Continuities of French interventions in Mali and Chad in the perspective of the Cold War and decolonization

This paper examines French military interventions in Chad and Mali against the backdrop of the Cold War and the post-Cold War period with the aim of showing how the causes, reasons, and techniques of these interventions have changed. We then subject both examples to a comparative analysis. The central concept of the thesis is the neocolonial system of Françafrique, which defined relations between France and its African counterparts throughout the Cold War. To this end, we use the political science concept of "stateness," which illustrates the causes and reasons why Chad and Mali never achieved stable and functional states capable of independence from their former colonizer, France, and instead continuously fell into crises that paved the way for military interventions. The case of Chad, analyzed in detail by Nathaniel Powell, plays the role of a model country in our work, which fell victim to France's neocolonial interventions during the Cold War. Based on his analysis, we create criteria for comparison that we will apply to the case of military interventions in Mali. The ambition of this work is to identify whether these continuous French military interventions follow a recurring pattern over two eras, and thus also the neocolonial paradigm of Franco-African relations.