French Intervention in Mali

Just read in the Independent that French forces are in Gao... certainly doesn't seem like they're hesitating about pushing back into the North.

The whole "borrowing other people's C-17" strategy seems to have worked out surprisingly well for them so far.

I'm really up to speed on the situation -- what are you referring to?

France doesn't have an equivalent to the C-17 for transporting equipment over a certain weight, but they've gotten a fair number of them from various allies since their intervention began. This fairly optimistic Economist piece from a day or two ago suggests this was fairly important for transporting attack helicopters and that they've managed to armtwist several free loaners out of the Americans after initial reluctance.

What's the point of an army if you can't even move it around the world? First the Maginot Line and now this? SILLY FRENCHIES NOT BEING PREPARED TO INVADE OTHER NATIONS!

A400M ain't done yet. Don't know if some of what they're moving would be too big for them anyway.

The only thing I know about the A400M is that it has sexy-spider propellers.

The French have 50 A400M transport planes on order which could easily carry tiger helicopters. I guess they had to rush into Mali before the new planes could be deployed (due sometime this year).

HOME BY CHRISTMAS. All guerrilla, all the time. Bon apetit!

They keep that understatement officer at the NYT busy these days.

And now back to your regularly scheduled discussion of deployment capability.

I'm curious what the French thought would happen; there was never a chance the Islamists would give them a straight up battle to the death. This was always destined for a messy insurgency.

Are there any strategic lessons from Afghanistan / Iraq other than "don't bother" that the French might apply?

I don't know, I haven't seen anything recent that is particularly compelling in terms of the French internal rationale for their approach. I'm just thinking along models I've seen elsewhere, so it's really just putting up a hypothesis to be refuted.

My guess would be: a number of them, yes, although the situation in Mali is significantly more stable in theory as a result of being the defense of an existing, up-until-recently solid government versus a total regime change from the ground up. The French also have language and some cultural affinity covered, as well as the fact that they are basically carrying NATO's water for the wholly predictable failures of containment in Libya which no doubt makes for some snippy negotiations at times.

In their favor is that the political purpose of the strategy is relatively clear and enjoys broad support, and the fact that there's no absurd construct of legitimacy to prop up: this really is the Malian government, warts and all. That's a big deal, and a much better problem to have than both that being up in the air *and* dealing with the practical aspect of efficiently applying military force.

I think there are a lot of specific technological and micro-level questions where they will be applying lessons from Afghanistan and Iraq, but beyond that their own body of work in Vietnam and Algeria should still be pretty instructive. Interestingly, I think this is what a rational preemptive warfare policy looks like: a real threat to an ally/sphere of influence member dealt with before it became an apocalyptic disaster. The surface concern is mitigating casualties from insurgents, yes, but underlying that is managing to draw lines around the potential for population "cleansing" that is always waiting in the wings. Notice I don't say "stop altogether", because I think anyone that was paying attention to Iraq especially saw how quickly the violence statistics changed with increasingly homogenized neighborhoods, and I don't put anything past this kind of operation.

There's another pretty significant difference: Afghan and Iraqi insurgents had places to hide, either amongst locals, in the wilderness, or across the borders amongst friendly governments. The Tuareg mercenaries have conflicted local support in the north at best; the Sahara to hide in; and bordering nations which have no love or use for them and would probably butcher them out of hand to avoid an insurgency due to past experiences with roving mercenary bands.

I think the French are looking to Mali operations with less ideology and a bit more practicality than was seen in some US operations.

Also, it's for things like saving one of the world's most significant libraries that this kind of intervention is needed. It's not the only reason - destabilising nations lead to a whole heap of other problems - but it shows that the mentality of the insurgent groups is particularly ugly.

I was thinking along similar lines when shoveling snow this afternoon: a stated goal of many of these insurgents is the destruction of Malian cultural relics and writings; even the illiterate and uneducated will be offended by that. One of Machiavelli's rules that bears repeating always and forever is that rarely is a foreign army greeted with open arms, because their presence injures national pride even if they may nominally be allies; however in this case the blow may be someone lessened by the fact that the French are there to preserve a source of national pride.