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‘A Piecemeal Approach with No Vision’: French Policy Towards Africa under Nicolas Sarkozy

  • Chapter
The Sarkozy Presidency

Part of the book series: French Politics, Society and Culture Series ((FPSC))

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Abstract

In December 2007, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, welcomed Colonel Muammar Ghadafi on a state visit, even allowing the Libyan leader to plant his bedouin tent in the grounds of the Elysée Palace. Some three years later, Sarkozy was at the forefront of the NATO-led campaign against Ghadafi. This dramatic change of posture was ultimately the result of quite a specific set of circumstances: the urgency of the humanitarian situation in Benghazi, Sarkozy’s readiness to order air strikes without even consulting his own Foreign Ministry, and France’s need to regain the initiative in North Africa after being caught off guard by the speed of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. Yet however unique the Libyan case may have been, it did reflect a new readiness on the part of French policy-makers to overhaul existing practices and accompany the spontaneous popular movements that had sprung up across North Africa. In so doing, it highlighted the sheer immobility of French policy south of the Sahara and led to renewed demands for a rupture (a clean break) with Françafrique (France’s neocolonial, clientelistic and, often corrupt, relations with black Africa).1

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Authors
  1. Gordon D. Cumming
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bristol, UK

    Gino G. Raymond (Professor of Modern French Studies) (Professor of Modern French Studies)

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© 2013 Gordon D. Cumming

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Cumming, G.D. (2013). ‘A Piecemeal Approach with No Vision’: French Policy Towards Africa under Nicolas Sarkozy. In: Raymond, G.G. (eds) The Sarkozy Presidency. French Politics, Society and Culture Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137025326_6

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