The upcoming meeting, its format and the issues to be discussed have already sparked Russia’s discontent, as the latter sees the developments as a strengthening of NATO in the South Caucasus through Armenia, which means that it will result in the Russian military being forced out of Armenian territory and the closure of the 102nd Military Base in Gyumri.
Commenting on the upcoming meeting in Brussels, Armenian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Ani Badalyan repeated the standard mantra: “We anticipate having substantive discussions on the political dialogue, the development of Armenia’s economic and energy capacities, as well as addressing humanitarian issues that Armenia is facing. The high-level meeting is aimed at developing and deepening our existing relations and is not connected with relations with third countries. Any allegations about it being directed against anyone else are irrelevant, baseless and fictitious.”
Meanwhile, the EU monitoring mission that unilaterally operates in Armenia is effectively turning into a NATO mission, which can be regarded as concrete steps as part of the plan to ensure Armenia’s security on the part of the Euro-Atlantic Union, France and the United States. This increased interest in Armenia on the part of the Western military bloc may affect the balance of power in the South Caucasus region. It would be naïve to expect Russia, Iran and Türkiye to passively watch what is happening on the territory of Armenia.
This is by no means the first attempt to revive Armenian claims to the lands of neighboring countries with the support of Western curators. In particular, at the end of Barack Obama’s presidential term in 2016, the United States tried to once again become active on Armenian territory and were making plans. At that time, the US Democratic Party, which was in power, showed increased activity regarding Armenia as a bridgehead against Türkiye and to promote its interests in the South Caucasus. It was at that time that the US embassy in Yerevan became one of the largest US diplomatic missions in the world in terms of the number of employees.
Today, the United States is actively interfering with all parts of the globe, including the Middle East and neighboring regions. It is not by chance that in 2016, prior to the end of his second presidential term, Barack Obama decided to “fall in love” with Armenia, repeating the pattern of behavior of another Armenophile, American President Woodrow Wilson, who a hundred years ago, in 1920, at the end of his second presidential term, made enormous efforts to interfere in the affairs of Türkiye and the Caucasus. To this end, he promoted the project of a “Wilsonian Armenia”, but effectively a “Greater Armenia” with an area of 103,599 square kilometers, at the expense of Turkish lands and about 70,000 square kilometers of Azerbaijani, Georgian lands and the territory of the “Dashnak Ararat Republic” in the South Caucasus.
On November 22, 1920, referencing the Treaty of Sèvres, US President Woodrow Wilson signed and authorized with the US state seal the arbitral award on the border between Armenia and Türkiye. From that day on, Turkish rights and title to the provinces of Van, Bitlis, Erzurum and Trapezund, which formed part of the former Ottoman Empire (103,599 square kilometers in total), were abolished and the rights and title of the Republic of Armenia were recognized.

As further events showed, the Americans inadequately assessed the situation (some sources claim that they simply did not have enough time to look into all the nuances). Back in September 1920, the Armenian-Turkish war began, provoked by an attempt of Armenian troops to occupy the territories ceded to it under the Treaty of Sèvres, which had never come into force. The Turkish Kemalist troops defeated the Armenian army within two months and stopped only at the approaches to Yerevan following the agreement with the Bolsheviks.
On November 22, defeated Armenia agreed to all of Türkiye’s conditions, renounced the Treaty of Sèvres, and signed a peace treaty with Türkiye in Alexandropol (modern Gyumri) on the night of December 2-3, 1920. According to this treaty, Armenia itself became a Turkish dependent territory. Armenians were able to avoid this fate only thanks to the arrival of the Red Army and the establishment of Soviet Armenia. The US had to accept the loss of the Armenian “bridgehead”.
The issues of the Armenian-Turkish border were fully resolved by the Treaty of Moscow in 1921 and the Treaty of Kars in 1921. However, to this day the Dashnaks consider the Treaty of Alexandropol to be illegitimate, allegedly under international law, because the parties were not internationally recognized and did not have relevant authority. At the same time, the Dashnaks “forget” that the League of Nations and the international law they want to refer to collapsed before World War II because of the struggle of the leading powers for hegemony in the world. And WWII resulted in the establishment of the UN, its Security Council, and new international law. The borders of existing states, including the USSR, Türkiye and Iran, were recognized then. That is, international law recognized the borders between these three countries in the South Caucasus. And after the collapse of the USSR, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia regained their independence in our region, with their sovereignty and borders also recognized by the UN. In other words, the “Wilsonian Armenia” and the Treaty of Sèvres are long gone.
But today, the international law that was formed as a result of World War II, together with the UN and other international institutions, is crumbling before our eyes. Maybe this is what inspires some Western countries to attempt once again, through Armenia, to challenge the internationally recognized borders of the countries in our region? In this context, let us recall another recent episode with the attempt to revive the Treaty of Sèvres. After Nikol Pashinyan came to power in 2018, he and his entourage began to voice harsh revanchist messages against Azerbaijan. It became clear that Armenia was completely derailing the years-long negotiation process within the OSCE Minsk Group on the peaceful resolution of the Karabakh conflict. Then, in late March 2019, then Armenian Defense Minister David Tonoyan, on an official visit to the United States, held lengthy consultations with American political and military officials. Apparently emboldened by the verbal support from the State Department and the Pentagon, Tonoyan then revealed Armenia’s new aggressive plans at a meeting with representatives of the Armenian community in New York: “I, as the Defense Minister, say that the option of return of ‘territories for peace’ will no longer exist, and I have re-formulated it into ‘new territories in the event of a new war’.”
