Business trip to Armenia

I went to Armenia from 18th to the 29th. Being there gave me a few insights into a part of the world that -- previously -- I had little knowledge about. Armenia is a small country of 3 million people, a third of whom live in its captial, Yerevan. Yerevan is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world -- it pre-dates even the founding of Rome.

Today, Armenia is a much smaller place than it was during the classical era. The Ottomon and Persian Empires split much of the lands that Armenians inhabited, and the current borders represent the area that the Soviet Union had controlled before it fell apart in the 1990s.

The country, then, representa a mere portion of what it had once been, and its neighbors are concerned about potential Armenian irredentism. To its west is Turkiye, which is the modern product of the Turkish ethno-nationalism from the late 1800s to the early 1900s.

To the northwest is Georgia, with which is somewhat friendly. To its east is Azerbaijian, a fellow former Soviet republic but also another Turkic rival. Armenia and Azerbaijan had fought several wars since independence in 1991, and while Armenia benefited from Russian support early on, it has seen its fortunes sour in recent years.

To the south is Iran, with which it is friendly, but of limited help these days due to internal unrest. Iran is suspicious of Azeri irredentism (there are more Azeris living in Iran's northwest provinces than in all of Azerbaijan), despite both Iran and Azerrbaijan being the only two majority Shiite countries.

Armenia's biggest foreign policy challenge is what to do about the area of Azerbaijan it controls called Nagorno-Karabakh. Although it recognizes Artsakh as independent, it is the only country to do so. Support for the Armenians in Artsakh puts Armenia in a difficult position -- they are reliant on Russia and Iran, two of the most autocratic countries in the world, while trying to remain a democratic country.

But it also puts the West in a difficult position, too. Turkiye is a part of NATO, and both it and Israel have close ties to Azerbaijan. Plus, with Russia now under trade sanctions, Azerbaijan's oil industry has become more important.

Adding in the fact that -- geographically -- Armenia is one of the most difficult-to-access parts of the world, and it creates a truly unenviable situation.