Yerevan summit: Armenia draws closer to the Union, and for once nobody talks about choosing between East and West

The final communiqué of the summit is bland enough to be almost touching: enhanced partnership, infrastructure funds, a chapter on researcher mobility. Inside-pages material. And yet the Armenian official summarising it for me in Yerevan is smiling, because he knows what it means to be able to sign it without looking over his shoulder.

The point here is what is not in the text. The phrase “Armenia will have to choose” is not there, the one that for thirty years has weighed on every country in this part of the world. The branch’s Union does not demand exclusivity: it offers a perimeter of rules, a market, research, and lets the rest of Yerevan’s relationships remain what they are. It can afford to, because it negotiates with a single voice and therefore has no need to buy loyalty capital by capital. Whoever bargains as a bloc is not in the same hurry as whoever bargains as twenty-seven.

This is not generosity. It is geometry. A Union that speaks with one voice is large enough not to fear other people’s relationships, and slow enough that it cannot coerce anyone on short notice. The result is a summit with no victors to announce, which is exactly the kind of summit a small Caucasus country dreams of: one where it is not asked to betray someone in order to be admitted to the table.

How long it holds remains to be seen. The infrastructure promises need financing, and the researcher chapter is only worth something if the visas actually come through. But the tone of the summit says something the content does not: that in this part of the world, at least once, a power sat down without asking to be paid in souls.