OPINION - The Trump Route: Peace Road or Corridor in Disguise?

By Karen Harutyunyan

Neither the Armenian nor the U.S. government has disclosed the full text of the three memoranda signed on August 8 in Washington D.C.. Among them, the most consequential is the so-called “Trump Route of International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP), a road across southern Armenia meant to connect mainland Azerbaijan with its exclave, Nakhichevan. That same day, Armenia and Azerbaijan also initialed the Agreement on the Establishment of Peace and Inter-State Relations, co-signed by U.S. President Donald Trump. Alongside the peace framework, Yerevan and Washington formalized cooperation on three fronts: capacity development for the “Crossroads of Peace” project, innovation in artificial intelligence and semiconductors, and energy security.

So far, the only official statement is that the new road will be operated by an Armenian-American joint venture. But questions multiply. Before the Washington summit, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev insisted that Azerbaijanis traveling between mainland Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan should not encounter Armenians along the way. Beyond the 17 provisions of the initialed peace agreement, Baku has advanced two further demands: the establishment of this corridor and amendments to Armenia’s Constitution.

Since August 8, Armenian officials and pro-government commentators have proclaimed the agreement as a historic achievement. They insist that the road will remain under Armenia’s sovereignty, that joint Armenian-American management is equivalent to U.S. security guarantees, and that peace has already come. These pronouncements rest less on evidence than on assumptions—and in some cases, on official talking points. Meanwhile, basic questions remain unanswered. Will Armenian border guards and customs officers check Azerbaijani travelers’ passports? How will customs duties on transit cargo be collected? Who ensures traffic security? Until such technical details are disclosed, the Armenian public has every right to suspect that the “Trump Route” is merely a corridor—rebranded in new packaging.

For Armenia, the only tangible gain from Washington may be a reduced risk of military escalation in the near term. In every other respect, the initialed agreement resembles an act of capitulation: Yerevan appears to be conceding to all of Baku’s demands—whether codified in the text or left implicit. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his cronies present this as political courage. Yet the pattern is clear. In 2019, he lacked the courage to accept the Karabakh settlement plan put before him. After 2020, he backtracked on his own pledge to provide a Russian-controlled route, effectively sacrificing Karabakh itself. In 2022, he lowered the bar for Nagorno-Karabakh’s status in the name of “international consolidation”—and what followed was blockade and, ultimately, the loss of Karabakh.

Now, without Karabakh, he is offering a route.

Pro-government propagandists labor to portray the “American road” as fundamentally different from the “Russian road.” But the deeper questions remain: why, after Karabakh’s fall, should Armenia even consider outsourcing control over its transport routes? Why accept every Azerbaijani condition, only to walk away with an initialed document, not a signed peace treaty? 

The August 8 ceremony also marked the launch of Pashinyan’s 2026 re-election campaign. By presenting the initialing of a peace agreement as a “fait accompli,” he positions dissenters as enemies of peace itself. But until the specifics of the Trump Route are revealed, the suspicion will persist: what is being sold as a symbol of “international peace and prosperity” may, in reality, be no more than a corridor—just in American packaging.