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ABSTRACT
Scholars argue that the 1991 Gulf War, when the United States worked hard to secure approval from the United Nations (UN), set a precedent for legitimate military intervention that other states, especially other liberal democracies, subsequently felt compelled to follow. France, however, continued to intervene unilaterally in its traditional African sphere of influence for several years, without seeking approval from the UN or regional bodies. Even after France drew widespread opprobrium for its support of a murderous regime in Rwanda, French leaders deployed thousands of combat troops unilaterally on various missions. This article relies on original interviews with French policymakers as well as on primary documents to make the case that the 2002–04 Côte d’Ivoire intervention finally steered French Africa policy towards greater multilateralism. It drove home the danger that unilateral interventions could fuel anti-French sentiment among African audiences, undermining France’s regional influence. Ultimately, therefore, concerns about African acceptance more than broader international pressure led France to fully embrace new norms of legitimate intervention.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Thierry Tardy, Adrian Treacher, and Marco Wyss for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Special thanks also go to Dr. Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, director of the Institute for Strategic Studies (IRSEM) at the French Ministry of Defence, for hosting me as a visiting scholar in Paris. I alone am responsible for the content of this article.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 On the Mali and CAR interventions, see Gregor Mathias, Les guerres africaines de François Hollande (Tour-d’Aigues: Editions de l’Aube 2014), 66–71; and Benedikt Erforth, Contemporary French Security Policy in Africa: On Ideas and Wars (London: Palgrave 2020), 84–142.
2 Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Armed Forces, French Senate, ‘France’s External Interventions: Strengthening Military Effectiveness through a Comprehensive and Coordinated Approach’, Report no. 794, 13 July 2016, 52, available at https://www.senat.fr/rap/r15-794/r15-7941.pdf; Marie Bourreau, ‘G5 Sahel: Vote à l’arraché sur le déploiement d’une force africaine’, Le Monde, 21 June 2017; and Leila Abboud, ‘France to send 600 extra troops to Africa’s Sahel region’, Financial Times, 2 Feb. 2020.
3 Thomas Risse-Kappen, ‘Between a New World Order and None: Explaining the Reemergence of the United Nations in World Politics’, in Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams (eds.), Critical Security Studies (Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press 1997), 279. For similar arguments, see also Bruce Russett, ‘The Gulf War as Empowering the United Nations’, in John O’Loughlin, Tom Mayer and Edward S. Greenberg (eds.), War and Its Consequences: Lessons from the Persian Gulf Conflict (NY: Harper Collins 1994), 185–97; and Bruce Cronin, ‘The Paradox of Hegemony: America’s Ambiguous Relationship with the United Nations’, European Journal of International Relations 7/1 (2001), 119–20. Scholars subscribing to a rationalist epistemology, too, often embrace this view at least implicitly; see, for example, Erik Voeten, ‘The Political Origins of the UN Security Council’s Ability to Legitimize the Use of Force’, International Organization 59/3 (2005), 531–32.
4 Risse-Kappen, ‘Between a New World Order and None’, 288.
5 See esp. Cronin, ‘The Paradox of Hegemony’, 105.
6 See, for example, Shaun Gregory, ‘The French Military in Africa: Past and Present’, African Affairs 99/396 (2000), 441–42; Adrian Treacher, French Interventionism: Europe’s Last Global Player? (Farnham: Ashgate 2003); Daniel Bourmaud, ‘From Unilateralism to Multilateralism: The Decline of French Power in Africa’, in Tony Chafer and Gordon Cumming (eds.), From Rivalry to Partnership? New Approaches to the Challenges of Africa (Farnham: Ashgate 2011), 49–51; and Tony Chafer, Gordon Cumming, and Roel Van der Velde, ‘France’s Interventions in Mali and the Sahel: A Historical Institutionalist Perspective’, Journal of Strategic Studies, this special issue.
