Cognitive Warfare: Toward a Resilience Framework for Armenia

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Introduction

In the last two years, the term cognitive warfare has begun to appear with increasing frequency in Armenian policy discussions and expert debates, particularly in the context of Armenia’s evolving security environment after the 2020 war, as well as on the eve of the 2026 parliamentary elections. Yet despite its growing use, the concept itself remains insufficiently defined. It is often conflated with narrower phenomena such as disinformation, information campaigns or psychological operations, or subsumed under the broader category of hybrid threats, without capturing the full spectrum of actors, methods and mechanisms that define it.

This conceptual ambiguity is not unique to Armenia. Across Euro-Atlantic policy circles, including within NATO and the European Union, the understanding of cognitive warfare—and the corresponding need for cognitive security and cognitive resilience—is still evolving. Contemporary conflicts increasingly target not only territories, infrastructures, or institutions, but also the human mind, how individuals perceive reality, interpret events, form judgments, and ultimately make decisions. In this sense, cognition itself has become a domain of strategic competition.

Cognitive Warfare, Cognitive Security and Cognitive Resilience

Cognitive warfare is the deliberate use of information, narratives, psychological operations, and social engineering techniques by state or non-state actors to influence, disrupt, or control the cognitive processes. Cognitive warfare is increasingly understood as targeting not only individuals, but entire populations. Its objective is not simply to spread false or misleading information, but to alter how societies think and act, thereby influencing political outcomes and destabilizing institutions. This includes not only psychological effects on individuals, but also institutional harm, particularly the erosion of trust in media, governance structures, and public institutions, as well as broader societal harm through weakening of social cohesion.

Cognitive security refers to the protection of individuals and societies from such manipulation, ensuring the integrity of perception, reasoning, and decision-making and cognitive resilience denotes the capacity of individuals, institutions, and societies to withstand, adapt to, and recover from attempts—including psychological operations and social engineering—to manipulate their cognitive environment.

Mapping Cognitive Warfare

Cognitive warfare is conceptualized differently across academic, policy and doctrinal communities. It is increasingly understood not as a single tactic but as a broad strategy that builds on psychological operations, information warfare, and strategic communication to influence how people perceive, think and act. 

Scholars have long anticipated this shift: rather than controlling territory, modern conflict often unfolds below the threshold of war, targeting perceptions and decision-making in ways that are difficult to attribute. In this framework, disinformation is only one tool among many. The larger aim is to shape cognitive environments; how individuals form beliefs, interpret information, and make choices. A defining feature of this domain is its asymmetry: influence operations are relatively cheap and easy to deploy, yet costly and complex to counter, often overwhelming institutions and forcing them into reactive positions.

Policy and institutional approaches build on these insights, emphasizing how digital technologies, especially social media, AI, and data analytics, have made influence operations more precise, scalable, and accessible to both state and non-state actors. Organizations like NATO now treat the human mind itself as a battleground, focusing on disrupting decision-making processes and exploiting cognitive vulnerabilities at both individual and societal levels. Meanwhile, the European Union frames the challenge in terms of democratic resilience facing foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI), prioritizing the protection of the informational and psychological conditions in which people form judgments. 

Across these perspectives, a clear shift emerges: the goal is no longer simply to control narratives, but to shape the very conditions under which reality is perceived and decisions are made.

Armenia’s Vulnerability to Cognitive Warfare and Challenges for Cognitive Security

Armenia presents a fertile environment for cognitive warfare due to the convergence of structural, political and societal factors. These include an unfinished transition from war to peace, the legacy of complex and adversarial relations with two neighbors—Azerbaijan and Turkey—an ongoing transformation of foreign and security policy in a geopolitically contested environment, and a fragmented yet pluralistic society and information environment. 

Together, these conditions create a setting in which competing narratives can be introduced, amplified, utilized, and contested with relatively high impact.

Structural Conditions and Conflict Context

At the core of this vulnerability lies the unfinished and uncertain transition from war to peace. The peace agreement with Azerbaijan remains unsigned, its modalities are perceived as unsatisfactory by a significant part of Armenian society, and the prospects for its implementation remain uncertain, placing its sustainability into question. 

Armenian society struggles to emotionally process the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan’s impunity, supported by Turkey, for the displacement of its Armenian population. It has deepened the sense of victimization, historical injustice and the loss of ancestral lands. At the same time, critical reflection on assessing the Armenian side’s role in the outcome is often constrained or politicized, with attention tending to focus selectively on the mistakes of either previous or current Armenian and Nagorno-Karabakh leadership, depending on political views. Debates on responsibility also extend to the international level, with blame variously attributed to Russia or to Western actors, again largely shaped by differing geopolitical orientations and preferences, rather than converging into a shared assessment.

