The impact of French military interventions on state formation in Chad has been a significant topic of academic research in the social sciences. Powell's argument in France's Wars in Chad draws its authority from a compelling rendition of historical details. Indeed, the author provides the first such account based on the underexplored files of the ‘chargés de missions géographiques’ in the Cooperation Ministry section of the French National Archives.
Powell's account covers the first two decades following Chad's independence from France (1960–1982) and considers how the former coloniser became entangled in Chadian wars through its military interventions. His argument that France's military interventions weakened the ability of the Chadian state to stand on its own is certainly not new. Other scholars before him, such as Nolutshungu (Limits of Anarchy, University Press of Virginia, 1995) for example, have argued that international interventions resulted in a ‘dependent sovereignty’, meaning that for the governments in Chad, ‘the more they are defended, the more they remained in need of defense’ from foreign states (12). Instead, I locate the novelty of the book's contribution in the subtle argument that France's military interventions have failed to reinforce the institutional capacity of the Chadian state because they did nothing ‘to alter the configurations of political imbalances and the fundamental substructure of power relations’ among Chadian stakeholders (162).
Powell argues that French officials’ predilection for the military option, instead of political solutions to Chadian wars, in great part emerged from the gradual construction of the geopolitical image of Chad as the keystone to France's ambition for global power. For example, French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing considered winning the wars in Chad as a ‘survival test’, and diplomats in the Foreign Ministry believed that failure to succeed ‘would mean the onset of gangrene’ in other parts of francophone Africa (199). The book suggests that even if France intervened at the behest of Chadian governments to quell armed rebellions, the strategic moves of officials in Paris were instead driven by regional threats. The French were especially uneasy with Gadhafi's Libya's expansionist ambitions towards Chad, Sudan and Egypt's use of proxy armed groups in the wars to settle their own scores with Libya, or Nigeria's emerging assertion of power in the region. Ultimately, the fascination with regional geopolitics meant France invested little effort in building the institutional capacity of the Chadian state, which could only remain militarily dependent on its former coloniser.
Powell shows that the significant geopolitical place occupied by Chad within France's diplomatic and security apparatus had evolved very little during the two decades. Despite the succession of presidents from different political ideologies – from the right-wing Charles de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou to the centre-right Valery Giscard d'Estaing and the left-wing Francois Mitterrand – they harboured the same interest in intervention in Chad. The origin of this policy continuity certainly lies with the role of French diplomatic and military attachés found both in France and in Chad, at the French embassy and within the Chadian administration. With a great deal of detail, Powell shows how diplomats such as Louis Dallier or military advisors such as Camille Gouvernnec or Pierre de Tonquedec used their positions to shape France's policy towards Chad. Here, Powell's original argument shines the spotlight on the contribution of people at the intermediary level in shaping France's Africa policy. Therefore, he distances himself from accounts relying on the dominant role played by the powerful advisor Jacques Foccart and his personal relationships with most of the presidents in francophone Africa.
Powell's book has also attempted to make the case for the agency of Chadians in influencing the French decision-making process. For example, he describes how government officials deliberately made unnecessary concessions to the rebellion during the Benghazi agreement, only to turn around and blame the rebels for breaking the terms of the agreement, thus leaving France with no choice but to mount Operation Tacaud in 1978.
Powell's argument is rich in anecdotes, such as the story of the French ambassador who kept an undated and signed letter from President Tombalbaye so that he could post it to his superiors in case Tombalbaye was under immediate threat and unable to request military assistance himself. Or how President Goukouni Weddeye had once stayed awake all night with his Kalashnikov, fearing that the French had staged a coup against him. The story turned out to be a false alarm sent by Chadian soldiers who had misapprehended French military movements at the capital's airport on that night.
However, for a book concerned with France's intervention and its impact on state formation in Chad, it is surprising that Powell does not provide any account of the connection between the colonial and the post-colonial, even more so because of the decades under study. An exploration of decolonisation in Chad would have set the stage for readers unfamiliar with Chadian politics to first understand Chad's dependence on external military support and, second, the preponderant role of France in its domestic politics.