7 On the distinction between institutions-based (or ‘qualitative’) and coalitions-based (or ‘quantitative’) multilateralism, see Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2003), 80–81.
8 See Andrew Bennett and Jeffrey T. Checkel (eds.), Process Tracing: From Metaphor to Analytical Tool (NY: Cambridge UP 2015).
9 This includes three permanent representatives to the UNSC: Jean-Bernard Mérimée (1991–95), Jean-David Levitte (2000–02), and Jean-Marc de La Sablière (2002–07); two chiefs of the military staff of the French president who subsequently also served as chiefs of the French defence staff: Henri Bentégeat (1999–2002, 2002–06) and Edouard Guillaud (2002–10, 2010–14); and several presidential advisers on African affairs: Bruno Joubert (2007–09), Hélène le Gal (2012–16), and Thomas Mélonio (2016–17).
10 Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention, 82.
11 Joseph Grieco et al., ‘Let’s Get a Second Opinion: International Institutions and American Public Support for War’, International Studies Quarterly 55/2 (2011), 563–83; and Terrence L. Chapman, Securing Approval: Domestic Politics and Multilateral Authorization for War (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press 2011).
12 Voeten, ‘The Political Origins’; and Alexander Thompson, ‘Coercion through IOs: The Security Council and the Logic of Information Transmission’, International Organization 60/1 (2006), 1–34.
13 Sarah Kreps, Coalitions of Convenience: United States Military Interventions after the Cold War (NY: Oxford UP 2011); and Stefano Recchia, Reassuring the Reluctant Warriors: US Civil-Military Relations and Multilateral Intervention (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2015).
14 This was confirmed in author interviews with several French officials. For example, according to Hélène le Gal, President Hollande’s senior adviser for African affairs from 2012 to 2016, the president ‘never thought that French civil society and public opinion had much influence’ in this respect. Author interview, Paris, 28 Mar. 2017. On the National Assembly’s role, see Falk Ostermann, ‘France’s Reluctant Parliamentarisation of Military Deployments: The 2008 Constitutional Reform in Practice’, West European Politics 40/1 (2017), 101–18.
15 On the legality of intervention by invitation, see Gregory Fox, ‘Intervention by Invitation’, in Marc Weller (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Use of Force in International Law (NY: Oxford UP 2015), 816–40.
16 See Alice Pannier and Olivier Schmitt, ‘To Fight another Day: France between the Fight against Terrorism and Future Warfare’, International Affairs 95/5 (2019), 897; and Thierry Tardy, ‘France’s Military Operations in Africa: Between Institutional Pragmatism and Agnosticism’, Journal of Strategic Studies, this issue.
17 David Edelstein, Occupational Hazards: Success and Failure in Military Occupation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2008), 137.
18 Ibid., 151.
19 Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Armed Forces, French Senate, ‘Crisis Management in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Report no. 450, 30 June 2006, 10, available at https://www.senat.fr/rap/r05-450/r05-4501.pdf. See also Treacher, French Interventionism, ch. 7.
20 Treacher, French Interventionism, 124–25; and Elizabeth Schmidt, Foreign Intervention in Africa: From the Cold War to the War on Terror (NY: Cambridge UP 2013), 175–79.
21 Pierre Lellouche and Dominique Moisi, ‘French Policy in Africa: A Lonely Battle against Destabilization’, International Security 3/4 (1979), 111–14. For an up-to-date discussion based on declassified documents, see also Marco Wyss, Postcolonial Security: Britain, France, and West Africa’s Cold War (Oxford UP forthcoming).
22 Schmidt, Foreign Intervention in Africa, 180.
23 Signalling credible commitment was among the main drivers of French interventions in Zaire in the 1970s, Chad in the 1980s, and Rwanda in the early 1990s. See Nathaniel Powell, ‘Battling Instability? The Recurring Logic of French Military Interventions in Africa’, African Security 10/1 (2017), 52–53.
