No Takebacks on Genocide Determinations.

Photo by @jorono on pixabay.com

On Tuesday, February 10, Vice President J.D. Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance visited the Tsitsernakaberd Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, Armenia. In a now-deleted post on X, Vance wrote that he laid a wreath “to honor the victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide.” Hours later, after political backlash, the White House claimed the language was posted by a staffer and walked it back.

This reversal is both unprecedented and illogical. The United States formally recognized the Armenian genocide in 2019 through a unanimous Congressional resolution, which was reaffirmed in 2021 under the Biden administration. Meanwhile, Vance become the first sitting Vice President or President to visit Armenia, and the first to recognize a genocide on social media only to retract it, once its political implications became clear.

This episode exposes that genocide recognition is treated as a discretionary political statement rather than what it is under international law: a legal determination with legal consequences.

The Armenian Genocide and U.S. Recognition

Between 1915 and 1922, Ottoman authorities carried out mass deportations and killings of Armenians across Anatolia, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million people. Violence against Armenians continued through the Turkish War of Independence after World War I and accompanied the creation of the modern Turkish state. Other ethnic and religious minorities were also targeted during this period.

Today, Turkey and Azerbaijan deny that these events constituted genocide. Turkey has also stated that the term genocide had not been coined yet at the time of the alleged genocide[CL1] [SK2] . Thirty-four countries recognize the Armenian Genocide, including the United States. The 2019 Congressional resolution recognizing the genocide was passed despite immense pressure from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and opposition from the first Trump administration.  In 2021, then-President Biden [EP3] [SK4] formally recognized the genocide on the 106^th anniversary of the start of the Armenian Genocide. In response, President Erdoğan warnedthat the US should ‘look in a mirror’ and cautioned that US-Turkish relations would suffer serious consequences.[EP5]  At the time, Washington had imposed sanctions on Ankara; however, relations have since returned to a functional equilibrium.

Vance’s informal walk-back on Tuesday gives the episode an air of ‘asked and answered.’ An initial acknowledgment of genocide was immediately followed by predictable backlash from Turkey and Azerbaijan, Turkey’s closest regional ally, and anger from Armenians over the retraction. Vance then reduced the statement to a vague expression of sympathy, calling the events a “terrible thing” that was “very, very important to them culturally,” while emphasizing Armenia’s status as “a very important partner for us in the region.” In doing so, he fully retreated from the legal and moral weight of his original words, leaving little more than diplomatic platitudes in their place.

This equivocation is especially striking given that the United States had already made a formal genocide determination. Vance’s capitulation to political pressure undermines U.S. credibility and weakens the system of genocide recognition itself.

What is the significance of the word genocide?

The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide contains the legal definition for genocide, which prohibits acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The five ‘genocidal acts’ are killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting destructive conditions of life; imposing measures to prevent births; and forcibly transferring children. As of 2026, 153 member states have ratified the Genocide Convention, including Turkey, on July 31, 1950.

The significance of the word genocide lies in its legal force. The Genocide Convention doesn’t simply criminalize genocide and define its terms; it imposes positive legal obligations onto its member states. Once a State Party to Convention knows, or should have reasonably known, that genocide is occurring or that there is a serious risk of genocide occurring, the Convention requires that State to take preventative action. Under international law, this duty is binding; States that fail to take reasonable steps to prevent genocide may incur international responsibility. Where the territorial state is unwilling or unable to halt the crime, other states must use all reasonably available means—diplomatic, economic, and legal—to influence the situation and discharge their own responsibility to protect.

This is why governments often avoid the term. During the Rwandan genocide, U.S. officials deliberately avoided using the word “genocide.” An internal memo warned that a genocide determination could commit the United States “to actually do something.” That logic still shapes foreign policy today: genocide recognition is treated as politically dangerous because it triggers legal and moral duties to respond.

Genocide Denial

This raises an obvious question: do genocide determinations still matter today? If the genocide occurred more than a century ago, with no living perpetrators to prosecute and no population currently facing extermination, does it matter that a high-level member of the U.S. administration briefly acknowledged the Armenian genocide and then reversed course?

Genocide denial is itself a form of violence. It is widely understood as the final stage of the genocidal process- the attempt to erase responsibility, legitimize the violence, and preserve the political and material gains produced by mass killing. It also is a dangerous political practice that helps create conditions for future atrocity crimes. The biggest indicator of future mass atrocities is the existence of past atrocities; this indicator is stronger when the genocide is denied. It allows perpetrators and successor states to avoid accountability and to normalize discrimination and exclusion.

Those dynamics persist today. More than a century after the genocide started, Armenians in Turkey remain subject to discriminatory treatment and social stigma. Surveys show incredibly high levels of public hostility toward Armenians, and Armenian churches face ongoing legal and security challenges. The term “Armenian” is still widely used as a slur in Turkish political discourse. Moreover, Turkey’s argument that the crime of genocide had no legal definition at the time does not lessen the severity of the crimes, nor does the fact that the term was coined later bar states from applying it retroactively, as many historical atrocities have since been recognized as genocide.

The Geopolitics of Denial

Denial is also a tool of regional power politics. Turkey has conditioned normalization with Armenia on Armenia abandoning its genocide claims. Turkey and Azerbaijan together keep the vast majority of Armenia’s international borders closed, leaving the country largely isolated from regional trade routes. This blockade has contributed to economic hardship, emigration, and energy insecurity in Armenia.

Turkey has also used its leverage within NATO to suppress any formal recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the alliance. The message is clear: acknowledgment of past atrocity is treated as a threat to current strategic relationships.

That logic now appears to be reshaping U.S. policy as well. Vance’s visit was intended to reaffirm U.S. engagement in the South Caucasus and to promote a proposed transit corridor linking Azerbaijan and Turkey through Armenia. Azerbaijan is a close ally of both Turkey and Israel — two states the Trump administration has been careful not to alienate, especially when it comes to alleged atrocity crimes. Genocide recognition, in this context, became a geopolitical inconvenience.

The danger of this reversal extends well beyond diplomatic embarrassment or confusion over existing legal determinations. It signals that genocide findings may be withdrawn as power and administrations shift and change in the U.S. That approach strips the Genocide Convention of its legal significance and reframes acknowledgment of mass atrocities as optional rather than obligatory. If genocide recognition can be abandoned because it complicates trade corridors or alliance politics, then the Convention’s core promise—prevention—ceases to function as a legal duty and becomes a matter of negotiation. The United States has already recognized the Armenian Genocide. It cannot credibly retreat from that position without further weakening the U.S. position in the liberal international world order.

Genocide determinations are not messaging errors. They are judgments based on international law, affirmed by scholars, national courts, and other states. Once made, they should not be reversed for reasons of political convenience.

written by Susanna Kelley