Trust toward Baku remains low, particularly amid concerns about expansionist intentions and historical revisionism, exemplified by the “Western Azerbaijan” narrative. Uncertainty over whether Azerbaijan will return border areas it occupied in 2021–2022, and the lack of confidence in their recovery through delimitation and demarcation, further contribute to insecurity. These dynamics are reinforced by a broader sense of existential threat tied to both Azerbaijan and Turkey, including fears that either could exploit favorable conditions to initiate further military action against Armenia or intensify hybrid warfare against it.

These perceptions are reinforced by Azerbaijan’s continued militarization, coercive diplomacy, and anti-Armenian rhetoric. This is accompanied by sustained and aggressive narrative warfare targeting not only Armenia as a state and Armenians as a nation, but also Armenia’s international partners and supporters, with the aim of shaping international perceptions of the conflict and the peace process, discouraging any criticism of Azerbaijan’s actions against Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia and legitimizing their outcomes, discrediting external engagement and sources of support to Armenia. Although such rhetoric has somewhat moderated following the 2025 Washington summit, these changes have not been consistent and are not widely perceived as credible. 

There is a growing perception that Azerbaijan is not satisfied with its military victory and is now seeking to consolidate it in the cognitive domain—advancing triumphalist narratives and reshaping how the conflict is understood domestically, internationally, and within Armenian society itself. Although Baku initially faced criticism from Armenia and its international partners, many believe it has since managed to blunt and gradually erode that pressure through a mix of coercive diplomacy and information warfare, normalizing the outcomes of the conflict. 

While some interpret this shift as a realist and pragmatic approach aimed at transcending the conflict and advancing a fragile peace process, others view it as a form of cognitive victory for Azerbaijan. There is also a concern that its impact extends beyond the cognitive or psychological domain, generating new risks and potentially leading to tangible implications for security, sovereignty, while also calling into question the long-term sustainability of peace.

This unresolved context creates space for competing interpretations of losses and concessions, threats and risks, intentions and outcomes, making public perception particularly susceptible to influence. Narratives about security, sovereignty, and statehood thus become central to political and societal debate, increasing exposure to cognitive pressure.

Narrative Transformation and Internal Contestation

These dynamics intersect with an internal struggle between established and emerging national narratives. Historically rooted narratives—shaped by the legacy of the Armenian Genocide and reinforced by the de-Armenianization of Nagorno-Karabakh, both of which contribute to deeply embedded layers of historical trauma—frame perceptions of threat, historical injustice, victimhood and vulnerability.

The current leadership has sought to move away from entrenched narratives of victimhood, historical injustice, and the perceived inevitability of conflict, promoting alternative frameworks centred on statehood, sovereignty, peace and pragmatism. This shift is reflected in initiatives such as the “Real Armenia” ideology, often juxtaposed with “historical Armenia,” prioritizing present-day statehood and pragmatic coexistence over historically anchored conceptions of nationhood and survival and at times perceived as an attempt to eliminate or downplay historical memory. It is also manifested in efforts to reinterpret or recalibrate national symbols and reference points, such as replacing Mount Ararat with Mount Aragats as a national symbol, which parts of society view as dismissing historical identity. 

However, deeply embedded narratives are characterized by strong societal resistance to change, while emerging narratives are often contested, contribute to societal polarization rather than cohesion, and are perceived as insufficiently anchored in public consensus. As a result, change occurs not as gradual adaptation, but through shifts between competing interpretations, with public discourse moving between conflicting narrative frameworks—at times leaning from one set of more extreme narratives to another—rather than consolidating around a stable new consensus.

This tension generates not only political disagreement but also deeper anxieties linked to national identity and ontological security—the need for a stable and continuous sense of collective self. Azerbaijani preconditions, including the demand to amend Armenia’s constitution to remove even indirect references to Nagorno-Karabakh, are perceived as challenging foundational elements of statehood and identity, reinforcing insecurity.

These divisions are further reflected in distinct societal and transnational constituencies. Segments of Armenians displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh and parts of the diaspora tend to remain more closely aligned with established narratives, which have historically played a central role in preserving identity, but do not always reflect the evolving realities within Armenia. These segments of the Armenian nation are particularly sensitive to issues of ontological security, reinforcing attachment to continuity and resistance to narrative change. At the same time, tensions between the ruling authorities and the Armenian Apostolic Church further contribute to societal fragmentation, particularly as the Church is viewed by some as a guardian of traditional narratives, while others perceive it as being instrumentalized for hybrid warfare by Russia. 