24 Lellouche and Moisi, ‘French Policy in Africa’, 122; and Schmidt, Foreign Intervention in Africa, 182–88.
25 Quoted in Jean-François Bayart, ‘‘Bis repetita’: La politique africaine de François Mitterrand de 1989 à 1995ʹ, in Samy Cohen (ed.), Mitterrand et la sortie de la guerre froide (Paris: PUF 1998), 275.
26 Jean-Pierre Bat, Le syndrome Foccart: La politique française en Afrique, de 1959 à nos jours (Paris: Folio 2012), 507–8.
27 Powell, ‘Battling Instability?’, 60–61; and Bayart, ‘Bis repetita’, 265–67.
28 Bat, Syndrome Foccart, 507–10; and Bayart, ‘Bis repetita’, 263–66.
29 Author interview with Guy Labertit (chief African affairs coordinator, French Socialist Party, 1993–2006), Vitry-sur-Seine, 21 Mar. 2017.
30 Hubert Védrine (secretary-general to the French presidency, 1991–95), statement before the French Parliamentary Information Commission on Rwanda (henceforth, PICR), 5 May 1998. All statements by French officials before this commission are available at http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/11/dossiers/rwanda/telechar/telechar.asp. On Mitterrand’s concerns about credibility, see also Louis Gautier, ‘Les guerres de François Mitterrand’, Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps 101/1 (2011): 64–70.
31 Gautier, ‘Les guerres de François Mitterrand’, 66. On Gabon and Togo, see also Bat, Syndrome Foccart, 514–22.
32 Author interview with Jean-Marc de La Sablière (deputy director [1985–89] and director [1992–96] of African affairs, French Foreign Ministry; deputy perm-rep [1989–92] and perm-rep [2002–07] of France to the UNSC), Paris, 10 Dec. 2014.
33 Bat, Syndrome Foccart, 521–23.
34 Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (London: Hurst 1997), 47–83.
35 Prunier, Rwanda Crisis, 93–98, 115–19.
36 Védrine, statement before PICR; Bruno Delaye (African affairs adviser to the French president, 1992–95), statement before PICR, 19 May 1998.
37 Prunier, Rwanda Crisis, 100–10; and Daniela Kroslak, The French Betrayal of Rwanda (Bloomington: Indiana UP 2008), 127–31.
38 As acknowledged by Adm Jacques Lanxade (chief of the French defence staff, 1991–95) in an interview with François Granier, La Nuit Rwandaise 10 (2016), 105, available at http://www.lanuitrwandaise.org. See also Kroslak, French Betrayal of Rwanda, 134–39.
39 French Presidency, ‘Notes re. meeting with Mr. Juvenal Habyarimana’, 22 Apr. 1991, 6, available at https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB461/docs/DOCUMENT%209%20-%20French.pdf; also Jean-Michel Marlaud (French ambassador to Rwanda, 1993–94), statement before PICR, 19 May 1998.
40 Prunier, Rwanda Crisis, 89–91.
41 Bayart, ‘Bis repetita’, 269–70; and Powell, ‘Battling Instability?’, 61.
42 On 3 March 1993, Mitterrand declared in a meeting of the defence council that ‘we need to withdraw, but we need to do so going through the United Nations. We can’t just leave like that’. Available at https://francegenocidetutsi.org/ConseilRestreint3mars1993NotesVedrine.pdf. On the decision to seek a UN handoff, see also Delaye, statement before PICR.
43 De La Sablière, author interview.
44 Olivier Lanotte, La France au Rwanda, 1990–1994 (Brussels: Peter Lang 2007), 92–100; and Kroslak, French Betrayal of Rwanda, 40–45.
45 Prunier, Rwanda Crisis, 203–4.
46 Official French sources long blamed the RPF, but declassified documents show that France’s external intelligence agency almost immediately placed the responsibility on Hutu extremists. See special report by Radio France Internationale, 6 Feb. 2019, at https://www.franceculture.fr/droit-justice/genocide-au-rwanda-une-note-confidentielle-contredit-la-version-francaise.
