France makes big bets in Libya, Ivory Coast

PARIS – This year, in both Libya and Ivory Coast, one country has launched military strikes and dragged the international community into action against entrenched autocrats: France.

It’s the same France that vigorously opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq eight years ago and has advocated trying every possible approach before bringing in the guns in other international crises.

Analysts say the extraordinary turnaround may be rooted in a revival by President Nicolas Sarkozy of traditional French notions of high-minded interventionism, as well as an attempt by the French leader to ease Europe away from its longtime dependence on the U.S. security umbrella.

At a time of upheaval in the Arab world and Asia’s rising economic might, experts say, France wants to boost Europe’s relevance with tough, human rights-based military interventions, and quash lingering rumblings about the continent’s decline.

There’s also another possible factor at play: Sarkozy faces a likely re-election campaign next year – and he may be betting that promoting France’s values of human rights can be a vote-winning appeal to the French craving for “grandeur.”

The intervention in Libya is also a startling personal departure for Sarkozy, who generously welcomed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to Paris in 2007, when the two countries signed a raft of arms and business deals. Last month, Sarkozy rallied European leaders against Gadhafi when he launched a bloody crackdown on protesters.

In Ivory Coast, a former French colony, France became the first country to fire its weapons on forces of Ivory Coast’s strongman Laurent Gbagbo this week. Its actions there are linked to its important economic and cultural stakes and a longtime, if relatively discreet, military presence in the country.

Within the European Union, France and Britain are the biggest military heavyweights in a bloc where some countries, notably economic powerhouse Germany, are hesitant to see their troops on foreign battlefields – a hang-up that most French don’t have.

“I think that France today can be proud to have participated in the defense and the expression of democracy in Ivory Coast,” Prime Minister Francois Fillon told parliament Tuesday, as France’s foreign minister said Gbagbo was negotiating the terms of his surrender.

On Monday, French and U.N. helicopters opened fire in Ivory Coast and neutralized heavy weaponry, like rocket launchers and cannon, of loyalists of Gbagbo, who has refused to hand over power to Alassane Ouattara – whom the United Nations says won last year’s presidential race.

France’s 1,600-strong Licorne force in Ivory Coast has its roots in a U.N. resolution aimed to cement a cease-fire that followed a civil war in the African country in 2002.