Category: News

The results of Armenia’s parliamentary election in June dealt Russia’s bid to reassert its grip on the South Caucasus a serious blow, and the reverberations are not confined to Moscow, Washington and Brussels. 

For Beijing and Tokyo, both of which have quietly built stakes in the region as an overland bridge between Asia and Europe, the election’s outcome, which reaffirmed Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s authority, carries real geoeconomic weight.

Pashinyan’s decisive victory represents a clear popular rejection of his Kremlin-aligned opponents and a significant failure for Moscow’s attempt to install friendlier leadership in Yerevan. It is also, by extension, a setback for Tehran. Iran was once a fervent supporter of Armenia due to shared hostility towards Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan’s secular majority Shi’a society is a direct repudiation of Tehran’s heavy-handed authoritarian Islamist governance.

Iran and Russia alike have a defense and security agreement and a regional partnership that relies heavily on the same opposition to Western and Turkish influence that Armenian voters just repudiated. With Russia badly weakened by the war in Ukraine and Iran preoccupied with its lingering confrontation with the United States and Israel, both traditional powers in the South Caucasus are more constrained than at any point in decades.

That vacuum matters enormously for Asian economies that have spent the last several years searching for trade routes that do not run through Russian or Iranian territory.

The Middle Corridor Problem

Since 2022, China has poured diplomatic and commercial energy into the Middle Corridor – the trans-Caspian route linking China to Europe via Central Asia, the Caspian Sea, the South Caucasus, and Turkey – deliberately bypassing sanctioned Russian rail lines. Beijing has treated this corridor as a hedge for its Belt and Road ambitions: a way to keep goods moving westward even if Russia remains a sanctioned partner. It could also be a long-term strategic lifeline in the event of a conflict with the West.

Georgia and Azerbaijan have long been essential nodes in that plan. Armenia, historically on the periphery of these calculations, now looks more consequential as Georgia increasingly tilts toward Russia. It is noteworthy that a Chinese company recently withdrew from involvement in developing a deep-water port at the Georgian Black Sea town of Anaklia.

A durable Armenia-Azerbaijan peace, anchored by the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, would open new transit options through Armenian territory and stabilize the wider corridor that Chinese logistics firms and state planners have been counting on. 

But it would do so on terms set substantially by Washington, not Beijing – a dynamic that Chinese planners are unlikely to welcome even as they benefit from the added stability. Expect China to continue quietly investing in Central Asian and Caucasian infrastructure to maintain its own leverage over the corridor’s future, even as it lets Washington absorb the diplomatic cost of brokering peace.

Japan’s Quiet Diversification Play

Japan’s stakes are less about Belt and Road competition and more about supply chain diversification. Tokyo has spent the past several years deepening ties with Central Asia through its “Central Asia plus Japan“ platform, partly as a hedge against overreliance on Chinese-controlled trade routes and partly to diversify access to critical minerals and energy. A more stable South Caucasus, freed from the risk of renewed Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict and less susceptible to Russian or Iranian disruption, makes that overland bridge to Europe and the Gulf considerably more attractive for Japanese trading houses and manufacturers looking to de-risk from both Russian and Chinese chokepoints.

Iran’s weakening position compounds this. Tehran has long served, however imperfectly, as an alternative transit and energy partner for Asian economies wary of relying entirely on Gulf sea lanes through the Strait of Hormuz. An Iran squeezed from its northern flank and increasingly isolated in the Gulf is a less reliable partner for that role, pushing Asian energy planners – including in Beijing, despite its 25-year strategic partnership with Tehran – to further diversify overland options through the Caucasus and Central Asia.

The Constitutional Fight Ahead

None of this is guaranteed. The Armenian election outcome is a beginning, not an endpoint. Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party won 49.8 percent of the vote, good for 64 of the 105 seats in parliament, retaining its majority but falling short of the two-thirds supermajority needed to amend Armenia’s constitution. This complicates efforts to finalize an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal.

Azerbaijan has conditioned its agreement to the peace deal on a tweak to Armenia’s constitution, removing language that can be construed as a territorial claim on Nagorno-Karabakh, which Azerbaijan regained control of in 2023.

The Constitution contains no direct language claiming Azerbaijani territory. The problem lies instead in its Preamble, which adopts the principles and national aspirations of Armenia’s 1990 Declaration of Independence – a document that explicitly references the December 1, 1989, decision on the “reunification” of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijani territory. As a result, Armenia’s constitutional framework is linked to a foundational document that contains a claim to internationally recognized Azerbaijani territory.

Without a constitutional amendment, any peace agreement risks being reversible by a future government, undermining the durability that transit-dependent economies in Asia need before committing serious capital to the region. Crucially, constitutional reform is neither exceptional nor unprecedented. States have repeatedly amended their fundamental laws in pursuit of peace and strategic interests. Ireland’s constitutional changes under the Good Friday Agreement remain the most prominent example, becoming the bedrock of peace settlement with the UK. Greece, for years, insisted on constitutional changes from Macedonia – ultimately leading to the Prespa Agreement and North Macedonia’s path towards Euro-Atlantic integration.

Pashinyan’s most viable path is likely a narrow, issue-specific coalition built around the peace-related provisions, framed as technical prerequisites for international normalization rather than partisan concessions. Whether he can secure the handful of additional votes needed will determine whether Armenia’s westward drift and the broader opening of the South Caucasus corridor become irreversible.

Why Asia Should Watch Closely

For governments and firms across Asia weighing where to route the next decade of Eurasian trade, energy, and mineral flows, the outcome of Armenia’s constitutional fight is not a peripheral post-Soviet story. It is a live test of whether one of the few remaining alternative corridors between Asia and Europe can finally be stabilized – and of who will set the terms. 

Chinese and Japanese planners alike have strong incentives to see the peace process succeed, even if neither is in a position to control how it unfolds. Moscow is already working to prevent it. Tehran is watching nervously. Beijing and Tokyo would do well to watch just as closely and strive for a South Caucasus that finally works.