TOPSHOT – Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan welcomes US Vice President JD Vance prior to their meeting in Yerevan on February 9, 2026. (Photo by KAREN MINASYAN / AFP via Getty Images)
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As the United States implements a new global strategy emphasizing burden-sharing and strategic delegation, it is finding that many traditional allies lack the capacity to assume greater responsibility for regional security. France exemplifies this challenge, with its international influence declining as its ability to shape developments in Ukraine and the Middle East falls short of its aspirations and rhetoric. This weakness is particularly pronounced in the Middle East, where President Emmanuel Macron’s disagreements with Donald Trump over Gaza, the Persian Gulf, and Lebanon, combined with geopolitical ripple effects from the South Caucasus, reveal structural limitations. For Paris, the region has become a critical test of French power projection and its effectiveness as a security partner beyond Europe.
On August 8, France acknowledged “important and courageous steps” by Baku and Yerevan toward peace, calling for a formal agreement, border reopening, and regional connectivity while reaffirming European support for their sovereignty. On August 18, 2026, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met with U.S. Congressman Abraham Hamadeh (R-AZ) in Yerevan to discuss strengthening Armenia-U.S. relations across political, economic, and technological domains, including the TRIPP transport initiative. This meeting occurred amid escalating pressure from Moscow, as Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin warned on August 11 that Armenia must hold a referendum by December 2026 to choose between EU and EAEU membership or face Kremlin countermeasures. Marking the first anniversary of the August 2025 Trump-hosted White House summit, the United States, Armenia, and Azerbaijan credited the gathering with ending decades of conflict and noted progress toward border normalization.
Despite official backing for Armenia-Azerbaijan normalization, France has remained largely absent from South Caucasus diplomacy, particularly since the 2020 Karabakh War. This reflects Paris’ difficulty adapting to new regional dynamics, especially Azerbaijan’s emergence as the dominant regional power and Turkey’s expanding influence. France has not only failed to strengthen ties with Baku, but its traditional relationship with Yerevan has deteriorated as Armenia seeks to diversify partnerships beyond Europe and Russia toward the United States. Consequently, Paris finds itself with limited leverage in a region where its diplomatic ambitions exceed its operational capabilities.
France’s post-Soviet engagement in the South Caucasus began as a formal mediator role, with its unique position as the sole European member of the OSCE Minsk Group providing institutional authority on the Karabakh conflict for three decades. Critics argue this format allowed Russia to manage and freeze the “cold conflict,” inserting itself into the strategic region rather than resolving the dispute. Even during this period, relations with Baku remained strained due to Azerbaijani suspicions of French bias toward Armenia.
Following 2018, driven by Pashinyan’s rise to power, deteriorating Armenia-Russia relations, the Second Karabakh War, and a significant Armenian diaspora, France shifted decisively toward Armenia, producing largely symbolic gestures such as the 2020 Senate resolution and public criticism of Azerbaijan’s 2023 offensive. This one-sided approach made Paris appear partisan and irrelevant just as Baku and Yerevan began pursuing direct normalization. By 2025-2026, France’s influence appeared to wane further, with reports suggesting Pashinyan moved to limit French influence within his government in favor of closer U.S. ties, leaving France with strained relations with Azerbaijan and diminished leverage with Armenia.
In late July 2026, Pashinyan removed Araik Harutyunyan, who had headed his office since 2021, officially citing the need to adjust government priorities and transition to a new phase. However, European and Ukrainian sources allege that Harutyunyan had been recruited by French intelligence and was providing political assessments and information about Pashinyan’s plans to Paris—claims that remain unverified but, if accurate, would fundamentally alter the context of the dismissal.
The appointment of Lilit Makunts, Pashinyan’s former ambassador to Washington and chief advisor, as Harutyunyan’s replacement further indicates a recalibration of the prime minister’s inner circle away from French influence and toward the United States. Combined with the personnel changes, this suggests Pashinyan is carefully adjusting Armenia’s external partnerships as regional power dynamics evolve, with Washington increasingly replacing Paris as Yerevan’s preferred Western interlocutor.
This Armenian case study reveals broader patterns of declining French strategic influence. Paris has spent years attempting to maintain a global role that increasingly exceeds its capacity to shape events, leaving it poorly positioned to adapt when regional power balances shift. This dynamic is evident not only in the South Caucasus but also in Africa, where France has been pushed out of several traditional post-colonial spheres of influence, particularly in the Sahel, compelling a strategic reassessment toward the continent.
The Middle East presents a more nuanced version of this challenge, with Paris maintaining diplomatic and economic ties but struggling to convert them into proportional strategic leverage, highlighting the growing gap between France’s strategic ambitions and its ability to influence outcomes beyond Europe.
Even within Europe, France has struggled to translate its political weight into continental leadership, despite Brexit and Germany’s prolonged economic and political difficulties creating what might have been an opportunity for Paris. This challenge is compounded by an EU that has passed its post-Cold War peak and is increasingly fragmented and incoherent, limiting France’s ability to mobilize the bloc behind any strategic agenda, let alone one led by Paris. This situation contradicts the new U.S. geostrategy, which is pressuring European allies to assume greater responsibility for their own security rather than relying on Washington to provide continental underwriting—a shift intensifying debates over burden-sharing and strategic autonomy. The ongoing war in Ukraine has amplified these pressures by exposing Europe’s military shortcomings, straining national finances and political cohesion, and forcing European governments to confront security challenges long assumed to be managed by the United States.
The war in Iran is also reshaping the South Caucasus by accelerating Armenia’s departure from the Moscow-Tehran-centered geopolitical order. As Iran weakens under U.S. and Israeli pressure, Yerevan has fewer incentives to maintain its traditional alignment with Tehran and greater motivation to deepen ties with Washington while normalizing relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey. This shift is producing a broader realignment in which the United States, Israel, and Turkey are increasingly shaping the South Caucasus through their expanding Middle Eastern influence. France and other European allies, despite their geographic proximity, remain largely absent from this transformation, constrained by the war in Ukraine and the resources and political attention it continues to command.
The broader lesson is that the South Caucasus illustrates the central challenge of America’s new geostrategy: Washington increasingly expects allies and partners to shoulder primary security responsibilities in their respective regions rather than relying on the United States to act as the primary security provider. In the strategically vital South Caucasus, wedged between two of America’s principal adversaries—Russia and Iran—Washington remains a relative newcomer and therefore requires capable regional partners to translate its growing engagement into lasting influence. Yet the paradox persists: some of America’s most advanced allies, including France, Germany, and the U.K., have proven less able to fulfill this role.
