France is preparing for a new kind of war

of a helicopter down to an attack submarine, Emmanuel Macron could have upstaged himself this week. But with no cameras to immortalise the stunt, all eyes instead were on the French president’s speech hours earlier. On November 9th, in the naval port of Toulon, Mr Macron unveiled France’s new national strategic review, drafted after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It contained important new thinking about France’s response to shifting threats. One arresting element of the document is its focus on Europe. In his speech Mr Macron announced the official end of , a French counter-terrorism mission first sent to beat back a jihadist insurgency in Mali in 2013. Although France pulled its troops out of Mali in August this year, 3,000 remain in the wider region. French soldiers, he said, would still deploy to the Sahel but only in support of local missions. For the French armed forces, traditionally organised around expeditionary and counter-terrorism missions in Africa, this marks quite a change.