For more than a year, Armenia's ruling party has been repeating an idea that has become almost dogma: unless Armenia changes its Constitution, Azerbaijan will not sign the peace agreement. Behind that phrase lies a broader logic that Nikol Pashinyan's government has applied since 2020: peace is achieved by giving ground. It is time to challenge it.

The treaty already settles what Baku claims to want. The text initialed in Washington in August 2025 includes a mutual renunciation of territorial claims, and the Armenian government itself has argued that this provides sufficient guarantees. Moreover, under the Vienna Convention, no state may invoke its domestic law as justification for failing to perform a treaty. Once signed and ratified, that commitment takes precedence over any reading of the constitutional preamble. And there is more: in September 2024, when it upheld the regulation on border delimitation, Armenia's Constitutional Court ruled that only those provisions of the Declaration of Independence expressly incorporated into the articles of the Constitution have normative force. In other words, the country's highest legal authority has already given the answer Baku says it needs.

Reciprocity is conspicuously absent. While Yerevan is asked to rewrite its fundamental law, no one asks Baku to drop its "Western Azerbaijan" narrative, through which it lays claim to Armenia's territory as its own. Aliyev voices it at official events, and the Armenian government responds lukewarmly at best.

Each concession opens the door to the next. First it was Artsakh. Then came the dissolution of the Minsk Group, the withdrawal of international lawsuits and the question of the corridor through Syunik. Today it is the Constitution. Nothing suggests that another condition won't appear tomorrow. Yielding to every demand does not build peace: it rewards pressure and teaches the other side that pressure works.

There are other paths. The United States did not merely sponsor the agreement: it signed a Strategic Partnership Charter with Armenia and a framework for the TRIPP route, which needs a treaty in force to move forward. Azerbaijan also needs peace for its plans to connect with Nakhichevan and for its role on the routes between Asia and Europe. The defense agreements with France and India, the European monitoring mission on the border, multilateral forums and the diaspora itself are cards Yerevan holds and does not play. The government has shown that it can change course when it wants to: it distanced itself from Russia, which failed as a guarantor when it was needed most. If it was able to reshape its alliances, it cannot now claim that the only way out is to give in.

The ruling party will raise three objections.

"Azerbaijan has military superiority and can afford to wait." That is precisely why concessions do not work: changing the Constitution does not alter the balance of power. The day after the referendum, Baku will have the same advantage and the same ability to demand something new. Today its main tool is not war but blackmail, and blackmail feeds on a willingness to give in. The only thing that changes that equation is strengthening Armenia's own defense and raising the political cost of an aggression that would jeopardize a route Washington has presented as its own achievement.

"The United States won't pressure an energy partner." No one expects it to break with Baku. But the TRIPP route runs through Armenian territory. Without Armenia, there is no corridor. What is missing is not room to ask, but the will to ask firmly.

"Without a treaty, the risk falls on Armenia." This is the strongest argument and the most misleading one, because no one guarantees that the reform will bring a signature. Baku has set no date or venue and made no written commitment: it merely says it "will see no obstacles." And there is a scenario the government would rather not mention: what happens if the referendum fails? Azerbaijan would have the perfect pretext to freeze everything and accuse Armenia of bad faith. If the ruling party believes the reform is inevitable, the least it should do is demand that it be tied to the simultaneous signing and ratification of the treaty, with international guarantors. Giving in first and hoping later is not pragmatism: it is a blind gamble with the country's sovereignty.

No one disputes that Armenia needs peace. What is in dispute is the logic that says it must be paid for with successive concessions. Changing a state's fundamental law because a neighbor demands it — a neighbor that refuses to abandon its expansionist rhetoric — sets a dangerous precedent: that of a nation shaping its internal order according to another's will.

A peace built on permanent surrender is not peace: it is a truce that lasts until the next demand. Lasting peace is negotiated from dignity, not from fear. And Armenia holds more cards than its government is willing to play.

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Sergio Nahabetian is the director of Diario Sardarabad (www.sardarabad.com.ar) and president of the Tekeyan Cultural Association of Buenos Aires. As a member of the Buenos Aires Provincial Chamber of Deputies, he authored Law No. 13,478 recognizing the Armenian Genocide, passed by the Buenos Aires provincial legislature in 2006.