Can Armenia Rebuild Trust in Itself?

By Margarita Krtikashyan, Yerevan, 30 May 2026

Armenia is entering another election season exhausted, suspicious, and psychologically wounded. Five years after the 2020 war, the country is no longer debating only borders, alliances, or diplomacy. Increasingly, it is debating something far more fragile: whether Armenians still believe the state can protect continuity itself.

This may be the deepest crisis facing Armenia today.

Not simply the loss of territory. Not only political polarization. Not even the collapse of old geopolitical assumptions. Beneath all of these lies something more dangerous: the gradual erosion of collective confidence. Confidence in institutions, in leadership, in alliances, in the future, and increasingly, in the very idea that the Armenian state is still moving toward a coherent national direction.

The approaching June 7 elections therefore feel different from previous political cycles. The atmosphere is heavier, more existential. Many Armenians are not asking only who should govern, but what exactly remains of the state after years of war, displacement, uncertainty, and continuous psychological pressure.

This anxiety did not emerge overnight.

The trauma of the 2020 war fundamentally altered Armenian public consciousness. The forced displacement of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023 deepened it further. What once felt unthinkable became reality within a remarkably short period of time. Since then, Armenian society has increasingly lived in a state of prolonged emotional exhaustion.

And exhaustion changes political psychology.

A tired society begins lowering its expectations. It slowly adapts itself to smaller ambitions, smaller strategic horizons, and smaller definitions of survival. Over time, even loss itself risks becoming normalized. This is perhaps one of the most dangerous consequences of prolonged national trauma: not sudden collapse, but gradual psychological reduction.

Today, many Armenians fear exactly this process.

The fear is not always expressed openly or coherently. Sometimes it appears through debates surrounding enclaves and borders. Sometimes through reactions to discussions about national symbols or historical memory. Sometimes through suspicion toward the language of “normalization” and “peace.” Yet beneath these debates lies a common concern: that Armenia is gradually being taught to psychologically adjust itself to retreat.

Whether one agrees with this perception or not, it has become politically significant.

The current Armenian government presents peace and normalization as strategic necessities. Given Armenia’s geopolitical environment, this position is understandable. The country is smaller than its regional adversaries, economically constrained, and surrounded by uncertainty. Avoiding another large-scale war is not an irrational objective.

Yet political language also shapes political reality.

When societies repeatedly hear the language of adaptation without hearing an equally strong language of resilience, preparedness, and continuity, insecurity deepens. Peace begins to sound less like stability and more like managed decline.

This is why the current public atmosphere in Armenia feels so psychologically tense. For part of society, the fear today is not only military defeat, but the gradual normalization of strategic retreat.

The controversy surrounding enclaves reflects this especially clearly.

From a purely technical perspective, such questions are often presented through maps, legal arguments, and border commissions. But for many Armenians, the issue is understood differently. It is viewed through the memory of phased concessions and cumulative loss. The fear is not about one isolated territorial adjustment, but about the possibility that each new concession becomes easier than the previous one.

This perception is intensified by geography itself.

Strategic roads connecting Armenia to Iran and Georgia are not abstract lines on a map. They are lifelines for a landlocked and vulnerable state. As a result, discussions about borders immediately become discussions about sovereignty, strategic depth, and long-term survivability.

At the same time, the legal dimension of these debates has further contributed to public distrust. Many Armenians increasingly feel that crucial issues involving sovereignty and territorial interpretation are being discussed in narrow technical language inaccessible to society itself. This creates the impression that existential questions are being transformed into bureaucratic procedures.

Such perceptions weaken confidence even further.

States cannot survive indefinitely through technical management alone. They require emotional legitimacy. They require a population that still believes the future of the state is worth defending psychologically, politically, and collectively.

This is where the idea of ashkharhazor becomes relevant once again.

Not necessarily in its narrow military meaning, but in its broader civilizational sense.

Historically, Armenian survival was never based solely on formal institutions or external guarantees. It depended on social cohesion, civic participation, and a deeply rooted instinct for collective continuity. The relationship between the Armenian people and the Armenian state was always more existential than administrative.

Today, that relationship appears strained.

Years of disappointment, internal polarization, and geopolitical trauma have weakened the connection between society and institutions. Rebuilding Armenia therefore requires more than military modernization or diplomatic agreements. It requires rebuilding public belief in the state itself.

This is perhaps the central challenge facing Armenia after 2020.

A country cannot rely entirely on professional political structures if society beneath them becomes permanently fragmented, cynical, and emotionally detached. Armies defend borders, but societies defend continuity.

This discussion inevitably extends beyond Armenia itself and toward the Diaspora.

One of Armenia’s greatest strategic assets remains the existence of large Armenian communities shaped by different historical experiences and geopolitical realities. Armenians in Russia often view security through a different lens than Armenians in Europe or the United States. Western Armenian communities frequently emphasize memory, identity, and democratic development, while post-Soviet Armenian communities may prioritize stability and strategic realism.

These differences are natural.

Yet despite different perspectives, one reality remains unchanged: without a viable Armenian state, Armenian political existence everywhere becomes weaker.

The Diaspora cannot replace Armenia. But Armenia cannot afford to become psychologically disconnected from the Diaspora either.

Over recent years, conversations within Armenian communities abroad increasingly reveal a mixture of frustration, grief, confusion, and concern about Armenia’s future direction. Many Diaspora Armenians continue supporting Armenia emotionally and materially, but they also seek clarity. They want to understand what kind of state Armenia is trying to become after years of trauma and geopolitical shock.

This question matters because memory alone cannot sustain a state indefinitely.

The Armenian Diaspora historically became one of the principal guardians of memory after the Genocide. But the future requires more than remembrance. It requires strategic seriousness, institutional development, and renewed state-society confidence.

At the same time, Armenia itself cannot simply detach political reality from historical consciousness.

This tension is visible in current public debates surrounding national identity, historical language, and symbolic continuity. Discussions connected to Mount Ararat, genocide discourse, normalization, and historical interpretation generate unusually emotional reactions because they are not perceived merely as intellectual disagreements. They are interpreted through a broader fear that Armenia itself is entering a period of civilizational uncertainty.

For many Armenians, the concern today is not simply what the country may lose physically, but what it may gradually stop believing in psychologically.

And once societies begin doubting their own continuity, political vulnerability deepens rapidly.

None of this means Armenia is doomed to decline.

Despite everything, Armenia still possesses extraordinary resources: a globally connected Diaspora, a historically resilient society, educational potential, cultural continuity, and a population that, even after repeated trauma, continues searching for ways to preserve statehood.

But these resources require direction.

The country cannot survive indefinitely on exhaustion alone. Fear cannot become a governing philosophy. Nor can endless adaptation replace strategy.

At some point, Armenia must move beyond managing trauma and begin rebuilding confidence not blind optimism, but serious confidence rooted in preparedness, institutional credibility, social cohesion, and strategic clarity.

This may ultimately become the real question facing Armenia after the June elections.

Not simply who governs.

But whether Armenian society still possesses enough collective belief to rebuild a state capable not only of surviving crisis, but of imagining a future larger than survival itself.

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