Photo. Pałac Elizejski
The ongoing adjustments on South Caucasus« security stipulations, particularly after the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020, enjoy led to a profound redefinition of the Republic of Armenia’s security policy.
The weakening of gift security guarantee mechanisms and the restricted effectiveness of used alliances enjoy prompted Yerevan to note unusual global partners and diversify its protection power and protection cooperation. On this context, Armenia’s members of the family with France and India, which in most recent years enjoy changed into vital actors supporting Armenia’s protection capabilities, enjoy taken on particular significance.
France
As allotment of its diversification policy, i.e., the stare unusual partners, Armenia made up our minds to quiz France for attend in strengthening its protection capabilities and retaining its inhabitants. This protection-oriented cooperation began to incorporate the acquisition/sale of protection power equipment and operational actions in the shape of workout routines. The cooperation intensified with Azerbaijan’s an increasing selection of aggressive actions. In 2023, after many months of blockade, the separatist Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh ceased to exist attributable to a lightning-hasty Azerbaijani protection power operation. This resulted in a wave of over 100,000 refugees who came to Armenia in the quest of a shelter. A month after these events, in October 2023, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna flew to Armenia and publicly committed France to supplying protection power equipment to Armenia, emphasizing the enjoy to beef up the nation’s defenses after repeated Azerbaijani offensives. In the identical year, the first French protection mission in the South Caucasus became established in Yerevan. In 2024, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu made his first-ever consult with to Armenia. He delivered protection power equipment and signed protection cooperation agreements. These included the provision of armored automobiles, weapons, ammunition, and enhancements to air protection capabilities.
While French protection power equipment exports to Armenia had been nearly non-existent till 2022, slay of 2023 and at some level of 2024, several contracts had been signed for land equipment to beef up Armenia’s protection capabilities. France supplied bastion-armored personnel carriers, Thales GM200 air surveillance radars, and Caesar howitzers. The value of contracts from 2023 amounted to a total of €74 million and rose to €204 million a year later. Discussions are at the second underway on diversified potentialities, as well to projects geared in direction of establishing Armenia’s industrial and technological gruesome in the field of protection. The French-Armenian protection partnership also contains training, with mountain infantry instructors being despatched to practice Armenian soldiers in mountain war, as well to an settlement between the Saint-Cyr Armed forces College and the Vazgen Sargsyan Armed forces Academy on the educational of Armenian cadets.
India
Armenia placed an direct for 15 Akash missile programs in 2022 for $720 million, becoming the first international purchaser of the platform. The Akash-1S programs, supplied by India’s Bharat Dynamics Restricted, provide protection against airborne threats comparable to fighter jets, guided missiles, and drones. As allotment of multi-million buck protection deals, Contemporary Delhi has committed to supplying the Armenian army with Indian howitzers, anti-tank missiles, and anti-drone equipment. As wisely as to air protection, India has also supplied its Pinaka missile programs to Armenia. The Pinaka system gives long-vary strike capabilities and is according to Armenia’s broader efforts to modernize its ground and artillery sources in cooperation with India.
Armenia is also finalizing a $3 billion deal to purchase eight to 12 Indian Su-30MKI multi-role fighters, with deliveries scheduled for 2027-2029. Armenia’s address India is allotment of Yerevan’s technique to diversify its protection partnerships away from its used reliance on Russia. In 2023, Armenia also appointed a protection attaché to its embassy in Contemporary Delhi to beef up protection power ties with India. India’s deepening ties with Armenia provide strategic footholds in the South Caucasus, countering the affect of Pakistan and Turkey in the save while increasing connectivity with European and Eurasian markets.
India and Armenia are close to signing memoranda of working out value between $3.5 billion and $4 billion which focal level on modernizing Armenia’s air protection, missile, and artillery programs. Absorbing discussions are underway on the inclusion of the unusual-generation Akash-NG system, characterised by vastly elevated vary and interception capabilities, in Yerevan’s multi-layered air protection architecture. Yerevan is also in BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles. A framework for cooperation in production is at the second being established that can enable the licensed meeting of BrahMos formulation in Armenia, marking a strategic shift in direction of joint production.
India’s cooperation with Armenia is, in a sense, allotment of the competition between India and Pakistan, which supports Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus save. The above settlement itself follows Azerbaijan’s most recent purchase of 40 JF-17 Yell Block III aircraft from Pakistan, India’s major geopolitical rival. In October, the arrival of Pakistani JF-17 fighters in Azerbaijan despatched a wave of unease by way of Yerevan. In leisurely October, Inter-Products and companies Public Family members (ISPR), the media soar of the Pakistani protection power, also announced joint combat workout routines with Azerbaijan, asserting that an air power contingent consisting of JF-17 Yell Block-III fighter jets had arrived in Azerbaijan for bilateral workout routines.
As wisely as to protection power cooperation, Armenia is also in economic cooperation with India. The major ingredient of this cooperation is the World North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC). It is a multimodal transport system established on September 12, 2000, in St. Petersburg by Iran, Russia, and India to promote transport cooperation between member states. This corridor connects the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf with the Caspian Sea by way of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is then linked to St. Petersburg and Northern Europe by way of the Russian Federation. For India, it is far a route connecting it to European and Eurasian markets. It runs by way of Armenia, which plays a necessary role in this context because it is far without doubt one of the important transit worldwide locations connecting India with Europe, the Persian Gulf, Iran, the Unlit Sea, and Georgia.
In direct to construct the project, a trilateral mechanism became launched in 2023, bringing together representatives from India, Armenia, and Iran. It is a platform for coordinating regional projects. Among diversified issues, it addressed the project of opening up parts of the Iranian ports of Chabahar and Bandar Abbas to facilitate Yerevan’s commerce assemble staunch of entry to to India. Thanks to it, Armenian ships had been in a situation to exercise them as early as January 2024. Each Contemporary Delhi and Tehran strongly improve Armenia’s efforts to changed into more desirous about regional cooperation and exercise of Iranian ports. The improvement of trilateral cooperation between Armenia, India, and Iran targets to boost regional transit infrastructure and expand every nation’s affect in the South Caucasus.
Conclusions
An evaluation of Armenia’s cooperation with France and India means that each partnerships play a actually vital role in the strategy of redefining Armenian security policy and international members of the family. Each France, as a key European actor and permanent member of the UN Safety Council, and India, as a rising regional energy and annoying hands manufacturer, provide Armenia diversified however complementary forms of improve in the position of protection and security.
Cooperation with these worldwide locations enables Armenia to gradually diversify its international partners and cleave its vulgar dependence on the Russian Federation, which has remained Armenia’s major security guarantor for a few years. This diversification has no longer easiest a protection power dimension, however also a political and strategic one, strengthening Armenia’s ability to pursue a more self sustaining international policy in an unstable regional atmosphere.
At the identical time, members of the family with France and India invent no longer imply a total rupture with gift alliances, however fairly an try and complement and steadiness them. On this sense, these partnerships could aloof be seen as allotment of a protracted-timeframe technique to expand the nation’s resilience and note replacement sources of improve in the face of the changing security architecture in the South Caucasus.
