This is why the visit of the Commander of the External Missions of the French National Gendarmerie, General William De Meyer, to Armenia should in itself be regarded as a certain element of pressure on Azerbaijan, and the French general with binoculars in his hands in front of Azerbaijani positions is nothing but a blatant military provocation. Can the visit of such a high-profile French general to the Armenian-Azerbaijani border be considered a direct threat to Azerbaijan? What does France want to communicate to Azerbaijan in this way? If we leave aside all sorts of bastions and Indian howitzers made by French technology, does Paris have real political leverage over our country?
Minval.az asked former Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan Tofig Zulfugarov to comment on these questions.
What kind of game is France playing in the South Caucasus region?
First of all, we need to understand France’s strategy for entering this region. France does not have the capacity for direct penetration, including any military components. They are well aware of this, but as evidence of this we can recall the speech of Emanuel Macron, which made it clear that France wants to revise its defense doctrine. It was said that France wants to have no more than 9,000 of its military personnel abroad, including overseas territories. The deployment of military aid to Armenia is ruled out because they realize that they may face opposition from Russia and possibly Iran. But if we pay attention to some of Macron’s speeches before the war in Ukraine, during the large-scale fighting and recent statements, we can come to the conclusion that France has a distinctive policy line with regard to Russia, which differs from the general position of the West.
It manifests itself in many elements and involves the issue of the war in Ukraine, the West’s competition with China, etc. I will not cite any details of Macron’s speech on these topics, but if one follows all this closely, one can find a number of points that confirm what I have said.
As far as the South Caucasus is concerned, France has always hoped that it could, in coordination with Russia, carve out some special place for itself in the region. There have been several invitations to this from Macron, when he openly said that if they wanted to achieve something in the South Caucasus—and this was right after the 44-day war—they should do it together with Russia.
France then asked several times to participate in the meeting hosted by President Putin within the Armenia-Azerbaijan-Russia trio. The requests were denied. There was even a scandal because some details of the conversation regarding the negotiations with the Russian President became public.
Now, we get to the most important component. It is clear today that the confrontation between the sides in Karabakh has been stabilized to such an extent that it is difficult to exploit any elements of the conflict in this region. Except for those that, for example, can be raised at the level of PACE and so on. And it is obvious to everyone that the conflict confrontation between Armenia and Azerbaijan is moving to the issues of borders and Zangezur. And here we come to a very interesting point on the issue of maps. As you know, Minister Lavrov also talks about the factor of the USSR General Staff, and what is surprising is that both Macron and even Scholz (remember the statement in Granada) talk about it as well. Why is this happening? After all, we can see today that the 1975 maps are a kind of historical atavism, because no one uses paper maps today. Now we have publicly available programs such as Google Maps and others. There are also special-purpose programs. And, for example, France supplied us with satellites that are used for location positioning. That is, there are plenty of programs available that make it completely unnecessary to use the maps of the USSR General Staff.
Why do we need them when we can open the Google Maps program on our phone and the resolution will be much higher than the resolution of the General Staff maps?
So why are they talking about all this? Macron in Granada, experiencing reputational losses, suddenly remembers the map of the General Staff of the USSR, a country that no longer exists. And when this country existed, it was one of the potential adversaries of France itself. Why is this happening? Does he not know that no one uses graphic maps today? The whole question is that, bringing up these maps, he voices an invitation to Russia with these maps to become a leading mediator in the issue that is becoming increasingly urgent, i.e., in determining the borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan. And this is what we are seeing happen out in the open.
France wants to play the role of a dominant element in this process together with Russia and to use the conflict management system in the future, just as they did when the Minsk Group was active. This is why the visits of the brigadier general and other actions like that are elements of France trying to get involved in this process.
Still, there is an opinion that William De Meyer came to the region in order to prepare a military attack by Armenia on Azerbaijan. Is this possible?
I am not questioning your sources. But I believe that some provocative actions may well be initiated in order to accomplish the strategic line I was talking about. That is, what I said does not preclude what your sources tell you being true. There are enough grounds for that. Because, as we know, Armenia will carry out this provocation, not hoping, of course, for military success. That country’s objective is to inflame the situation. And, as I said, France wants to join with Russia to settle this situation. I cannot say to what extent an agreement has been reached between them, but it is all obvious. And France, in fact, does not hide its aspirations.
Does France have real leverage over Azerbaijan?
Not over Azerbaijan, no, but it does over Armenia. It has quite enough leverage to organize a provocation. France either has to come to an agreement with Russia or act against its interests. And then the whole issue comes down to the situation that is unfolding on the other side of the conditional border. After all, they have deployed their mission, as they say, in Armenia. But the scope of this mission is not defined by the borders. What are they doing there? There are a lot of questions in this respect.
Rauf Nasirov
Translated from Minval.az