47 ‘Rwanda Genocide’, BBC News, 7 Apr. 2014, at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-26875506/.
48 Lanotte, France au Rwanda, 387–88.
49 Led by Gen Christian Quesnot, Mitterrand’s chief military adviser, these officials envisioned a French action that would ‘progressively re-establish security’ in Rwanda. See Quesnot, note for the president, 18 June 1994, at https://francegenocidetutsi.org/Quesnot18juin1994.pdf.
50 Bruno Delaye, note for the president, 24 June 1994, at https://francegenocidetutsi.org/Delaye24juin1994.pdf. See also Lanotte, France au Rwanda, 395–97.
51 Edouard Balladur, Le pouvoir ne se partage pas: Conversations avec François Mitterrand (Paris: Fayard 2009), 244–45.
52 Edouard Balladur, defence council, 15 June 1994, at https://francegenocidetutsi.org/ConseilRestreint15juin1994.pdf. See also Balladur, Le pouvoir ne se partage pas, 245–46; and Lanotte, France au Rwanda, 399–401. Mitterrand himself appears to have thought that if necessary, France could intervene with only an ad hoc coalition of African partners: ‘If we can’t count on the others, we have to go in alone with the Africans’, he declared during the same defence council meeting on 15 June.
53 Res. 929, adopted on 22 June 1994, paragraphs 2, 4. France also secured (largely symbolic) troop contributions from several African countries, including Chad, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal. Gregory, ‘French Military’, 439; and Lanotte, France au Rwanda, 414.
54 Author interview with Jean-Bernard Mérimée (French perm-rep to the UNSC, 1991–95), Paris, 9 Dec. 2014.
55 Lanotte, France au Rwanda, 437.
56 Kroslak, French Betrayal of Rwanda, 232–40; and Prunier, Rwanda Crisis, 308–11.
57 Edouard Balladur, statement before PICR, 21 Apr. 1998.
58 Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Armed Forces, French Senate, ‘France’s Africa Policy’, Report no. 324, 28 Feb. 2011, 29, available at https://www.senat.fr/rap/r10-324/r10-3241.pdf.
59 Author interview with Jean-David Levitte (chief diplomatic adviser to the French president, 1995–2000, and 2007–2012; French perm-rep to the UNSC, 2000–2002), Paris, 20 Mar. 2017. See also Richard Banégas and Roland Marchal, ‘La politique africaine’, in Maurice Vaïsse and Christian Lequesne (eds.), La politique étrangère de Jacques Chirac (Paris: Riveneuve 2013), 183–90; and Bat, Syndrome Foccart, 621–25.
60 French Ministry of Defence, ‘50 Ans d’Opex en Afrique, 1964–2014’, Cahier du RETEX (Paris: 2014), 32–33, available at www.c-dec.terre.defense.gouv.fr/images/documents/retex/cahier/20160606_50-ans-d-OPEX-Afrique.pdf.
61 Ibid., 54–55.
62 Ibid., 61–62.
63 In 1998, a UN peacekeeping operation took over. See Raphaël Granvaud, Que fait l’armée française en Afrique? (Marseille: Agone 2009), 267–68.
64 Author interview with Louis Gautier, Paris, 29 Mar. 2017.
65 Yves Gounin, La France en Afrique: Le combat des Anciens et des Modernes (Brussels: de Boeck, 2009), 54; and Banégas and Marchal, ‘La politique africaine’, 191.
66 Bat, Syndrome Foccart, 638–39.
67 Author interview with Gilles Andréani, Paris, 26 Nov. 2014.
68 Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Armed Forces, French Senate, ‘Crisis Management in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Report no. 450, 14–15. See also Gregory, ‘French Military’, 441–42.
