After defeating the country in the 2020 44-day war, Armenia’s de facto authorities declared the beginning of an “era of peace” accompanied by threats of force and ultimatums from Baku.
It is noteworthy that after the 2020 war, Azerbaijan has increased its military budget by 20%, is making up for losses and is building new military units on the borders of Armenia and Artsakh. Turkey carries out military operations outside its borders, particularly in Syria and Iraq.
Security issues have come to the fore in the previously quiet Europe. Europe is increasingly militarized, as detailed in the Armenian Project report.
Let us recall the plans of some European states in the military sphere. On March 18, 2022, Polish President Andrzej Duda signed a law on increasing the size of the army. According to the document, the number of Polish armed forces will be doubled from 150 thousand to 300 thousand. Defense spending will also rise from 2.2% of GDP this year to 3% next year.
On May 31, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said: “Germany will soon have the largest conventional army in NATO in Europe.” And on May 30, it became known that the government and the Conservative Party of Germany agreed to allocate 100 billion euros for the modernization of the country’s armed forces. It was noted that the deal will allow Berlin to reach the necessary index for NATO countries, in which defense spending is 2% of GDP, “within a few years on average”.Germany’s defense spending has been between 1.1-1.5% of GDP over the past eight years. At the moment, the number of servicemen of the German armed forces is 182 thousand. Germany is inferior to Turkey (550 thousand) and France (205 thousand soldiers) in the number of armed forces. If we are talking about numerically surpassing the armed forces of Turkey, then Germany will triple the number of military personnel.
As for France, the president of the republic, Emmanuel Macron, promised on September 1 to make the French army the first in Europe in terms of technology.
“A strong army is the key point of our strategy… We have an armament program for 2019-2024 that will allow us to restore our capabilities, as well as adapt to the current situation in the world, which will allow us to make the French army the first army in Europe,” Macron said in a speech. having at the opening of the conference of French ambassadors.
Earlier, Macron called on the Ministry of Defense to revise the 2019-2025 military programming law, taking into account the conflict in Ukraine. He noted that France “entered the regime of war economy”.
Let’s remind that on May 26, 2022, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, said that “the natural order of things is war” and not peace, as was previously thought.
Against the background of universal militarization, the de facto authorities of Armenia are thinking about how to further weaken the army. In particular, the de-facto prime minister said that he plans to shorten the period of mandatory military service and replace it with several military conscriptions, and the de-facto government presented an anti-social law to the parliament, according to which the rich will be able to get out of service with money, etc. All these measures do not lead to an era of peace, but provoke new demands and aggressions from Azerbaijan to Armenia.
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