Azerbaijan announced on September 19 that it had launched an "anti-terrorist campaign" against the militarised groups of Nagorno-Karabakh – the region at the centre of Azerbaijani-Armenian disputes and confrontations. A day later, combat operations were stopped due to the agreement according to which the pro-Armenian paramilitary groups of Nagorno-Karabakh assumed the obligation to disarm.
Meanwhile, the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, announced his intention to introduce a new initiative to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan at the end of August. Later, the leader of France made a round of telephone calls to Transcaucasia countries’ heads and discussed problems of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Karabakh.
First, it is connected with blocking local transport corridors by participants, first by Azerbaijan.
Nagorno-Karabakh is a disputed territory, unrecognised republic in Transcaucasia where ethnic Armenians live. Even though this area is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh declared independence at the end of the 1980s–the beginning of the 1990s. Since then, Armenia and the pro-Armenian local forces have de facto controlled it.
In 1992, the OSCE Minsk Group for peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was created, and France, the USA and Russia became its cochairmen. Noticeable contradictions characterise the results of the activity of this diplomatic format. Despite formulating several compelling scenarios of permission for ethnopolitical disputes in Nagorno-Karabakh, the region repeatedly became the arena of fierce military operations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The last large armed conflict happened in the fall of 2020, during which Baku established control over much of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent territories.
France’s desire to reinforce its position as the co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group and a mediator in the Baku-Yerevan negotiations fits into the picture of the modern strategic equation in Eurasia. First of all, it is caused by the weakening of Russia due to its continuing war in Ukraine.
The Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan underlined it in his interview with Italian newspaper La Republicca: "Armenia’s security architecture 99.99% was linked to Russia, including in the logic of procurement of arms and ammunition, but today we see that Russia itself needs weapons, arms and ammunition and this situation it’s understandable that even if it wishes so, the Russian Federation cannot meet Armenia’s security needs," said the prime minister.
In light of the above, the Armenian leader announced reforming Yerevan's policies in the area of security, thereby anticipating experts' forecasts about the gradual separation of the Transcaucasian Republic from Russia that will automatically cause the restoration of relations between Armenia and the Euroatlantic community.
"Now Armenia neither in economic nor in any other plan is not of interest to Russia," Pashinyan said in the already mentioned interview with foreign journalists.
The increasing anti-Russian sentiments in the Armenian political elite became the reason for strengthening the positions of European countries in the region. While having close historical ties with Armenia, France is the most apparent favourite in a rush to influence Yerevan.
But today, interstate solidarity has transformed into direct military support. A few months earlier, Paris sent 50 armoured personal carriers to Armenia, and 170 French MPs called the government to increase the support to Yerevan. Regular contacts between representatives of the military departments and private meetings of defence ministers followed this.
At the same time, the media have repeatedly leaked information about the probability of French offensive arms export to Armenia (MLRS, attack UAVs, etc.).
Focusing the attention of the French authorities on the Karabakh problem is motivated by several reasons. First of all, it is the influence of a strong Armenian diaspora in France, which is also very good in lobbying for the interests of Yerevan. The representatives of the Armenian community have a leading position in the French National Assembly, major media companies and expert communities.
This is an important but not a critical factor.
A more obvious reason for the Macron government's interest in the Karabakh problem is the desperate effort of France to restore its political reputation after a series of failures in foreign policy. And Armenia plays an instrumental role in Paris’s geopolitical ambitions.
The leaders of Transcaucasia Republic realise it, but this way, they are trying to harden their negotiating positions with Azerbaijan and Baku’s ally – Turkey. As for Macron's government, after several failures in Africa (withdrawing from Mali, weakening its influence in Niger, etc), it goes right through and penetrates Transcaucasia, a region with unique Turkish influence, while Ankara remains France’s ally in NATO.
Macron’s policy of growing influence in the South Caucasus can be described as a play of being "all in." The French leader made such a radical decision because of painful mistakes in its internal politics (price rise, inflation) and gross domestic failures on the international scene.
Torn by internal contradictions, France is unlikely to defeat Turkey in the struggle for Transcaucasia. Now, Macron’s actions look more like an adventure doomed to failure.
Another political flick on France’s nose gives an impetus to the systemic crisis of institutes in the Fifth Republic. And while France remains one of the systemically important EU countries, aggravating its inner problems will inevitably cause destabilisation of the sociopolitical situation in the European community.
But the much bigger concern is caused by the possible complications in international policy connected with the French-Turkish confrontation in Transcaucasia. If the contradictions between France and Ankara reach a critical level, it will inevitably cause a split in the southern flank of NATO.
This situation could weaken the political and military institutions of the North Atlantic Alliance, which has recently been undergoing severe hardship due to the war in Ukraine.
At the same time, the French-Turkish relations are already complicated by serious disagreements on critical questions of the international and regional agenda. Erdogan is angry about Paris’s refusal to support membership of Turkey in the EU, and also the uncompromising stance of the Elysee Palace in question of support of territorial integrity of Cyprus and its firm solidarity with Greece over Ankara's disputes with the division of the Aegean Sea.
The French political establishment cannot forgive Erdogan for his contempt for the interests of France in the Middle East and North Africa. The list of mutual claims and two-edged offences between partners in NATO is impressive and gradually continues to be replenished with new miscommunications.
But the real drama, comparable on tragic scales with the Russian-Ukrainian war, can turn around in Transcaucasia. Deliveries of French weapons to Armenia caused rage in the authoritarian leader of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, and his ally – the rigid and wayward president of Turkey.
It is unlikely that the cunning leaders of Turkey and Azerbaijan will quietly wait for that moment when Armenia, with the assistance of France, rearms the army and the militarised groups of Nagorno-Karabakh under its control. They will not stay when Yerevan challenges Azerbaijani-Turkish tandem to take revenge for defeat in armed conflict in the fall of 2020.
Far from it. Baku and Ankara, for sure, will take the lead and, under dummy pretexts, initiate military operations against Armenia with the aspiration to inflict the maximum defeat over it, which the Armenian nation will not be able to recover entirely, at least, in the foreseeable future.
And events in Nagorno-Karabakh on September 19-20 convincingly support this view. This time, the fire of war managed to be extinguished. However, there is no confidence that the flame of bloody armed conflict will not inflame again.
Kemran Mamedov is a Moscow-based Azerbaijani journalist born in Georgia, focusing on South Caucasus issues.
