The French were winning in Algeria, but the population was unable to stomach what its soldiers were doing, and voted overwhelmingly (>80%) in favour of decolonization, pushing the government to move from an over to covert control over the colonies (from actual colonies, to Francafrique). Many African leaders today are French-trained, French-selected and acting in French interests (although these increasingly seem to be a subset of US interests) and as such are better thought of as "black governors of French territory".

It is relatively easy to control a country. Send it back to the stone age, keep a limited size, but modern and efficient force close by to protect the administrators of what ensues against the occasional attempt. Cf the French Marines who stopped two coups on Omar Bongo's palace, or the 1,000 troops flown in from Chad to defend French interests in the ROC.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...

What is conveniently avoided is that Japan, Germany and South Korea are at (relative) peace and prosperous because of immense investment by the US. All three are still, technically, militarily occupied territory.

The wars were total wars, won at the cost of millions of lives and financial and industrial commitments that reshaped the culture of both nations, at enormous civilian costs especially on the losing side (Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima...) and the territory kept at peace via millions of boots on the ground, enormous military effort (how much does Okinawa cost per annum?) and enormous financial spending, justified by Pax Americana being presumably worth more than its bill. In the case of WWI, not invading the losing power after breaking its will to fight resulted in a worse war a couple decades later.

Another unpalatable and often glossed over fact is that in both Germany and Japan, middle management was kept in power because the invading authority (such as MacArthur) realised that chaos would follow otherwise, and that in a statist, single-party state, all the talent would converge to the ruling party anyway.

Today's taxpayer does not want to pay for another Japan or Germany, and some people in Washington have sold him the unicorn of "instant happiness once the bad guy is removed with a few skilled operators and cool tech" (aka COIN), ignoring decades of history.

Either the American taxpayer needs to push for colonialism (call a spade a spade), or it needs to accept that furthering US interests will create side effects for locals. The latter is obviously a lot easier to stomach, especially with free speech allowing comfortable, safe civilians to complain loudly about how unfair it all is, so it has been the default position of successive administrations since Johnson. Option 3 is to accept the occasional bombing and attack on your civilians, in exchange for isolationism. The risk of that option is well described by the example of Chamberlain in the 1930s.

It is amusing to note that Ethiopia's victory against the Italians was in (some say, large) part due to a Brit. Cf the Gideon Force.

OK, lets take something we do know with some more certainty. Combined GDP of all CFA Franc countries (both blocs): ~$170bn

Do you honestly think that France is taking 3x this per annum and hiding it in offshore accounts?

Certainly France (and the US) meddled with successions in Africa (and even when they didn't have France's blessing, most elite soldiers in the immediate post-colonial period had served in the French Foreign Legion....) but for all the coups, former French colonies can and did leave the CFA Franc, one rejoined a couple of decades later and a couple of countries that weren't ever French colonies also decided to join.

I'm not familiar with the administrative details behind the CFA Franc, but it sounds quite likely the author is inexpertly trying to describe a pretty standard set of central banking arrangements (governments required to borrow reserves at the base interest rate to fund deficit spending, fiscal rules for a currency area, foreign currency reserves held with ECB to support commitment to Euro parity etc). A bit like the French in the Euro really...

There are good arguments for the CFA Franc not being wholly beneficial for its member states, but this isn't one of them.

I didn't notice the amount was referring to the CFA Franc specifically. I'm referring to Francafrique generally, whose means of extractions go way beyond monetary policy. If he claimed half a trillion just from CFA countries, it is indeed a taller claim.

Takes some balls to put forward the DRC as an example of an untouched country. Let's see: Tshombe's plane was hijacked and he was jailed in Algeria just as the French-backed "mercenaries" (including, allegedly, Bob Denard) were about to take the place over from the American-backed Mobutu. Che Guevara and a few hundred Cubans on one side, people like "Mad Mike" Hoare on the other (not American, but...). Talking of Belgian military intervention, ever head of Jean Schramme?

Point taken, that was very poor phrasing on my part. I meant that Belgium doesn't engage in France-style interventions in Africa anymore.

Interesting that this got 4 downvotes (6, since it had 2 upvotes before everything in the thread started going down - by far the most downvoted of all my posts!). This comment is a bit pointless since the thread has been flag-killed, anyway.

