Alec Yenikomshian

Armenia must adopt a special TRIPP law to safeguard its sovereign rights on the route

The U.S.–Armenia TRIPP Implementation Framework Agreement (TIF) is now a reality. As such, it will define Armenia’s strategic trajectory for years to come.

How Armenia arrived at this juncture—driven largely by Azerbaijani pressure rather than sovereign choice—and the level of responsibility held by past and present authorities are vital questions. However, they lie outside the scope of this analysis. This paper proceeds from the recognition of our current circumstances.

Regarding the East–West communication routes passing through Syunik, two primary questions must be addressed: Could Armenia have:

• Afforded to refuse the opening of these routes?
• Secured an agreement fully aligned with its own interests?

Given the current balance of power with Turkey and Azerbaijan, the answer to both is a definitive "no."

This leads to a critical follow-up: To what extent does the agreement with the United States benefit Armenia, and where does it fall short?

Again, considering the regional power imbalance, the TRIPP agreement is not the worst possible outcome. While it imposes significant constraints, it secures Armenia’s core sovereignty at the level of political declaration. Nevertheless, the agreement carries serious risks. Yerevan is now obligated to take proactive measures to neutralize these threats before they manifest.

Sovereignty provisions

The TRIPP framework explicitly affirms Armenia’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, jurisdiction, border control, customs authority, and law-enforcement primacy. It rejects extraterritoriality, foreign uniformed presence, and the outsourcing of sovereign functions.

However, the agreement also embeds long-term structural constraints that raise the cost of exercising sovereignty in practice—which is precisely how sovereignty erosion occurs in the real world.

Structural Constraints

First, the framework establishes extreme duration and irreversibility: exclusive development and operational rights extending nearly a century, accompanied by sunk costs, reputational penalties, and path dependence.

Second, it creates a form of economic-functional capture. A U.S.-linked development company will manage an integrated transit system whose operational logic, revenue optimization, and continuity expectations are externally shaped. Armenia retains formal authority but increasingly acts as a rule enforcer inside a system it does not strategically control.

Third, operational narrowing—risk-based inspections, time-sensitive transit obligations, and digital pre-clearance—reduces Armenia’s discretionary control points without abolishing them outright.

None of this constitutes formal extraterritoriality. But together, these elements place Armenia at the threshold where sovereignty remains intact in law yet becomes politically and economically costly to exercise.

The Real Risks Lie in What the Framework Omits

The most serious dangers stem not from what the TIF states, but from what it leaves undefined.

The agreement is silent on arbitration, dispute resolution venues, injunctive relief, and carve-outs protecting sovereign acts. In international infrastructure practice, such silences are rarely neutral: they are typically filled later by investor-protective arbitration mechanisms, not by default domestic jurisdiction.

Similarly, while Armenia’s emergency and suspension powers are acknowledged, no procedural safeguards are defined—no thresholds, timelines, review mechanisms, or protections against political or financial retaliation.

There is also no constitutional anchoring: no requirement for parliamentary ratification or constitutional review, enabling executive-driven fait accompli dynamics.

The framework is therefore transitionally stable but directionally ambiguous. It does not predetermine sovereignty erosion—but it structurally enables it unless counterbalanced by Armenian law.

SPVs: The Most Likely Vector of Erosion

The most common entry point for sovereignty erosion lies in the Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) to be created under the TRIPP Development Company.

SPVs may later attract foreign private capital, generate pressure for investor protections, and introduce layered international arbitration. While financially efficient, SPVs are politically dangerous unless explicitly subordinated to Armenian law and excluded from arbitrating sovereign acts.

History shows that states lose effective control over transit infrastructure not because they lack legal authority, but because exercising that authority becomes legally, financially, or politically prohibitive once commercial structures and arbitration obligations are in place.

Turkey and Azerbaijan: principal beneficiaries of absence of strategic safeguards

The August 8 and January 13 Washington agreements already provide Turkey and Azerbaijan with unimpeded transit through Sunik. But their ambitions do not stop there.

Geopolitical beneficiaries are rarely legal beneficiaries.

Although the TIF legally benefits U.S.-linked entities, Turkey and Azerbaijan can exploit any reduction in Armenia’s freedom of action caused by SPV litigation, compensation exposure, or procedural delays—without signing a single document.

They benefit from being legally absent: they assume no obligations, bear no liability, and retain full strategic flexibility, while SPVs absorb legal risk and sponsors absorb diplomatic friction.

They need only one thing: Armenia’s sovereign responses to become slow, costly, or externally mediated.

The bulwark against sovereignty erosion: Lex TRIPP

To prevent incremental sovereignty erosion, Armenia must bind its emergency and arbitration powers from the outset, through a special framework law: Lex TRIPP.

Lex TRIPP would:

• convert political assurances into enforceable legal protections,
• classify security and suspension measures as non-arbitrable sovereign acts,
• impose hard stops on SPV jurisdictional creep,
• ensure that any future attempts to erode the agreement's safeguards are subject to the discretion of Parliament or the Constitutional Court, rather than being left to incremental technical drift.

Lex TRIPP would be complementary, not in opposition to TIF. It is defensive, not obstructionist. It accepts facilitation and long-term concessions while drawing clear legal red lines. It would signal to Washington that Armenia is a rule-of-law state, not a bad-faith veto player.

The TIF:

• preserves Armenian sovereignty in law,
• constrains it in practice,
• and defers its erosion to future instruments.

That is why Armenia’s next legal steps—Lex TRIPP, arbitration exclusions, constitutional review—are decisive rather than optional.