The coexistence of historically rooted and emerging but unsettled narratives creates a fragmented cognitive environment marked by uncertainty and contestation, making it highly susceptible to influence. External and domestic actors can amplify elements of victimization, reinforce threat perceptions, or exploit tensions between competing narratives. Influence operations thus operate not by introducing entirely new ideas, but by activating and reshaping existing cognitive frames. Both the persistence of entrenched narratives and attempts to transform them too radically—especially when such change is associated with, or perceived as occurring under adversarial pressure—create vulnerabilities that can be exploited.

Geopolitical Contestation and Foreign Policy Transformation

These internal dynamics unfold within a broader context of intensified geopolitical contestation. Armenia’s strategic reorientation—gradually reducing its dependence on Russia while deepening ties with the United States and the European Union, including advancing EU integration aspirations—places it at the center of competing geopolitical projects.

The U.S. has increasingly assumed a central mediating role in the Armenia–Azerbaijan peace process, culminating in the 2025 Washington summit and subsequent diplomatic engagement, marking a shift from Russia’s previous dominance as the primary broker. This transition is not only geopolitical but also cognitive, reshaping perceptions of external influence, foreign policy alignment, and sources of security assurance and deterrence. The EU, in parallel, has launched a new Strategic Agenda with Armenia and decided to establish EU missions under its Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP), including EUMA and a planned mission on countering hybrid threats. Together, U.S. mediation and EU engagement contribute to a reconfiguration of Armenia’s external alignments, which itself has become a subject of contestation.

Russia’s official rhetoric has framed Western engagement as destabilizing and externally imposed, while seeking to reassert its role as Armenia’s historical ally and security guarantor. Azerbaijan’s rhetoric has also frequently echoed criticism of the EU’s role vis-à-vis Armenia. Beyond official statements, this positioning is reinforced through broader patterns of foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI). Drawing on methods observed in European contexts such as Romania, Moldova, and Bulgaria, Russian influence efforts include interference in elections. They are carried out through the promotion of aligned political figures, informational networks, and amplification of narratives that question Western engagement, portray it as foreign interference, and elevate Russia as an indispensable security provider. These efforts often involve the deployment of agents of influence, support for political actors entering electoral processes, and the use of public messaging that warns against Armenia’s EU integration trajectory and its potential economic consequences. They also instrumentalize themes of national identity, historical trauma, and security vulnerabilities, inflating threats, reinforcing divisions and shaping domestic perceptions.

While maintaining pragmatic relations with Armenia, Iran, for its part, has expressed concern over expanding U.S. involvement in the region, particularly in relation to connectivity initiatives such as TRIPP, which could introduce a greater American commercial and strategic presence near its borders. Iran’s approach is therefore shaped less by direct contestation over Armenia’s internal political orientation and more by broader regional balance considerations.

Across these dynamics, a recurring pattern emerges in which external actors are not only geopolitical partners or competitors but also subjects of narrative construction. Russia, and at times Iran, are framed as traditional allies and “saviors,” particularly in contrast to external threats posed by Azerbaijan and Turkey or uncertainties associated with Western engagement. These competing representations reinforce the transformation of foreign policy into a central arena of cognitive contestation, where external alignments, security choices, and strategic priorities are actively shaped, interpreted and contested within Armenia’s domestic space.

Societal Structure and Information Environment

Armenia is a hybrid democracy, and its society is both pluralistic and highly individualistic, with a strong tendency of debate and diverse viewpoints. These characteristics further reinforce these vulnerabilities. While this pluralism constitutes a democratic asset, it also produces a fragmented discursive space in which competing interpretations coexist and make it more difficult to establish a stable consensus on key national issues. This fragmentation interacts with the narrative tensions described above, reinforcing polarization and creating openings for external influence.

Armenia’s information environment amplifies these dynamics. The media landscape is pluralistic but highly segmented, often reflecting political affiliations and competing narrative positions, while digital platforms accelerate the circulation of emotionally charged and polarizing content. Exposure to FIMI is heightened by following various foreign sources, including the continued influence of Russian-language media.

These dynamics are further reinforced by the interaction between domestic polarization and external influence operations. Existing societal divisions provide entry points for amplification, allowing external actors to embed their messaging within already contested debates rather than introducing entirely new narratives. 

