There is a familiar Washington ritual playing out on Capitol Hill on Tuesday that would once have seemed unremarkable. Armenian-American activists in T-shirts bearing the faces of prisoners held in Baku, bipartisan Congressional amendments demanding the enforcement of Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, and Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, the country's most powerful Armenian lobbying group, warning at a press conference that the current peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan is "a consolidation of ethnic cleansing and preparation for a new war." The thing that adds a new dimension to the process is that the very Armenian government approved this agreement, and the prime minister of the country, recently confirmed in power by his resounding victory in elections, described it as a first step "towards eternity and development of the Armenian nation." The diaspora and the homeland used to discuss the future of Armenians. But now they no longer talk about the same future.

ANCA describes itself as the largest and most influential Armenian-American grassroots lobby group in the US, an assertion which, judging by its legislative and media clout, is definitely true. ANCA’s lobby network has managed to keep Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act alive for over thirty years, which is a provision prohibiting US military assistance to Azerbaijan that has no equivalent in sanctions legislation anywhere in America against a post-Soviet nation. Moreover, ANCA managed to win several Congressional resolutions and affect foreign aid funding as well as keep the bipartisan support of the Armenian Caucus for seven presidential administrations.

The problem is that success in........

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