The French military will likely continue to be bogged down in Africa, given that the situation there is pretty dire and French vital interests are threatened.
The French betrayed Czechoslovakia in 1938, then got steamrolled by the Wehrmacht themselves, and their credibility in Central and Eastern Europe has been shot ever since.
Not that France has a vested interest in Africa but an alliance built on "we just don't like US/EU" is doomed to fail - there is no way in the foreseeable to outcompete that power block for now.
Also three alliance members China/KSA/UAE will be expected to carry the rest and I don't think they have the tolerance or the stomach for it.
France has intervened multiple times in Africa, so their armed forces are at least operationally ready to do something like Russia's invasion of Georgia.
Outside of France I fear it's mostly paper tigers, even the UK. France is clearly one of the most militaristic nations in Europe and the only one who has demonstrated willingness to use force (see UK's parliament report on the Lybian intervention).
I still think Russia is a lot stronger than people think.
French vital interests are in Africa, not in Pacific. And the strategic situation in Sahel isn't good. Given that military budgets are always strained, it makes sense to concentrate on the core challenges and leaving the Pacific be.
So, two competing hypotheses:
1) France knows something we don't know about the likelihood of them getting into a high-intensity war
2) France's military is worried about the civilian government cutting their budget until they are irrelevant, as happened in most of the rest of European NATO, and wants to look relevant
For background, the French military industrial complex is in serious trouble. For example, the US had to step in to take over supplying submarines to Australia when France proved unable to complete the contract: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/11/australia-reaches-settlement...
Most charitably, France has serious problems they need to correct if they expect to participate in the defense industry. Less charitably, France has thrown away their commitment to their NATO and Western allies and regime change will be needed before they can expect even a minimal level of credibility.
It's OK, France delivers. France will go to where the war is; which is a lot harder than it sounds. There are very few nations in the world capable of sustained, global, serious power projection, and France is one of them.
Do you mean the second coup from 2021? That’s when France started to have clear difficulties to deal with the Malian government, the coup was in May, Macron announced the planned end of the operation in June IIRC due to issues related to the new government.
In any case it’s a quite complicated topic, but it’s not one government being in bed with French entities. You have multiple groups fighting for territory and resources in the region for their own interest, France went there to support the government fight against Islamist groups by demand of Mali. And you now have a lot of Wagner mercenaries too (see https://www.csis.org/analysis/tracking-arrival-russias-wagne... for example. Trigger warning: be ready to read some horrifying details if you look at recent events…).
You can read about the Operation Barkhane article on Wikipedia it has lot of context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barkhane
(I would recommend the French article if you read French).
There was a general opposition to French forces, from part of the population since the beginning which is to be expected. If you go a bit more into the details you will see that Russia took the opportunity to start an information war in the region to push against French forces, as a soft evidence you can see that protesters started asking for a Russian intervention in 2019 (in French, sorry https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2020/01/10/au-mali-le...).
That has also been communicated by Macron as a reason to stop their operation and leave the region (he made public speeches clearly pointing to Russia without explicitly saying it’s name, you can easily find them online and official translations).
The reason that France is concerned about conflicts in North Africa states is not because those countries have amphibious military capability and can strike metropolitan France. It is (besides the cynical suspicion that France likes maintaining some economic hegemony over its former colonies) because every North African conflict sends another wave of refugees and economic migrants north towards Europe.
It looks to me like France/Mali gov relations took a turn after the 2020 coup ?
All in all I can totally imagine Malian population having an anti-French sentiment, while their government is in bed with French entities.
France is almost completely unapologetic over any of it's past actions. They will issue lowkey official apologies, like they did to new Zealand in 2015 but nothing will change and no one will be prosecuted.
If anything, there is a huge desire to "go back to the glory days". It's pretty much the only country that is still so brazenly colonial (the concept of a francafrique is not even subject to any debate there) and they are regularly pulling "rainbow warrior" types of actions in africa even now. A good example is their complete control on Ivory Coast politics to the point of violently interfering when things don't go their way.
They even had generals openly admit on TV that they greenlit almost every type of war crimes in Algeria, with nothing of consequence happening to them even after their own confession. The past is the past, right?
So yeah I wouldn't hold my breath over the deportations happening anytime soon.
France will never let the Germans have any say over the Nuclear deterrent. France will never accept the idea that the working language is English or that French troops might have to take orders from a Romanian. The Brits clearly don’t trust the French or German intelligence services enough to let them into the FIVEYES club. French, Brits and the Dutch are the only ones with veteran militaries. Nobody will be willing to give up veto power and nobody will accept anyone else having it anyway. Western European voters are never going to accept Johnny and Jean-Pierre dying to save Boris the Bulgarian Slav from Boris the Russian Slav. Europe is too internally racist, prideful, and Nationalistic in its current form for this to work.
Hope I’m wrong, but history is on my side with this
The French betrayed Czechoslovakia in 1938, then got steamrolled by the Wehrmacht themselves, and their credibility in Central and Eastern Europe has been shot ever since.
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