Later, on the centenary of the Treaty of Sèvres, in August 2020, literally a month before the start of the 44-day war, the Armenian side again voiced its claims to the territories of Türkiye and Azerbaijan. At that time, Director of the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia Ashot Melkonyan said in an interview with Armenpress that the treaty remains in force and subject to fulfillment even 100 years later. Thus, the Armenian side set its sights on 180,000 square kilometers of territory, openly reviving the plan to recreate a mythical “greater Armenia”.
“Article 89 of the Treaty of Sèvres was an arbitral award. It was to enter into force without ratification. Türkiye was liable to accept the document immediately and unconditionally, since an arbitral award does not necessarily imply ratification by a country. From the moment of submission, from November 22, 1920 to this day, in terms of international law it remains in force and the de jure Armenian-Turkish border is not the current Akhuryan-Araxes line, but actually the border that includes most of the provinces: Trabzon, Erzurum, Bitlis, Van with an area of 90 thousand square kilometers of Western Armenia and 70 thousand square kilometers of Eastern Armenia, including the territory of the Republic of Armenia,” Melkonyan said, implying both Turkish territories and the lands of Azerbaijan occupied by the Armenian Armed Forces at that time.
According to Ashot Melkonyan, the Treaty of Sèvres still being in force is also evidenced by the fact that the former Entente countries are still using this document against the Turkish authorities in their own interests. In other words, Melkonyan voiced an attempt to revive the Treaty of Sèvres, which was apparently backed by a number of Western countries led by the United States and France.
“It is not by chance that the Entente countries put this document on the agenda from time to time when state-to-state relations with Türkiye go bad, reminding that the current de facto Armenian-Turkish border is invalid, while the Turkish-Armenian border according to Woodrow Wilson’s arbitral award is valid,” Ashot Melkonyan said.
In reference to the opinion that the Treaty of Sèvres expires 100 years after its signing, Melkonyan said this opinion was an erroneous one, as none of the signatories had declared the Treaty of Sèvres invalid.
“The document says nothing about the duration of the arbitral award, no new document has been adopted, no party, including any of the non-ratifying countries, has declared the Treaty of Sèvres invalid, so it is still relevant 100 years later,” Melkonyan said.
This begs the question: why then, after the Tovuz battles in July 2020, and before the imminent war, did the Armenian side become so bold and openly began to make territorial claims not only against Azerbaijan, but also against NATO’s Türkiye? After all, Türkiye is one of the most important members of NATO and has the second strongest and best-equipped land army of the North Atlantic Alliance. Was it Washington and other Western partners who gave such courage to Armenia?
It appears that Washington and Paris had already decided at that time to dust off the “Wilsonian Armenia” project and the Treaty of Sèvres.
More than a hundred years ago, it was US President Woodrow Wilson who initiated the idea of creating a large Armenian state with access to the Black Sea and the inclusion of a significant part of the territory of Türkiye, which was defeated in the First World War. It should be noted that under Woodrow Wilson the US entered the First World War only at the end of 1917 in the “final stage” and expected to strengthen its influence in Western Asia and the Caucasus as one of the victorious countries. However, the problem was that at that time the Americans had neither a colony nor a dependent state on which they could “rely” in the Middle East and the Caucasus.
The United States was not a major superpower in 1919-1920. The British Empire was clearly superior in terms of power and influence in the world. And France, despite its formal “alliance”, was not happy with the strengthening of the US. At any rate, having divided the east of the Mediterranean taken from the Ottoman Empire among themselves (Syria and Lebanon went to France, Palestine and Jordan to Britain), the Entente allies did not let the United States into the region.
But World War I did not resolve these and other global problems in the confrontation between empires. As a result, World War II broke out, and the United States became the ultimate hegemon, taking from France and Britain almost all of their colonial territories in the Middle East, where they had traditionally considered themselves the masters.
Today, when the redistribution of spheres of influence on the planet and the shaping of a new world order are again underway, the United States and France are not averse to trying once again to use the Armenian bridgehead in our region, the project of which was proposed by President Woodrow Wilson a century ago. But this idea ended in fiasco once again. Exactly one hundred years after the defeat of Dashnak Armenia in November 1920, modern Armenia was defeated again in November 2020, this time by the Azerbaijani army. This completely disrupted the US and French plans for our region. Like a hundred years ago, Armenia was sacrificed to the political games of the major powers and left alone with its problems and neighbors. It seems that repeating mistakes is the favorite sport of all Armenian authorities, both a hundred years ago and today. And the Western instigators of this Armenian “plundering campaign” will eventually accept their defeat and will make an agreement with Russia, Türkiye and Azerbaijan at the expense of Armenia’s interests, and maybe even at the cost of Armenia’s statehood. For them, this country is literally and figuratively a bargaining chip in the game at the great chess board of global geopolitics.
And another thing, incidentally, all three American presidents, Woodrow Wilson, Barack Obama and the incumbent Joe Biden, started their games towards the end of their presidential terms, all three were from the Democratic Party and all three caused disaster and defeat for Armenia … usually in November.
Rizvan Huseynov
Translated from Minval.az