The recent renewal of defence agreements between France and eight African states has transformed the historical forms of military cooperation in effect since the independance of the latter (Bayart, 2011). Despite its implications on “Françafrique” (Hugon, 2010), this major shift initiated in 2008 has not been extensively examined yet. It is here proposed to consider the case of Djibouti, which is furthermore rarely studied per se in the field of political science. In the hope of sheding light on a reality twice neglected, close attention will be paid to the process which led to the signature of the 2011 defence agreement between Nicolas Sarkozy and Ismael Omar Guelleh.
Rather than exploring the strategic and economic factors at stake, it seems especially relevant to apprehend the weight of history in this context. In a decade where France has lost its military privilege in Djibouti with the installation of the US Army in Camp Lemonnier in 2002, one may indeed wonder about the relative importance of history as a subject of international relations (Kratochwil, 2006). This case-study based on a field inquiry is designed to provide some answers to this question.
Through ethnographic interviews of diplomats from both sides, notably the French mixed working group, and thanks to archivistic research in France and Djibouti, it should be possible to understand the way memories of both colonial and postcolonial eras influenced the processes of discussion and writing. The collected narratives, be they private accounts or public speeches addressed as political justification, will allow to point out how path dependance (Bennett and Elman, 2006) and social memory forged through the years in a long run clientelistic relation (Mbembe, 2000) might impact an international negotiation. More generally, they will permit to fathom how historical perception of the Other (Neumann, 1996) may impact foreign policy.