69 Labertit, author interview.
70 Labertit and Gautier, author interviews.
71 Bat, Syndrome Foccart, 635–43.
72 Ibid., 644–45.
73 Jean-Jacques Konadje, L’ONU et le conflit ivoirien (Paris: Harmattan 2014), 78.
74 Jacques Chirac, Le temps présidentiel (Paris: Nil 2011), 425; also Jean-Christophe Notin, Le crocodile et le scorpion: La France et la Côte d’Ivoire, 1999–2013 (Monaco: Rocher 2013), 52–53.
75 Stephen Smith, ‘Les principales raisons du plus important engagement militaire français en Afrique depuis vingt ans’, Le Monde, 4 Jan. 2003.
76 Author interview with Gen Henri Bentégeat (chief of the military staff of the French president, Apr. 1999-Oct. 2002; chief of the French defence staff, Oct. 2002-Oct. 2006), Paris, 1 Mar. 2017.
77 Notin, Crocodile, 63; and Smith, ‘Principales raisons’.
78 Nigerian authorities viewed the crisis as ‘an African problem that must be solved by African leaders.’ Quoted in US Embassy Abuja, ‘Nigeria: Obasanjo Cool to Paris Summit on Côte d’Ivoire’, cable no. 256597, 16 Dec. 2002. These hesitations, as well as logistical problems, meant that the 1,200-strong ECOWAS force only deployed in January 2003. Konadje, L’ONU et le conflit ivoirien, 136.
79 Fabienne Hara and Comfort Ero, ‘Ivory Coast on the Brink’, The Observer, 15 Dec. 2002.
80 A secret US diplomatic cable subsequently noted that ‘the consequences for … French nationals of a withdrawal of French forces would be serious. The same is true for France’s credibility throughout Africa. Such a decision will not be taken lightly’. US Embassy Paris, ‘France and West Africa’, cable no. 439, 25 Jan. 2005.
81 Konadje, L’ONU et le conflit ivoirien, 83–86. See also Marco Wyss, ‘Primus inter pares? France and Multi-Actor Peacekeeping in Côte d’Ivoire’, in Thierry Tardy and M. Wyss (eds.), Peacekeeping in Africa: The Evolving Security Architecture (London: Routledge 2014), 135.
82 Notin, Crocodile, 39, 53; and Laurent D’Ersu, ‘La crise ivoirienne, une intrigue franco-française’, Politique africaine 105 (2007), 88.
83 D’Ersu, ‘Crise ivoirienne’, 89; and Notin, Crocodile, 73.
84 Bat, Syndrome Foccart, 645.
85 Notin, Crocodile, 76–77.
86 Gounin, La France en Afrique, 67.
87 Author interview with Jean-Pierre Lacroix (deputy director [2002–06] and director [2014–17] of UN affairs, French Foreign Ministry), Paris, 27 Mar. 2017.
88 Author interview with Bruno Joubert (director of African affairs, French Foreign Ministry, 2003–06; Africa adviser to the French president, 2007–09), Paris, 23 Mar. 2017. See also Chirac, Le temps présidentiel, 426; and Konadje, L’ONU et le conflit ivoirien, 88–89.
89 Joubert, author interview. De Villepin first broached the idea of a UN mission with other UNSC partners in early 2003. Jean-Marie Guéhenno, The Fog of Peace (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press 2015), 96.
90 Bat, Syndrome Foccart, 648; and Notin, Crocodile, 94–97.
91 UN, ‘Conclusions of the Conference of Heads of State on Côte d’Ivoire’ (Paris: 25–26 Jan. 2003), UN Doc. S/2003/99, available at www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/Cote%20d'Ivoire%20Marcoussis.pdf.
92 Jean-Marc de La Sablière, Dans les coulisses du monde (Paris: Robert Laffont 2013), 246–47; and Guéhenno, Fog of Peace, 99–100.
