The United States is rolling out a new global posture built around burden-sharing and burden-shifting, asking allies to take on more regional security responsibility rather than leaning on Washington by default. According to Forbes, that shift is exposing a problem: many of those allies do not have the capabilities to carry the load they are being asked to take on, and few illustrate the gap as clearly as France in the South Caucasus.
France spent nearly three decades as one of three formal mediators in the Armenia Azerbaijan dispute through the OSCE Minsk Group. Forbes reports that Paris has been largely absent from the region since the end of the 2020 Karabakh war, and that its position has eroded on both sides at once. France failed to build a working relationship with Baku, while a pro-Armenia tilt after 2018 cost it credibility as a neutral broker and left Yerevan as its only real point of contact in the region.
That point of contact looks weaker than it used to. Forbes notes that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan reshuffled his government in July 2026, removing Araik Harutyunyan from office and replacing him with Lilit Makunts, a former Armenian ambassador to the United States. Unverified reports cited in the Forbes piece suggest Harutyunyan had ties to French intelligence, and whether or not that detail holds up, the personnel change reads as part of a broader pivot in Yerevan toward Washington and away from Paris.
The regional balance of power has moved with it. Forbes describes Azerbaijan as the preeminent actor in the South Caucasus today, with Turkey's role expanding alongside it and the United States and Israel increasingly shaping outcomes that France once had a seat at the table for. Iran's weakening position, per the same reporting, has also reduced Armenia's old incentive to hedge toward Tehran, freeing Yerevan to lean further toward Washington.
None of this means France has been formally pushed out of the region. It means the informal channels and mediator status that gave Paris influence for three decades have quietly stopped doing much work, at the same time that the United States is asking allies generally to do more with less direct American backing. Forbes frames the South Caucasus as a preview of a wider pattern: a superpower stepping back from micromanaging every regional file, and legacy mediators like France finding that the seat they held out of habit is no longer reserved for them.