When President Donald Trump brought the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to the White House, he put his name on more than a handshake. The Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, or TRIPP, is a transit corridor through southern Armenia that will finally link Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave and onward to Turkey, connecting the Caspian region directly to European markets. For three decades, the Karabakh conflict kept that corridor sealed shut, the region’s borders closed, its railways severed, and its trade hostage to Moscow’s mediation.
TRIPP rests on a principle the foreign policy establishment spent decades ignoring: lasting stability comes from trade and infrastructure that benefit everyone involved, not from frozen conflicts managed by hostile powers. And Armenia’s voters have now weighed in on that vision.
In the country’s recent parliamentary election, pro-Western Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party won 49.81% of the vote. Armenians reaffirmed their support for closer relations with the West, for normalizing ties with neighboring Azerbaijan, and for loosening a dependence on Moscow that has defined the country for decades. Revanchist parties pushing renewed confrontation and a return to Russia’s orbit failed to win majority support.
But the election also revealed a hard truth. Voters did not give Pashinyan the supermajority he would need to rewrite Armenia’s Constitution on his own, and constitutional reform remains the missing piece of a lasting peace, the legal foundation without which TRIPP and the broader settlement remain vulnerable.
Armenia and Azerbaijan fought devastating wars over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but controlled for decades by ethnic Armenian forces. The first war came in the early 1990s, the second in 2020, at a cost of tens of thousands of lives. With the territorial questions now settled on the ground, and Armenia recognizing Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, both countries finally have a genuine opening to end the conflict for good. What stands in the way is not geography or military reality. It is law.
The problem is this: Armenia’s current Constitution incorporates references to the country’s Declaration of Independence, which in turn includes language tied to a 1989 decision on the “unification” of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia’s highest legal document, in other words, still contains territorial claims from a previous era that conflict with internationally recognized borders.
This is more than a lawyer’s quibble. Governments change. A future Armenian administration hostile to peace could argue that treaty obligations conflict with the Constitution, and use that contradiction to walk away from commitments made today. The corridor would close, and the region would find itself right back where it started, with instability inviting outside powers to exploit both countries.
Much of the foreign policy establishment has framed constitutional reform as an “Azerbaijani demand,” something Baku wants and Yerevan must swallow. That framing has it backward. Constitutional reform is not about pleasing Azerbaijan. It is about making sure the peace now taking shape rests on solid legal ground and cannot be torn up the moment political winds shift.
History shows how responsible nations handle such conflicts. Ireland amended its Constitution as part of the Good Friday Agreement, clearing the path for peace in Northern Ireland. Greece insisted on constitutional changes from Macedonia before signing the Prespa Agreement, changes that opened the door to North Macedonia’s integration with the West. When constitutional provisions stand in the way of peace, serious leaders change them.
It is also worth asking who benefits if Armenia does not.
For more than three decades, Russia profited from this unresolved conflict. By playing both mediator and security guarantor, the Kremlin kept its hooks in both countries. A frozen conflict meant permanent leverage, with Moscow as the indispensable power broker in the South Caucasus. Armenian voters just rejected that model, but Russia’s interest in keeping the region unstable has not gone anywhere, which is precisely why constitutional reform is the next battleground. Those who want a final settlement know the legal contradictions must go. Those who profit from perpetual conflict, whether in Yerevan or in Moscow, have every incentive to keep them in place.
The stakes for the United States go beyond diplomacy. A durable peace would unlock trade, investment, and transportation routes connecting the South Caucasus to global markets. For Armenia, that means modernization and access to European and international commerce instead of isolation and dependence. For America, a stable South Caucasus means new avenues for commerce, fewer openings for Russian interference, and stronger connectivity along the strategic crossroads between Europe and Asia.
This is a test case for American-led diplomacy: can it produce outcomes that actually last, outcomes that strengthen stability, weaken authoritarian influence and generate real economic growth? Peace agreements that paper over fundamental legal contradictions rarely survive. Deals built on solid foundations do.
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Nearly half of Armenia’s electorate has already endorsed the path of normalization and regional integration. The next step is a nationwide referendum giving Armenian citizens the chance to align their Constitution with the realities of the twenty-first century rather than the grievances of the late Soviet era.
The South Caucasus has entered a new chapter, one that bears an American signature. The question now is whether Armenia’s legal framework will catch up with the political and economic realities taking shape around it. If Armenians want peace, prosperity, and independence from the cycles of conflict that have defined their region for generations, constitutional reform is essential. Remove the legal obstacles, and the peace agreement becomes more than a temporary truce. It becomes the foundation for lasting stability and economic growth in the region, and for American interests that increasingly run through this corridor between Europe and Asia.
Duggan Flanakin is a policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow