Mastering “Irrational” Violence: The Relegitimization of French Security Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

The global context of the 1990s imposed constraints on French security policy in sub-Saharan Africa, but it has also offered new opportunities to reauthorize and relegitimize French military cooperation, military intervention, and prepositioned forces after the fiasco of the Rwandan genocide. It is argued that the post-Rwanda French military doctrine of the mastery of violence has relegitimized French hegemony by identifying violence as the enemy to be contained, controlled, and eliminated. The “new” military cooperation (symbolized by the program of RECAMP [Renforcement des capacités africaines au maintien de la paix]) has in fact redefined the French “right” of military intervention in Africa instead of promoting the formal objectives of security and development.