France

Ukraine is set to receive dozens of light tanks from the United States, France, and Germany. How will these weapons bolster Ukraine’s defense against Russia?

Numerous countries will hold elections in 2022. Here are ten to watch. 

French President Emmanuel Macron's decision to end Operation Barkhane, the French mission to fight jihadism in the Sahel, bears some resemblance to the ongoing removal of American troops from Afghanistan.

On January 19, French President Emmanuel Macron said that recent successes against jihadis and the pledge of additional EU troops makes it possible to "adjust" French military operations in the western Sahel. More likely is that growing opposition to the costs of French military operations and the upcoming French elections are driving Macron to the decision. The French military presence—Operation Barkhane—numbers 5,100 and cost a reported $1.1 billion in 2020. The French Ministry of Defense has signaled that France is likely to announce the withdrawal of 600 troops in February. Meanwhile, demonstrations have popped up in some West African capitals, with organizers denouncing the French presence as neocolonial. Macron's stated justification for a drawdown strains credibility. Jihadi groups in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger are far from defeated. On January 21, jihadi forces killed three Malian soldiers and three days later they killed an additional six. Concerns are rising that jihadi activity will spread further into Senegal and Ivory Coast. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, West and Central Africa already hosts some 7.2 million [PDF] “people of concern”—including refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, returnees, and stateless persons— with many coming from or located in the Sahel. EU nations are augmenting Task Force Takuba in an attempt to bolster regional security, but the partnership is still getting off the ground. France is looking toward the presidential elections in 2022. Recent polling data shows that for the first time, a majority of French now oppose French military activity in West Africa. The negative, popular reaction to the deaths of thirteen French soldiers in Mali in 2019 illustrates the limited tolerance among the French public for military casualties. Macron is a shrewd politician, belying his technocratic image. His party fared poorly in 2020 municipal elections. Hence a French drawdown in West Africa makes domestic political sense. But, if the French drawdown is substantial, it seems likely that there will be an upsurge of Islamist activity; the armed forces of the weak Francophone West African states have become dependent on the French to hold the line. If the French leave, calls for greater American involvement will likely grow, especially if jihadis sweep toward beleaguered capitals and move to establish Islamist polities hostile to the West. Should such calls occur (as they did following French defeat in Vietnam a generation ago), the Biden administration would do well to proceed with great caution, given the complexity of the situation and the relative lack of granular knowledge about the Sahel in the United States.

Big tech's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week; Russia’s SolarWinds hack compromises thousands of customers; Facebook calls out France and Russia for misinformation operations in Africa; Germany refuses to exclude Huawei; and European Union introduces cybersecurity strategy.

Mwazulu Diyabanza, a Congolese-origin activist in France, first attracted social media attention by seeming to steal an artifact from the Quai Branly Museum in Paris to protest slavery, colonialism and the alleged French theft of Africa's cultural patrimony. The attempted theft was carefully staged for live streaming. The museum authorities stopped the theft. In July, he repeated his protest at a museum in Marseilles. It was also live-streamed. Diyabanza is now back in the news because he, along with four accomplices, will stand trial on September 30. Diyabanza and his supporters hope that the trial will put on the stand France's colonial history. Fueled by social media, the Diyabanza episode is now in the mainstream media.   France's relationship with many of its former African colonies is close. Indeed, French interests in Africa are seen by some as the basis for France's international standing as more than merely a large member state of the European Union. In 2020, against a background of domestic protests against inequality (the "gilet jaunes" demonstrations), the French version of the "Black Lives Matter" protests that focused on the history of French participation in the slave trade and colonialism, the new assertiveness of French citizens of colonial origin, and the unfocused anger at the disruptions caused by the coronavirus, the Diyabanza trial has the potential for a renewed popular focus on French holdings of African art. In 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron pledged to return to Africa the African art in French museums. He established a commission to consider how that might be done. The commission issued a report that has failed to win widespread support in France. According to U.S. media, the French government has announced the restitution of 27 objects, of which only one has been returned. (It is claimed that there are some 90,000 sub-Saharan African art objects in French museums.)   Though the media tends to be focused on the issues of race, class, and colonialism, the question of the return of art to countries of origin has many dimensions and is long standing. For example, successive Greek governments have demanded that the United Kingdom return the Parthenon fragments in the British Museum (the Elgin Marbles). On the other hand, it is argued that great works of art are part of the world's heritage and do not belong to the descendants of those that made them. Hence, so this argument runs, African-origin art no more belongs to contemporary Africa than the works of Leonardo or Michelangelo belong to modern Florentines. With some exceptions, African art housed in Western museums is carefully curated and is accessible to the public. (For example, there is a major collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that periodically presents "block-buster" exhibits of African art.) In sub-Saharan Africa, there are few institutions that can safeguard and display art works of world importance. In what may be a partial way forward, however, France is largely funding the construction of a state-of-the-art museum in Benin that would display the 27 returned works of art, among others.

French President Emmanuel Macron, in a September 22 UN General Assembly (UNGA) speech, made continued French military involvement contingent upon Mali's restoration of civilian rule. He was blunt: "They (the junta) must put Mali on the irreversible path of returning to civilian power and organize rapid elections." And, "France [...] can only remain engaged on this condition." As he has in the past, Macron was also clear that France has a low tolerance level for popular demonstrations against France, or francophone West African states that might be tempted by anti-French rhetoric: "The second these states want us to leave or consider that they can fight terrorism on their own, we will withdraw." The same day Macron was speaking at UNGA, there was a small anti-French demonstration in Bamako. The Mali junta appears impervious to pressures from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU) to restore civilian government. Pressure from France might be different. France deploys more than 5,000 well-trained, well-equipped troops against jihadist extremist groups that seek to overthrow the government and destroy the political class in Mali and in its neighboring states. The French are assisted by some EU partners, and the United States provides logistical and intelligence support. Were France to withdraw, so, too, would its EU partners, and the continued U.S. presence, small though it is, would be called into question.  The jihadist operations in the Sahel have intensified and spread. French withdrawal might well lead to their destruction of Mali and some of its neighboring states. If the Mali junta remains intransigent, would the French really withdraw? West Africa is the French equivalent of the Russian "near abroad." For many French, close ties with francophone Africa makes their country more than simply a large state in the European Union. On the other hand, there is opposition in France to unending military engagement in the Sahel: some characterize the Sahel as France's Afghanistan.  A possible, even likely, outcome will be that the junta will adopt more civilian trappings, such as a genuinely civilian head of state that is acceptable to the Macron government, even if it must hold its noose. 

With Washington absent and Berlin indifferent, it has fallen to Paris to deter and defuse the situation.