James O’Brien, the assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, praised Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s “brave” foreign policy when he spoke during a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing on Tuesday.
When asked by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Ben Cardin what the U.S. is doing about Azerbaijani and Russian threats to Armenia’s security, O’Brien said: “Russia had guaranteed Armenia’s security after the 2020 war with Azerbaijan and for a long time before that, and it failed. It turned its back as Azerbaijan retook the territory around Nagorno-Karabakh. That has led to a severe break.
“Much of the population [of Armenia] want to get further from Russia. So we’re creating the conditions for that happen.”
O’Brien said this was the main purpose of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s trilateral meeting with Pashinian held in Brussels in April. They set up a “new platform to help Armenia reduce its dependence on Russia,” he said.
“It’s almost entirely dependent on Russia for its energy and its economy. We need to diversify that so that it’s able … to make the brave steps that Prime Minister Pashinian is leading them on, which is a break with Russia,” added the diplomat.
O’Brien went on to praise Pashinian’s efforts to negotiate a comprehensive peace deal with Azerbaijan. He reiterated his earlier statement that the deal is important to Washington because it would also reduce Russian influence in the region by facilitating a new trade route from Central Asia to Turkey passing through Armenia.
O’Brien said nothing about possible U.S. military aid to Armenia and pressure on Azerbaijan. Cardin, who visited Armenia in early July, complained in that regard that he has not seen “much of a fuss made by the international community” about Azerbaijan’s continuing occupation of Armenian border areas seized after the 2020 war.
Pashinian has pledged to “diversify” Armenia’s foreign and security policy in response to what he sees as Russia’s failure to defend his country against Azerbaijani attacks. The premier and his political allies say that closer security ties with the West will help the country better cope with its grave security challenges.
Armenian opposition leaders counter that the policy change is reckless given the lack of any Western security guarantees or significant military aid. They say that it is also alienating neighboring Iran. They argue that unlike the U.S., Iran could intervene militarily to prevent Azerbaijan from opening an extraterritorial corridor to its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenia’s strategic Syunik province.
In a March 2024 article, two analysts from the Rand Corporation, an influential American think-tank, similarly warned Armenia against “unduly alienating” Russia and fully aligning with the West. Washington “cannot play the role of security guarantor” while Moscow “could still impose disastrous costs to Armenia” despite being bogged down in Ukraine, they wrote.