From Dominique Moïsi, European Voice:  If France has again become a regional gendarme by default, it is largely for three reasons. American enthusiasm for intervention in Africa has greatly diminished since the operation in Somalia in 1992-93 – and more globally following the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. European interest in military intervention in Africa is as low as ever. And, as for the region’s governments, it would be an understatement to say that they are not yet ready militarily to take their fate into their own hands. . . .

Indeed, the conflict in Mali is taking place geographically in Africa, but in many ways its causes and ramifications lie in the Middle East. When France intervened in an African country in the past, there was no risk of terrorist attacks on its territory or on its citizens elsewhere in the world. That is no longer the case. . . .

Before the intervention, Mali was not a French priority. Rising unemployment at home seemed to be a more urgent task than did addressing instability in Africa. While the French public agrees that Mali cannot be allowed to become a haven for terrorists, the way Afghanistan did in the late 1990s, attitudes toward intervention have evolved in recent decades. In the early 1980s, after a particularly bloody terrorist attack on French and American forces in Lebanon, France’s tolerance for military casualties seemed much higher than that of the United States. But this has changed. The French now find themselves on the front line at a time when they have much less appetite for it. . . .

As the supreme commander of an army at war, [French President Francois] Hollande can now try to reinvent himself. But, successive presidents since Jacques Chirac have failed to reconcile the French with politics. France’s citizens have tended to expect too much from their state, and now they may be expecting too little from politics and politicians at a time when deep divisions on fundamental economic and social issues run not only between the traditional right and left, but also within both camps.  

Will foreign intervention reunite the French? Will war in Africa be the defining moment of Hollande’s presidency? Will he be remembered as the French Harry Truman – a discreet, uncharismatic man who, when faced with urgent and dramatic circumstances, ended up doing the right things for lack of a better alternative?  

This is a portentous moment both for Mali and for security in the Sahel and Europe. It is no less significant for Hollande and France.  

Dominique Moïsi is senior adviser at IFRI (the French Institute for International Affairs) and is currently a visiting professor at King’s College London. © Project Syndicate, 2013.  (photo: Joe Penney/Reuters)