Last week, on September 2nd, Paris City Hall quietly skipped the opening of a photo exhibition of Armenian nationals imprisoned in Baku over war crimes, which had been due to take place in the square outside its own front door. Three days later, Franck Papazian, co-chair of the Coordinating Council of Armenian Organisations in France (CCAF), appeared on CNews to deliver the verdict: the French government had "caved to Azerbaijan's threats." His prescribed remedy, delivered with the weary patience of a man who has said it before because he has, is not new. According to their demands, the government should cut diplomatic ties with any country that goes against their principles and, if necessary, expel its ambassador - in short, it should simply dance to their tune. "You have to behave like a dictatorship, in reality," he explained, "if you want to be respected by one."

It is worth sitting with that sentence, because Mr Papazian clearly has not. The proposition that democracies earn the respect of authoritarian states by imitating them is not a theory of deterrence, per se. It is a theory of surrender dressed in........

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