and ontological (in)security. The study uncovers shifts in the articulation of the liminal Self in relation to the EU and Russian Others and how it is framed as a source of agency in foreign policy discourse in the aftermath of the 44-day war. It is argued that there has been a shift from potential agency as a bridge to constrained agency as a hub in Armenia due to a rupture of the ontological security narrative.

List of Interviews

Table

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to all experts and political and civil society representatives who took the time to share their knowledge, visions, and experiences with me. I would also like to thank Fabienne Bossuyt, Laure Delcour and Olga Burlyuk for their support and most valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. These incursions targeted provinces in southern Armenia, near the border with Azerbaijan, and resulted in 215 square kilometers being taken over by the latter since 2020, according to Civilnet (2023).

2. The literature also mentions other forms of liminality with different effects, such as interstitial and external liminality (Loh and Heiskanen 2020), which are not within the scope of this paper.

3. This refers to Armenia repelling Azerbaijan’s attacks and retaliating before the 44-day war.

4. This should be nuanced by the fact that no interviews with representatives of the so-called pro-Russian opposition were conducted during the field trip in 2023, while some of them would call for Armenia to join the Union State with Russia.

5. Terms such as genocide to refer to the conflict with Azerbaijan come from the Armenian discourse and are not necessarily recognized as such by external actors.

6. The blockade stopped after the capitulation of Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Special Research Fund [grant number BOF.DOC.2020.0018.01].