The French model is very different to ours. Some of the earliest geopolitically realist literature goes back to the French, with Leibniz making the suggestion that the French take over Egypt to have Mediterranean dominance, something Napoleon would famously take up as a challenge. Bonapartism as an ideology was most systematically put together by Napoleon III, a man most famous for eating mosquitos in Mexico and getting outflanked and captured by Bismarck and the new Germany.
The only positive thing for which he is remembered is the Haussmann project, which built modern Paris. He believed in channeling the revolution rather than opposing it, to build a new regime lead by a strong executive who would use plebiscites and populism to win. The project was to build great modern cities, bring the country together with investment in thousands of miles of railway, to have a pragmatic foreign policy, to enable economic competition where it was productive, to use the hand of the state to block monopolies, to allow foreign trade and ideas, but targeted protectionism as well to avoid the French being in any way dependent on other countries for power or agriculture, a problem his uncle couldn’t overcome with the British blockades.
Despite its ignominious end, the Napoleonic legacy is meaningful in France. The radical secular third republic has a great deal of influence on todays France with its cold and stolid belief in laïcité and multiculturalism. Nonetheless after WWII the attempted return to the coalitions and the chaos of the third republic collapsed in the new regime which couldn’t handle the weight of propping up its moribund colonial empire. Charles De Gaulle would be the man to pragmatically manoeuvre out of this bad situation, retaining dictatorial powers temporarily, and setting up a republic with a strong executive president. He famously left the NATO council and boated all the way to the US to demand an audience. The New France would use nuclear power and be energy independent, be responsible for its own military production as far as possible, would make its own decisions in foreign policy and not be bullied by America, they even opposed the unification of Germany to retain dominance over the EEC. The post Gaulle French presidents pale in comparison to the original, and are in reality a bunch of centre left to centre right self satisfied men who’s reputation comes from their flamboyant French bravado, but nonetheless a very different kind of man becomes president of France, someone of a different mould than other western countries due to their unique history.
Within Africa they used soft and occasionally hard power through the foreign legion to make sure they had cooperative governments. To be sure, many of the negative elements we associate with France were developing, a Gaullist civic nationalism was tolerable within the context of a France that was over 90 percent white, but the cracks were developing, and France infamously was not immune to 1968, the sexual revolution, declining birth rates, social radicalism, multiculturalism and all the other problems of the modern world. Nonetheless, France was, and is, distinct from the Anglosphere in terms of how it is governed, and the more radical right wing critiques of the system are mainstream, with figures such as Jean-Marie Le Pen, Eric Zemmour and others being a real threat and not utterly fringe.
Macron is a disconnected former banker with connections to the rothschilds, and in no way do I see him as someone who is answering any of the real problems which modern France faces, nonetheless he was willing to use the power of the state to beat up protestors over their response to the pension problem. The raising of the age here was entirely necessary from an economic point of view, and a leader who is willing to literally beat up his own people for the necessity of what has to be done is a kind of leadership that goes totally against the spirit of mass democracy which dominates the Anglosphere. He did an acceptable job with the more recent race riots, with mass arrests, although he spuriously blamed these events on youths who were overly excited about violence due to… video games, so he’s clearly not ever going to address the root causes, and isn’t running again.
Macron was opposed to the NATO intervention in Libya, as it destabilised the country, lead to civil war, and reopened human trafficking, so he decided to do some investment in the country. Gaddafi had cracked down on human trafficking to Europe and once he was gone the floodgates were open.
This was bad news for France as a rich country on the Mediterranean. The preferred policy is to invest money in aid in third world countries, with the string attached that they close routes to enter Europe and crack down on human trafficking. This has come under pressure recently with Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger having coups, and both now employing Wagner mercenaries and expelling French troops from the countries, breaking economic ties to France and hoping for Russian assistance in development has been especially the message from the Malian Junta. The Junta also claims that Wagner has been more effective in combating islamists. Burkina Faso has not made use of Wagner, but has taken place in the Russia-Africa committee and reopened their embassy to them. Ending exploitative trade deals from the French has been one of the central pieces of propaganda of these coups. The Russian’s bizarre new geostrategy of allying with third worldism post their expulsion from the west is something which deserves its own exploration, as it’s also a fascinating and depressing situation.
