French Interventions in Africa: Reluctant Multilateralism by Stefano Recchia & Thierry Tardy

Author:Stefano Recchia & Thierry Tardy [Recchia, Stefano & Tardy, Thierry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367618476
Goodreads: 54063289
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-11-16T00:00:00+00:00

Multilateralism as capacity provider

During the Cold War, France was able to conduct regular military interventions in sub-Saharan Africa autonomously, and outside of any institutional framework.21 It was stationing permanent troops in several African countries in accordance with Defence and Cooperation agreements and had the political and military capacity to re-deploy them whenever and wherever required. In this context, multilateralism was never considered to be an option and would have been perceived as an unnecessary constraint if ever debated.

This exclusively ‘unilateral way’ is no longer possible in the post-Cold War era, for both capacity and legitimacy reasons. In capacity terms, the overall French military posture has been significantly reduced since the end of the Cold War. Three parameters come into play.

First, there has been a general reduction in defence spending and force structure. In percentage of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the French defence budget has gone down from 3.3% in 1990 to 1.8% in 2018.22 In the same period, the Army – the main troop provider in African operations – has been downsized from approx. 240,000 in 1990 to 115,000 in 2018.23

Second, downsizing has impacted the French presence in Africa, with permanent troops (not counting those involved in operations) reduced to approx. 2,700 in 2019, compared with 5,000 at the end of the 1990s and 8,000 at the end of the Cold War.24 In 2014, France still has approx. 3,100 troops pre-positioned in Djibouti, Senegal, and Gabon, yet it is increasingly solicited for operations. In the course of 2014, the number of troops deployed in the Sahel in operation Serval has reached 1,800 – approx. 4,500 in Barkhane in early 201925 – while France also deploys 2,000 troops in operation Sangaris in the CAR.26

Third, the nature of operations in Africa has also evolved in a way that is more resource-demanding. In the Sahel in particular, not only do counter-terrorism operations necessitate a wide range of high-end human and technological resources, but they also imply heavy wear and tear costs due to the specificity of the terrain (see Table 3), at odds with most low-intensity French operations of the 1970s and 1980s.

These three factors combined have undermined the capacity of France to project and sustain forces in sub-Saharan Africa. In 1997, Prime minister Lionel Jospin admits that ‘France cannot ensure, alone, the security of its African partners’. In 2014, a French Parliamentary Report asserts that France can no longer afford to maintain an ‘African army’, deploring obvious financial and capacity constraints that in the long run undermine France political influence in Africa.27 In the same vein, the 2017 Strategic Review acknowledges that ‘France clearly cannot address all […] challenges on its own’; while France’s ‘national autonomy is real and should be as comprehensive as possible, […] it is limited within a growing number of fields’.28

Table 3. Cost of operations (not in Africa only).a Year

2003

2005

2007

2009

2011

2013

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