Institutional capacities to address cognitive threats remain limited, including in areas such as strategic communication, media and digital platforms regulation, and coordinated responses to disinformation and influence operations. Government strategic communication capacities have also faced challenges in ensuring consistency, credibility, and societal resonance, particularly in a highly polarized and contested informational environment. 

At the same time, Armenia benefits from a vibrant civil society which plays an important role in strengthening cognitive security. These actors contribute to identifying and exposing disinformation, fostering media literacy, supporting informed public debate, and enhancing societal resilience to external influence. However, this ecosystem is itself not immune to fragmentation, as most of the civil society and expert community are also divided along identity-based and geopolitical orientations, at times becoming an additional arena for contestation rather than a cohesive source of resilience.

Fragmented Perceptions of Cognitive Warfare

Within this environment, perceptions of cognitive warfare in Armenia are themselves divided along two dominant lines. One frames cognitive threats primarily through the perceived transformation of Armenian narratives under external pressure, particularly from Azerbaijan and Turkey, where changes in national discourse are interpreted as externally imposed or coerced by the adversary and as contributing to the erosion of national identity. The other emphasizes Russian hybrid and information threats, focusing on influence operations aimed at shaping domestic debate, strategic orientation, and perceptions of external partnerships, often framed in terms of risks of sovereignty loss.

In practice, these perspectives tend to operate in parallel rather than intersect. Those who prioritize one threat often downplay or dismiss the other, resulting in a segmented understanding of cognitive warfare. This mutual exclusion fragments public and expert discourse, creates analytical blind spots, and complicates the development of a coherent and integrated response.

Recommendations: Strengthening Cognitive Security and Resilience

Building on these existing vulnerabilities and strengths, enhancing cognitive security and resilience in Armenia requires a broader approach that goes well beyond countering disinformation. It involves strengthening how society perceives, interprets, processes, and responds to complex political, security, sovereignty- and identity-related challenges under conditions of sustained internal and external polarization and pressure.

A central priority is the development of a more coherent and anticipatory strategic communication capacity. This includes the ability of state institutions to frame policies—particularly on security, peace, and identity—in ways that are consistent, credible, and socially grounded. In a context of contested narratives, communication is not merely about informing, but about shaping shared understanding and reducing the space for manipulation. Addressing gaps in strategic communication is therefore not only a technical issue, but a core component of cognitive resilience.

At the institutional level, cognitive security requires more integrated approaches to identifying and responding to foreign information manipulation and broader cognitive threats. This involves strengthening analytical capacities, improving coordination across state institutions, and linking security, governance, and communication functions more effectively. It also requires approaches that reduce confrontation in public discourse by fostering inclusive dialogue rather than imposing narratives, including structured engagement with populations displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh and the diaspora. Importantly, such efforts must remain embedded within democratic frameworks, preserving pluralism and avoiding responses that could further erode trust.

Societal resilience is equally critical. While media literacy remains relevant, cognitive security depends more fundamentally on society’s ability to navigate uncertainty, tolerate ambiguity, and engage with competing narratives. This includes fostering critical and analytical thinking in ways that encourage open inquiry rather than impose predefined interpretations, enabling individuals to assess competing narratives independently while preserving pluralism. This places emphasis on strengthening critical public discourse, trust in institutions, and the capacity to sustain informed disagreement without escalation into polarization. Advancing these objectives is particularly challenging in the run-up to parliamentary elections, when political competition tends to intensify divisions; however, a credible and democratically conducted electoral process can help mitigate escalation and contribute to a more stabilized post-election environment.

In this context, the role of civil society becomes central. Their role in public outreach—when conducted in a targeted, accessible, and strategically calibrated manner—can help bridge the gap between expert knowledge and broader societal understanding.

External partnerships can further reinforce these efforts. Cooperation with the EU and other partners in areas such as hybrid threat analysis, strategic communication, and institutional capacity-building provides access to experience and tools, while also embedding Armenia within broader resilience frameworks. 

In this context, the planned EU CSDP mission with a mandate to strengthen Armenia’s resilience to hybrid threats can play an important role in supporting national capacities. Its effectiveness, however, will depend on its ability to fully grasp and adapt to the specificities of the Armenian environment—including its post-conflict dynamics, identity-related sensitivities, and geopolitical pressures—rather than applying standardized approaches. A tailored, context-sensitive approach will be essential to ensure relevance, local ownership, and sustained impact.

Ultimately, cognitive security should be understood as a long-term dimension of national security and governance. It is closely linked to the ability of the state and society to maintain coherence in the face of pressure, manage narrative transformation without destabilisation, and preserve both democratic pluralism and strategic direction.

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