The West African Block of ECOWAS as a whole is dominated by Nigeria and broadly pro-western. They have suspended now all three of west African counties which have had coups, but military intervention at least at the time of writing seems unlikely. The result at the moment seems to be the end of the French as a serious influence in the region.
In Niger though, whilst ending French influence plays a part, it’s also due to the power of the illegal migration industry. The fact that President Bazoum comes from a minority background in Niger doesn’t help him either. Niger is one of the key countries containing routes from which people can be smuggled into Europe through Libya. The President was formerly the interior minister and one of the prime people who cracked down on human trafficking, the problem is, the military had been making money from the trade:
Domestically, Bazoum had been closely associated with a law against people smuggling that was brought in by Niger’s government with the support of EU authorities in 2015, at the height of the European refugee crisis.
Under the terms of a deal struck with EU leaders, Niger – one of the poorest countries in the world and a transit point for people heading for Libya and then southern Europe – received aid money in return for blocking routes north.
Bazoum became interior minister in 2016, the same year the law was implemented. The legislation became known as the “Bazoum law”. In 2021, he was feted by the international community including the former colonial power France after winning elections that ushered in Niger’s first peaceful transition of power.
The legislation was opposed by figures in the Nigerien military who had previously benefitted financially from bribes paid by people smugglers and those being smuggled.
There was an entire infrastructure of bribing border officers to turn a blind eye or help in the process. The traffickers and the large number of people willing to pay to get out is a sufficiently powerful force and lucrative enough business that the military in these corrupt countries couldn’t help but join the gravy train. The result is disastrous for the EU, the French, and the German and Italian governments where “invest over there so they don’t have to come over here” is the preferred policy solution to illegal migration. The affected recipient countries see systematic destabilisation and the policies can even contribute to coups. Sudan and the Horn of Africa are the other areas for which this has been linked by observers as a prime cause of unrest.
Western governments have created a Gordian knot for themselves, they want to find ways to reduce illegal migration, but to do so creates conflicts between entrenched interests in the countries from which people are coming and the democratic governments willing to accept these deals could be toppled. This in turn fuels further instability and causes more illegal migration, and western governments are never willing to work with third world dictators, meaning a total loss of control over what happens. In Britain the situation is even worse as the government practically does everything it can to encourage the problem anyway, Morgoth covered how this works very well in his video.
The White Man needs an immediate and total abnegation of “Responsibility” for the third world and to slam the door shut. Being the Santa Claus of the world where anyone coming from poverty can just break in and gain access to a vast social infrastructure paid for by the native people of western countries. Letting unlimited economic migrants in is not an option, but the post Algerian-War French strategy of using soft and hard power to enforce favourable trade deals and using aid as a means to garner cooperation from these governments only ends up causing resentment at the deals and military presence, and aid can always have unforeseen consequences.
We have to just say that their economic or social problems are their problems, we don’t owe these countries anything. In Britain jumping to this position will likely be impossible due to deep-seated post colonial guilt that has been imposed on people and illegal migration has only become a problem very recently, but for countries like Germany, Italy and France especially, making the leap is very much a real possibility within the near future. A complete end of the White Man’s Burden could be on the cusp with the tangible failure as cooperative countries in the third world seem to be falling like dominos recently, Afghanistan fell, the Saudis are unreliable, and with three coups in west Africa in a short period of time, at least for the French, the faux Macho post Gaullist half measures seem to be falling apart.
My hope as someone Francais, hoping to immigrate to France, is that the Pro-France Franco-Afrique get favourable treatment, are kept Christian and are encouraged into an alliance, and that France cuts herself off from the wicked EU. Better France join in union with her former colonies, embrace them, providing them with managers, supervisors and encouraging them to find their own footing so that they can be self-sustaining and then super-powers in Afrique in their own right and then leave them to dominate their neighbours.
But over-all we French should withdraw from Afrique and simply behave like a distant ally of sorts and trade partner towards French-Christian African states (along with Nigeria & Kenya of course as they are beautiful countries with wonderful cultures). But screw interventionism and screw involvement of any other sort.
I can understand the sentiment, but pretending the rest of the world doesn't exist won't make it go away.