Was the 44-Day War Preventable? Pashinyan vs. Sargsyan

Years after the 44-day war, the debate over its causes and the possibility of its prevention continues to be a central theme on Armenia's political agenda. Nikol Pashinyan has again addressed the topic in response to recent statements by the third President of the RA, Serzh Sargsyan.

The Prime Minister stated that the only realistic way to avoid the 2020 war was to recognize Artsakh as part of Azerbaijan. "As a first step, we had to accept that Karabakh should be part of Azerbaijan," Pashinyan presented this position, effectively arguing that any other scenario would inevitably lead to a military conflict. This thesis implies that the logic of the negotiation process and international realities left the Armenian side with no alternative.

The third President of the RA, Serzh Sargsyan, strongly disagrees with this viewpoint. On November 7, on the "Imnemnimi" podcast, he insisted that the 44-day war was not inevitable and that there were three main reasons for its outbreak.

"The first reason was the avoidance of and complete withdrawal from the negotiation process," Sargsyan noted. According to him, the proposal of an "incomprehensible option" by the authorities led to the cessation of negotiations.

As a second reason, the former president pointed to the actions of the Armenian side, which gave Azerbaijan the opportunity to justify its own military aggression.

The third and decisive factor, according to Sargsyan, was the decline in the army's combat readiness. He claims that "Azerbaijani and Turkish intelligence were very well aware of the situation in our army and saw that our army's combat readiness had significantly decreased."

Thus, while the current government presents the war as a fateful inevitability that could only have been avoided at the cost of the most painful concession for national interests, the former leader insists that it was a direct consequence of the wrong policy pursued after 2018, negotiation failures, and the weakening of the army.