Across centuries of conquest, displacement, lost statehood and geopolitical upheaval, Armenians have had to preserve a distinct identity while living among, and learning from, larger civilizations.
I had the opportunity to meet H.E. Narek Mkrtchyan, Ambassador of the Republic of Armenia to the United States, at a luncheon at the University Club hosted by the Rotary Foundation of Washington, D.C. Our conversation ranged across Armenian history, faith, education and the diaspora before arriving at questions that occupy his diplomatic work today: peace with Azerbaijan, Armenia’s relations with the United States, regional connectivity, artificial intelligence, semiconductors and energy.
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A historian by training who served as Armenia’s Minister of Labor and Social Affairs before becoming Ambassador to Washington in 2025, Mkrtchyan views these subjects through the long experience of his country. Armenia’s encounters with other civilizations, he believes, have shaped a national habit of learning from others while protecting an Armenian identity.
Faith, Language and Learning
Christianity holds a central place in Armenian history. Armenia is traditionally recognized as the first state to adopt Christianity as its official religion, at the beginning of the fourth century. Its influence extended into education, literature and scholarship.
The creation of the Armenian alphabet in the early fifth century helped produce a period of intense intellectual activity. Armenian scholars translated religious texts as well as works of philosophy, history and science, connecting Armenian readers with ideas circulating across the ancient world.
Armenia’s location exposed it to Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Ottoman and Russian influences, sometimes through cultural contact and often through conflict.
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“Our ability to absorb other influences and to keep Armenian identity helped us to learn from others,” Mkrtchyan explained.
That ability became particularly important during the long periods when Armenians had no sovereign state. Churches, monasteries, schools, manuscripts, merchants and intellectual communities carried language and culture across generations and borders.
The arrival of printing gave those communities another means of maintaining their connections. Armenian clergy and intellectuals published works in theology, philosophy, mathematics and science. Armenian commercial networks also stretched from India to Europe and Russia, eventually reaching across the Atlantic.
Commerce connected Armenian communities separated by considerable distances. Books and scholarship provided another connection. Together, these networks helped sustain a people whose communities increasingly extended beyond their ancestral homeland.
One significant chapter developed among Armenians living in India during the Enlightenment. Armenian thinkers there considered the institutions that an independent Armenian state might one day require. Among the best-known works was Vorogayt Parats, or The Snare of Glory, associated with Shahamir Shahamirian and the Armenian intellectual community of Madras in the eighteenth century.
The work considered constitutional government, political participation and limits on state power at a time when Armenians remained largely without a state of their own.
When an independent Armenian republic emerged in 1918, women participated in its parliament the following year. Armenia also appointed Diana Abgar as its representative to Japan, placing her among the pioneering women in modern diplomacy.
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The First Republic lasted only about two and a half years before Sovietization. Armenia subsequently became deeply integrated into Soviet science, engineering and education while Armenian continued to be used in education and scholarship.
For Mkrtchyan, this history matters because it helps explain how Armenians came to regard knowledge, education and adaptability as national assets.
Independence returned under difficult circumstances. The 1988 Spitak earthquake had killed tens of thousands and devastated communities across northern Armenia. The collapse of the Soviet Union was followed by war, economic hardship, closed borders and political upheaval.
Those experiences continue to inform Armenia’s choices today.
Peace After War
Few issues carry greater weight in contemporary Armenian life than the conflict with Azerbaijan. Years of war, displacement and loss have affected people on both sides. For Armenians, the 2020 war remains particularly painful.
Mkrtchyan spoke about the difficulty of carrying that history without allowing it to determine what comes next.
“The pain will always accompany us,” he said. “But we don’t want to let this pain define and shape our future.”
That view is central to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Crossroads of Peace initiative, which seeks to open transportation and economic links and place Armenia within a wider network connecting the South Caucasus and neighboring regions.
A major diplomatic development came in Washington on August 8, 2025. At the White House, Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a joint declaration witnessed by U.S. President Donald Trump. The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan also initialed the negotiated Agreement on Establishment of Peace and Inter-State Relations.
Armenia and the United States signed memoranda concerning the Crossroads of Peace initiative, artificial intelligence and semiconductors, and energy security.
For Armenia, these subjects are closely related. Peace could reopen transportation routes and economic opportunities that decades of confrontation restricted. Greater regional connectivity could also give the country a different economic role in the South Caucasus.
Armenia borders Turkey, Georgia, Iran and Azerbaijan, a location that has historically exposed it to competition among larger powers. The current strategy seeks economic value from that geography through transportation, trade and infrastructure.
This also explains why connectivity, in the Armenian view, increasingly extends beyond roads and railways. Digital infrastructure has become part of the equation.
Armenia’s Technology Ambitions
Armenia has a strong tradition in mathematics, engineering and computer science, and technology companies have established engineering operations in the country. The government is now seeking to build on that base through artificial intelligence and advanced computing.
The Armenia-U.S. memorandum on artificial intelligence and semiconductors signed in August 2025 provided a framework for closer cooperation in those fields.
Developments since then have moved quickly.
In 2026, Armenia announced plans connected with advanced computing infrastructure using NVIDIA technology. The Firebird AI project near Hrazdan is being developed as a major computing center intended to support the training and operation of large artificial intelligence models.
For a small country without large reserves of oil or gas, Mkrtchyan believes Armenia’s competitive advantage lies elsewhere.
“Our wealth is our human capital,” he said.
That statement connects much of what he had told me about Armenia’s past with the country’s current ambitions.
For centuries, Armenian communities invested heavily in education, language and scholarship. During the Soviet period, Armenia developed a substantial scientific and engineering base. The present interest in artificial intelligence and semiconductor technology draws on that tradition, although the scale of the technology and the international competition surrounding it are new.
Armenia-U.S. cooperation has also expanded beyond artificial intelligence. The two countries are working across energy, critical minerals, semiconductor supply chains, scientific research and infrastructure.
Energy is particularly important to Armenia’s technological plans because large computing facilities require substantial and reliable electricity. Armenia already uses nuclear, thermal, hydroelectric and solar generation, making energy policy an important part of its broader economic and technology strategy.
The challenge for Armenia will be converting ambitious projects and international partnerships into lasting domestic capacity, jobs, research and opportunities for Armenian engineers and scientists.
What Armenia Carries Forward
Listening to Mkrtchyan speak about Armenian history, it became clear why a conversation that began with faith, language and cultural survival eventually arrived at artificial intelligence.
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The connection is education.
The Armenian alphabet gave generations access to scholarship in their own language. Translation connected Armenian intellectual life with knowledge produced elsewhere. Printing helped geographically separated communities communicate. Trade linked Armenian merchants and communities across continents. Soviet-era investment produced generations of scientists and engineers.
Artificial intelligence presents a very different set of opportunities and risks, but Armenia is approaching it with a familiar reliance on education and human capital.
Peace could determine how far those ambitions can go.
Open borders and reliable transportation links would give Armenia greater access to neighboring markets. Stable relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey could alter the economic geography of a country that has lived with closed borders for decades. Stronger ties with the United States could provide investment, technology and expertise.
None of those outcomes is guaranteed. The history between Armenia and its neighbors is difficult, the regional balance remains complicated, and major infrastructure and technology projects will ultimately be judged by what is built and sustained.
Mkrtchyan nevertheless sees an opportunity for Armenia to draw on an old national strength in a very different century.
“Our wealth is our human capital,” he told me.
For a country whose language, scholarship and institutions survived long periods without statehood, that may be more than an economic argument. It helps explain how Armenia sees its place in the world today.