Clearstream (1, not 2) is the one case where we DO have evidence, thanks to lengthy and numerous lawsuits and plenty of publicly available documents, including some taken from the safes of the companies involved.

As a French citizen, I used to be somewhat adamant that there was no way my government was ever capable of doing Bad Things, a few hundred books later and exposure to the people in these groups (including working for an Elf-like company, and family in management in Total), I think differently.

The same happened to all my replies on this post. it Seems like a french cyberteam crushed all debate with flagging, down voting and scripted attacks.

Where is the defense of freedom of speech beloved by #ImCharlie folks?

Another foreigner discovers the wonders of Francafrique, but he gets the mechanism wrong.

Although trying to study the place from third party sources is like watching Rashomon, this is pretty much how it works: - "friendly" dictator is installed and maintained so long as he cooperates. - aid packages are sent over (in cash, by plane) and loans made with friendly zero interest - money flies straight back via Geneva to finance French parties (e.g. RPR and Chirac, but also Mitterrand whose network was a subset of Pasqua's, ironically; who knows who is in charge these days) - country is maintained in poverty by any means practical (rigged election equipment with magical 90%+ wins, flying in 1,000 soldiers into Congo from Chad, shipping weapons by the crate...) so as to lower the cost of keeping it under control. This includes financing both sides of a war (as in Angola), and the "black governors" as some call them deliberately installing the rule of corruption from top to bottom (see Mobutu for the best example). The loans and missing aid definitely help keep the finances problematic, especially when they cause future resource production to be promised away for years as collateral.

It's important to note that Francafrique has been internationalised; FX Verschave, who despite being almost a communist has been very good at keeping track of the whole thing thinks the French networks have become subsets of the US ones. Cuba, Russia were also big players on the chessboard. As for the targets the saying is the louder they complain about the West, the closer they are. Omar Bongo was hand-chosen by De Gaulle (cf Foccart's memoirs) and trained and educated in France. He was the most reliable and famous, so close to the French government he arbitrated disputes between ministers.

You basically hear two sides of the story: - "communists are trying to take over the place and we must stop them and forget human rights for a while whilst we do so" (CIA, Rhodesians, South Africans back in the days) - "the Western capitalist powers will do anything to conquer their colonies and keep them in control, but we're the democratic choice" (Madagascar, Ghana, Zimbabwe and the aforementioned left wing countries). Some of the claims are pretty bold, for example aforementioned Verschave claims the left wing Mitterrand made Le Pen's political career happen (from 0.4 to 10% of the vote) in exchange for maintaining a nice vivier of far-right youth that could be relied on for African "holidays" and the occasional false flag car burning in Algerian-French banlieues.

I don't think either side is right of course but you can glimpse crumbs of truth from each side, and occasionally pockets of data emerge as the various powers take the fight to the press and public temporarily, or some Don Quixote decides to try her hand at windmills like Eva Joly against Elf (cf "Poisoned Wells" which is a nice taster to the place). I look forward to reading the declassified intelligence documents in 70 years or whatever it is. Mercenary accounts can be pretty entertaining too - I'll close with Simon Mann's quote about the French DGSE and military intelligence, "whatever you do, we can do dirtier".

I can't edit my post due to being a new user, so I'll add that the incentive for foreign countries is not just financial; it's VERY helpful for countries to have a source of black funds that Congress or whoever is supposed to be accountable for it does not "need" to "see". This is Jack Nicholson in a Few Good Men all over again - the public enjoys the "blanket" and doesn't ask about what it takes to maintain it.

It's also helpful in inter-agency rivalries, as whoever has the most resources, particularly black resources, can be the most efficient. Believe it or not there are several factions in France, aforementioned DGSE is the "official" actor outside the borders, but the DST has their own agents as well (yes, outside the territory) and then you have the military intelligence apparatus which competes against the other two and is in theory supposed to run the "mercenaries".

This is very disturbing. I had thought the days of dirty financial politics were getting over, but it seems that the fight is just getting more intense. I can see why though: if France or US does not take a side, China will (used to be Soviets earlier). So its always this stupid game which others play and the common Africans are haplessly caught in the middle wondering why their countries are so impoverished.