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I've always been curious about France's work in Africa. How much of this is driven by noble humanitarianism vs natural resource access vs maintaining the remnants of their colonial power?
For a state I consider generally left-of-center and focused on its own welfare state, I forget how much of a military presence they have.
When in doubt, assume more of the remnant bias.
When the term neocolonial gets thrown around, a disproportionate (or, alternative, proportional) amount of the stronger case-examples can be attributed to / derive from France and the francosphere. For a rather critical but non-European/American critique, here is a link to a Caspian Report on the french sphere of influence from last year, before the coup wave.
African operations to bolster the Francophone-sphere have been France's strategic priority for decades, to a degree that most failed European military co-development projects over the last two decades have failed over the requirements contradictions that can be tracked to the gaps between French-prioritized African requirements and German-prioritized Eastern European requirements. France is distinct among most western powers in its design prioritization of light tanks specifically for African deployability considerations. Further, France for a good part of the War on Terror era kept trying (and generally failing) to solicit European support for its African efforts. When the cases for a European Army were made to intervene without American support, the often (but not always) unspoken area for them to intervene in was north and western africa, i.e. where the Francophone zone is.
One of the under-stated (but well understood in France) consequences of the Ukraine War is that it's actually be a catalyst for the dissolution of the post-Cold War French sphere of influence in Africa. When Russia began looking in earnest for ways to try to increase costs against the Europeans for supporting Ukraine after the gas cutoffs failed, one of the most accessible / appealing / fits-Putin's-mindset was to target the French interests in Africa. How much Russia was directly involved in the African coups that brought in anti-France juntas is unclear, and to a degree irrelevant, as Russia was very willing to provide international legitimacy and new-regime security support (via Wagner) to facilitate the split by these states from France.
Which has, arguably, been a bit of a own-goal by Putin, as the suspected Russian hand in the 2023 coups not only strengthened French support for further European military contributions to Ukraine, but increased France's balance of military interests away from Africa (where it had less to keep) and more towards eastern Europe (which increases strategic interest conflict).
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