Two months ago, the U.S. military sent an Ethiopian proxy army to clear Islamists out of Somalia. The United States followed up that victory with the long-expected formation of Africa Command, likely to be centered on existing facilities in Djibouti. Meanwhile, the Navy is standing up inland forces that one service official says are ideally suited to African operations. This African buildup occurs against the backdrop of increasing Chinese investment in the continent, the Associated Press reports: “China says its trade with Africa soared to $55.5 billion last year, overtaking former colonizer Britain to become Africa’s third-largest trading partner after the United States and France.”
The latter nation is the likely loser in the three-way competition for dominance. But French leaders aren’t just rolling over, the Christian Science Monitor contends:
Following hard on the heels of Chinese President Hu Jintao’s eight-nation tour of Africa last week and the U.S. announcement that it will create a new military command for Africa, the Franco-African summit in the swanky city of Cannes, France, shows that the scramble for Africa is picking up pace. With more than 30 African heads of state and representatives from nearly all of the 53 nations of the continent attending, the 24th Franco-African summit is an attempt to reassure France’s former colonies — and any other African countries that are interested — that France will continue to champion African causes on the global stage, such as development aid, debt relief, and greater access to global markets
But France’s relationship to the continent hasn’t always been so chummy, the story continues:
While France reduced the number of French bases on the continent from nine in the 1960s to its current three (in Djibouti, Chad, and Senegal), France’s bilateral military relationships with many former colonies have left a black mark on its postcolonial history. Current examples of this are found in Ivory Coast, where French military battled national forces after the government of President Laurent Gbagbo launched a military raid that killed nine French peacekeepers in 2004. With French forces now at a stalemate in that country, enforcing arms embargos and travel bans, some security experts call this mission “France’s little Iraq.” More troubling to critics of France’s role in Africa was France’s support of Rwanda’s former Hutu-dominated government in the early 1990s, even after evidence that government supporters — on radio, in newspapers, and in churches — were announcing publicly their preparations to wipe out the Tutsi minority in 1994.
Years later, France is still rather contrarian when it comes to the West’s policies towards Africa, Robert Wall writes over at Ares, the Defense Technology International blog: ”In 2005, the U.S. and France were in a war of words over whether NATO or the EU should lead support of African Union operations in Darfur. The run-in has been hanging over transatlantic relations concerning Africa ever since.”
But rather than continue to fight, Wall continues, many in the French military feel that France’s sidelining is inevitable … and that it’s time to withdraw: ”Ever since the U.S. made clear it considered the Gulf of Guinea of strategic interest, due the access to oil without choke-points, it was clear the Europeans would be pushed aside.”
Still, France maintains the world’s most powerful expeditionary military after the U.S. and the U.K., with the world’s only non-U.S. nuclear aircraft carrier, a capable amphibious force and a bristling approach to peacekeeping that makes it a more effective intervention force than most. Even if it were to eliminate permanent bases in Africa, France would retain an ability to act on the continent rivaled by few powers.
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