ABSTRACT
On 25 September 2007, after months of French diplomatic efforts, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that the United Nations Security Council had unanimously endorsed the French proposal to deploy a joint EU and UN force in eastern Chad and the northeastern Central African Republic (CAR). Resolution 1778 authorized a UN presence of 300 police and 50 military liaison officers (MINURCAT), and the deployment of an EU force with the ‘robust authorization to protect and support [MINURCAT]’. France took the leading role (as the ‘framework’ nation) in what was dubbed EUFOR Tchad/RCA. Despite these developments and the appearance of humanitarian concerns, France’s involvement in the Chad/Darfur crisis was reminiscent of its neocolonial tradition of military intervention in Africa. France’s approach to the crisis shows the fundamental primacy often placed upon its security policy and military apparatus when it comes to Africa – an approach that often translated into ‘stabilizing’ allied regimes. As a consequence, France played an important and continuous role in Africa’s 40-year war and in its most recent chapter in Darfur. Moreover, the fundamental continuities of France’s approach to Africa underscore the weakness of the ‘responsibility to protect’ norm, the problems of operationalizing any form of humanitarian (military) intervention, and the failure of the ‘international community’ to come up with viable solutions beyond the recourse to ex-colonial powers.
