TOPSHOT - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan welcomes US Vice President JD Vance anterior to their gathering successful Yerevan connected February 9, 2026. (Photo by KAREN MINASYAN / AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
As the United States rolls retired a caller world geostrategy centered connected burden-sharing and burden-shifting, it is discovering that galore of its friends and partners deficiency the capabilities to presume greater work for location security. France is simply a lawsuit successful point, pinch its world power eroding arsenic its expertise to style the wars successful Ukraine and the Middle East has fallen short of its ambitions and rhetoric. This diminution is peculiarly evident successful the Middle East, wherever President Emmanuel Macron many times fought pinch Donald Trump connected Gaza, the Persian Gulf and Lebanon, and successful the South Caucasus, wherever the geopolitical consequences of some conflicts are converging. For Paris, the region has frankincense go a revealing trial of the limits of French powerfulness and its expertise to enactment arsenic a meaningful information supplier beyond Europe.
France said connected Aug. 8 that Baku and Yerevan had taken “important and courageous steps” toward peace, while calling for a general agreement, the reopening of borders, and location connectivity, and reaffirming European support for their sovereignty and territorial integrity. On Aug. 18, 2026, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met successful Yerevan pinch U.S. Congressman Abraham Hamadeh (R-AZ) to talk deepening Armenia-U.S. ties crossed the political, economic, and technological spheres, arsenic good arsenic implementation of the TRIPP carrier project. The gathering came amid increasing unit from Moscow, aft Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin warned connected Aug. 11 that Armenia needed to clasp a referendum by December 2026 to choose betwixt EU and EAEU membership, aliases look Kremlin-led countermeasures. On the aforesaid day, marking the first day of the Aug. 2025 Trump-hosted White House summit, the United States, Armenia, and Azerbaijan credited the gathering pinch ending decades of conflict and highlighted advancement toward separator normalization.
Despite its charismatic support for the Armenia-Azerbaijan bid process, France has been mostly missing successful action successful the South Caucasus, particularly since the extremity of the 2020 Karabakh War. This reflects Paris’ trouble adapting to the region’s caller strategical realities, peculiarly Azerbaijan’s emergence arsenic the preeminent location character and Turkey’s expanding role. France has not only grounded to amended ties pinch Baku, but its traditionally adjacent narration pinch Yerevan has besides suffered arsenic Armenia has sought to diversify its partnerships beyond Europe and Russia to the U.S. As a result, Paris has recovered itself pinch constricted leverage successful a region wherever its negotiated ambitions person outpaced its expertise to style events.
France’s post-Soviet domiciled successful the South Caucasus began arsenic a formal, balanced mediator – its unsocial spot arsenic the only European personnel of the OSCE Minsk Group gave it organization opinionated connected the Karabakh conflict for 3 decades. Critics based on this format fto Russia negociate and frost the “cold conflict”, inserting itself into the strategical region alternatively than resolving the dispute, and moreover during this play ties pinch Baku were consistently strained by Azerbaijani suspicion of French bias toward Yerevan.
After 2018, driven by Pashinyan’s rise, deteriorating Armenia-Russia relations, the Second Karabakh War, and a ample home Armenian diaspora, France’s posture shifted sharply toward Armenia, producing mostly symbolic gestures for illustration the 2020 Senate solution and nationalist disapproval of Azerbaijan’s 2023 violative that further soured relations pinch Baku. This tilt near Paris looking partisan and irrelevant alternatively than balanced, conscionable arsenic Baku and Yerevan began pursuing nonstop normalization. By 2025-2026, France’s power appeared to beryllium waning further still, pinch reports that Pashinyan had moved to curb French sway wrong his ain authorities successful favour of person ties pinch Washington, leaving France pinch mediocre relations pinch Azerbaijan and diminishing leverage pinch Armenia alike.
In precocious July 2026, Pashinyan removed Araik Harutyunyan, who had headed his agency since 2021, officially citing the request to set the government’s priorities and modulation to a caller phase. European and Ukrainian sources, however, allege that Harutyunyan had been recruited by French intelligence and was passing governmental assessments and accusation astir Pashinyan’s plans to Paris – claims that stay unverified but, if accurate, would formed the dismissal successful a very different light.
The assignment of Lilit Makunts, Pashinyan’s erstwhile ambassador to Washington and main adviser, arsenic Harutyunyan’s replacement further suggests a displacement successful the premier minister’s soul circle distant from French power and toward the United States. Taken together, the reshuffle whitethorn awesome that Pashinyan is recalibrating Armenia’s outer partnerships arsenic the location equilibrium changes, pinch Washington progressively displacing Paris arsenic Yerevan’s preferred Western interlocutor.
The section successful Armenia is truthful little important for what it says astir 1 charismatic than for what it reveals astir the broader erosion of French strategical influence. Paris has spent years trying to sphere a world domiciled that progressively exceeds its expertise to style events, leaving it poorly positioned to accommodate erstwhile location powerfulness balances shift. The shape is evident not only successful the South Caucasus but besides successful Africa, wherever France has been pushed retired of respective accepted post-colonial spheres of influence, peculiarly successful the Sahel, forcing it to recast its attack toward the continent.
The Middle East has presented a subtler type of the aforesaid problem, pinch Paris retaining negotiated and economical ties but struggling to construe them into commensurate strategical leverage, underscoring the widening spread betwixt France’s strategical ambitions and its expertise to style outcomes beyond Europe.
Even wrong Europe, France has struggled to construe its governmental weight into continental leadership, contempt Brexit and Germany’s prolonged economical and governmental difficulties creating an evident opening for Paris. The problem is compounded by an EU that has passed its post-Cold War highest and is progressively divided and incoherent, limiting France’s expertise to mobilize the bloc down immoderate strategical agenda, fto unsocial Paris’s. To a important extent, this flies successful the look of the caller U.S. geostrategy, which is pressing European friends to presume greater work for their ain information alternatively than relying connected Washington to underwrite the continent, a displacement that has intensified debates complete burden-sharing and strategical autonomy. The ongoing warfare successful Ukraine has magnified these pressures by exposing Europe’s subject shortcomings, straining nationalist finances and governmental cohesion, and forcing European governments to face information challenges that they had agelong assumed the United States would manage.
The warfare successful Iran is besides reshaping the South Caucasus by accelerating Armenia’s departure from the geopolitical bid centered connected Moscow and Tehran. As Iran weakens nether U.S. and Israeli pressure, Yerevan has less incentives to sphere its accepted alignment pinch Tehran and greater logic to deepen ties pinch Washington while normalizing relations pinch Azerbaijan and Turkey. This is producing a broader realignment successful which the United States, Israel and Turkey are progressively shaping the South Caucasus done their expanding power successful the Middle East. France and different European allies, contempt their comparative geographic proximity, are mostly absent from this process, constrained by the warfare successful Ukraine and the resources and governmental attraction it continues to consume.
The broader instruction is that the South Caucasus illustrates the cardinal situation of America’s caller geostrategy: Washington progressively expects friends and partners to enarthrosis superior information responsibilities successful their respective regions alternatively than relying connected the United States to do so. In the strategically captious South Caucasus, wedged betwixt 2 of America’s 3 main adversaries – Russia and Iran – Washington is still a comparative newcomer and truthful needs tin location partners to construe its increasing engagement into lasting influence. Yet the paradox is that immoderate of America’s astir precocious allies, specified arsenic France, Germany, and U.K, person proved little capable to capable that role.
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