France’s Double Standards

By Rachel Avraham

It might not have caught the attention of Westerners, but people in the Global South noticed it long ago: Europeans exhibit a double standard when it comes to violations of sovereignty and civilian lives. What does that mean? In Europe, it’s customary to support a particular side in a military conflict based on the defense of a specific value. For example, a country whose territory has been invaded by soldiers from another nation can be supported in the name of defending territorial integrity, the right to sovereignty, or the right to life, and so on.

However, every now and then, we notice a phenomenon where European countries choose to support nations that don’t represent the very values they championed when it came to other countries. This exposes the hypocritical and sycophantic self-interest of the “enlightened” Western nations. This double standard is one of the reasons many countries in Eurasia and Africa are not taking sides in the Russia-Ukraine war. While many European countries engage in this demeaning and hypocritical behavior, one country acts this way most overtly: France.

When the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, France gave its absolute and unequivocal support to Ukraine, claiming that Russia had invaded its legal territorial boundaries and that Ukraine had the right to defend its independence and sovereignty over its lawful territories. The truth? There’s some truth to what the French say. However, what’s infuriating about this story is that France is playing favorites when it comes to supporting countries that need to defend their territories and sovereignty from external attacks by other nations. The most striking example of this is France’s support for Armenia in its military conflict with Azerbaijan. Why, in the Caucasus war, does France support the aggressor who initiated the illegal occupation of territory legally belonging to another country, rather than the one defending its sovereign territories?

Let’s take a step back. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, two countries disagreed with the territorial division for each nation that separated from the Soviet Union: Russia and Armenia. According to the division, each Soviet Republic that became an independent state received its territorial area as a country based on its territory as a Soviet Republic. This fundamental division was agreed upon in the Alma-Ata Declaration on December 21, 1991. From Russia’s perspective, its leaders have always viewed the post-Soviet Eurasian countries as semi-independent states, allowing them (the Russian leadership) to act in these countries as they please. As for Armenia, it decided not to be content with its original territory and forcibly conquered the Azerbaijani region of Karabakh. Thus, Armenian nationalists managed to create “Greater Armenia” from the territory they seized from Azerbaijan in the “First Karabakh War,” a territory that constituted a fifth of Azerbaijan’s landmass.

According to the French moral compass, as demonstrated by France’s support for Ukraine in its war against Russia, we would infer that France would also support Azerbaijan, whose territory was shamefully occupied. But no. Not only does France not support Azerbaijan but Armenia, it also tried for years to prevent Azerbaijan from reclaiming its occupied territory and intensified its opposition to Azerbaijan after the “Second Karabakh War” in 2020, in which Azerbaijan regained its occupied land.

As mentioned, it seems France wasn’t content with just standard diplomatic support for Armenia but engaged in direct external intervention in an issue not directly related to it (and frankly, not even indirectly so much). France is a member of the OSCE Minsk Group (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). This organization was established in 1992 to resolve the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, with France being one of the three co-chairs of the group, along with the United States and Russia. It’s important to note that each of these three countries has a large and politically powerful Armenian lobby. The OSCE Minsk Group largely failed in all its endeavors for three decades, not only in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict but also in conflicts created by Russia in Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine in 2014-2021. Furthermore, the group failed to negotiate a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan based on the Alma-Ata Declaration, which would have forced the Armenians to withdraw militarily from Karabakh. Beyond that, the group achieved no breakthrough in resolving the conflict.

Over time, questions arose about France’s participation in the group and its role as a co-chair. Firstly, as mentioned, France has the third-largest Armenian diaspora in the world (after Russia and the United States), which constitutes a strong political force. You tell me, what French politician would want to disappoint such a large number of potential voters over some conflict that doesn’t concern their private life in any way? I imagine none.

Secondly, in recent years, France has been grappling with large-scale Muslim immigration, which is not sitting quietly and is shaking the streets of France and French politics. Today, many French people understand that opening their country’s doors to anyone seeking assistance from the Middle East was not the best decision made in Paris, leading to a significant political shift across France towards the far-right. Based on the anti-Muslim sentiment that has become so prevalent in France, the decision to support Christian Armenia over Muslim Azerbaijan is the only decision supported across the entire French political spectrum. Politicians like Le Pen use crusade-like terminology to defend the Christian Armenian population from the Muslim Azerbaijanis, even though Azerbaijan is a completely secular country, and its conflict with Armenia has nothing to do with religion or any particular civilization, but rather with international law. And frankly, it’s ludicrous to portray Azerbaijan as an evil Muslim country, given that one of its greatest allies is the Jewish state of Israel. Thirdly, France also supported (Christian) Greece against its conflict with (Muslim) Turkey, so it’s not surprising that France would not support Turkey’s close and significant ally—Azerbaijan.

In November 2020, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Both French parliaments unanimously voted for French recognition of the independence of the separatist enclave of Artsakh (the Armenian name for Karabakh), mirroring the positions of Russia and Armenia. Subsequently, a frustrated Azerbaijan called for the closure of the OSCE Minsk Group.

The conflict between France and Azerbaijan is not just a conflict between two countries but a mirror image of a larger conflict between the West and the Global South, ignited by double standards and justice. Western countries will not gain the support of the Global South, even on substantive issues like the Russia-Ukraine war, as long as justice is not served and Western countries stop supporting other occupiers who act against international law, similar to the case of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. We must not normalize double standards regarding separatism, the sanctity of states’ territorial integrity, and colonialism. Countries like France must not continue to behave in such a despicable manner, dictating the “right” and “wrong” sides of conflicts between different countries based on their political interests. Only in a political world like the one countries such as France are trying to bring us into, does it make sense to support Ukraine but vehemently oppose Azerbaijan.