93 De La Sablière, author interview. For more details on how tensions over Iraq affected UNSC diplomacy on Côte d’Ivoire, see Stefano Recchia, ‘Overcoming Opposition at the UNSC: Regional Multilateralism as a Form of Collective Pressure’, Journal of Global Security Studies, forthcoming.
94 De La Sablière, Coulisses du monde, 246.
95 Ibid., 247.
96 Guéhenno, Fog of Peace, 99–100; and Notin, Crocodile, 111.
97 Notin, Crocodile, 116; and Guéhenno, Fog of Peace, 104.
98 D’Ersu, ‘Crise ivoirienne’; 97–98; and Bat, Syndrome Foccart, 649.
99 Bat, Syndrome Foccart, 650.
100 Joubert, author interview. See also de La Sablière, Coulisses du monde, 250.
101 Notin, Crocodile, 130; and Bat, Syndrome Foccart, 650.
102 Bentégeat, author interview.
103 Ambassador de La Sablière recalls that he simply ‘explained’ France’s action after the fact, which, he recalls, resulted in ‘some problems’ with other members of the council (author interview). The UNSC nevertheless issued a declaration in support of the French forces, after Paris threatened to withdraw its entire contingent. De La Sablière, Coulisses du monde, 252.
104 Bat, Syndrome Foccart, 650.
105 Granvaud, Armée française en Afrique, 214–15.
106 Author interviews; also Notin, Crocodile, 152.
107 ‘Côte d’Ivoire and France: A Bloody Mess’, The Economist, 11 Nov. 2004.
108 US Embassy Paris, ‘France and West Africa’, cable no. 439, emph. added.
109 Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Armed Forces, French Senate, ‘Crisis Management in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Report no. 450, 45.
110 De La Sablière, Coulisses du monde, 253–57; and Guéhenno, Fog of Peace, 107–12.
111 Notin, Crocodile, 235–54; and Bat, Syndrome Foccart, 655–58.
112 Wyss, ‘Primus inter pares?’, 138–41; and, for details of the military operation, Notin, Crocodile, 368–92.
113 Author interview with Adm Edouard Guillaud (chief of the military staff of the French president, 2006–10; chief of the French defence staff, 2010–14), Paris, 24 Mar. 2017.
114 Author interview.
115 On the DRC intervention, see Recchia, ‘Overcoming Opposition at the UNSC’. On Chad, see Marina Henke, ‘A Tale of Three French Interventions’, Journal of Strategic Studies, this issue.
116 Author interview with Thomas Mélonio (deputy presidential adviser [2012–16] and presidential adviser [2016–17] on African affairs), Paris, 22 Mar. 2017.
117 Powell, ‘Battling Instability?’; and Pannier and Schmitt, ‘To fight another day’.
118 As Louis Gautier, the third-highest-ranking official at the French Defence Ministry from 2014 to 2018, explains, ‘The terrorist challenge has restored the legitimacy of France’s African action – nobody criticizes France anymore’ (author interview).
119 Adam Nossiter, ‘Can France Ever Leave Africa? Airstrikes in Chad Raise an Old Question’, New York Times, 14 Feb. 2019.
120 See fn. 2, above; and .
121 French Ministry of Defence, White Paper on Defence and National Security (Paris: 2013), 24, available at http://www.livreblancdefenseetsecurite.gouv.fr/pdf/the_white_paper_defence_2013.pdf.
122 Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (NY: Cambridge UP 1999), 287–88.
123 Ibid.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Stefano Recchia
Stefano Recchia (PhD, Columbia University) holds the John G. Tower distinguished chair in international politics as an associate professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. His research interests revolve around the politics and ethics of military intervention, US and French defence policy, and multilateral cooperation in security affairs. He is the author of Reassuring the Reluctant Warriors: US Civil-Military Relations and Multilateral Intervention, published in 2015 in the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs series. Further information about his research is available at www.stefanorecchia.net.