French "Falklands War"?

Archibald

Banned
Hey, I thought about a Brazil vs France scenario many years ago, at the whatif modeler board.

Here's my try.

I imagined that violence in Rio De Janeiro reached such a level that Brazil turned into a military dictatorship (ok, ASB !)
The said dictatorship decided to invade French guyana, and notably the Kourou spaceport. :)

What come next was a remake of the Falklands in the early 2000s.

Foch (well, Sao Paulo) Vs Charles de Gaulle. F-18s Vs Rafales.

I have to dug that :rolleyes:

EDIT

Found it ! Ca va chier !
http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,9290.0/highlight,kourou.html
 
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Chad and Djibouti have already been mentioned. The latter works both before and after independence. The adversary can be a communist Ethiopia or an irredentist Somalia.

Madagascar claims the Glorieuses (also claimed by the Seychelles and Comoros), Bassas da India, Europa, and Juan de Nova. It was a leftist dictatorship between 1975 and 1992, and that would be the best opportunity to invade, but AFAIK there's nothing in those islands to be worth the bother for them.

The Comoros claim Mayotte, which is worth the bother, but they're not going to put up much of a fight. None of the other Indian Ocean claims produce anything.

War with Syria over Lebanon is a possibility, except I think Syria would have already provoked the Israelis before the French.

Suriname claims part of French Guiana, but not an important enough part to make an impression.

France supported the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda. If these guys managed to take power during the Angolan Civil War and hold it long enough to grant the French some major oil contracts, they might end up intervening against an MPLA attempt to retake Cabinda.

Finally, Vanuatu was very opposed to French nuclear testing and supportive of New Caledonian independence under Walter Lini, but you need to push those tensions pretty far to get actual war.
 

Cook

Banned
The problem for me with the Djibouti scenario is didn’t the French have a rather sizable military presence there? Such a presence would make it clear that they would be willing to fight.

Both The Falklands and Kuwait were invaded by someone that had concluded, rightly or wrongly that they wouldn’t be opposed.
 
Hey, I thought about a Brazil vs France scenario many years ago, at the whatif modeler board.

Here's my try.

I imagined that violence in Rio De Janeiro reached such a level that Brazil turned into a military dictatorship (ok, ASB !)
The said dictatorship decided to invade French guyana, and notably the Kourou spaceport. :)

What come next was a remake of the Falklands in the early 2000s.

Foch (well, Sao Paulo) Vs Charles de Gaulle. F-18s Vs Rafales.

I have to dug that :rolleyes:

EDIT

Found it ! Ca va chier !
http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,9290.0/highlight,kourou.html

I like it, nice scenario. I really think this is a possible way to go in regard to this challenge, too. I mean, Brazil had dictatorships, and let's face it, there are a ton of example where dictatorships due really stupid things. The POD can be really easy-some other random military officer gains control of Brazil in the 1970's or 1980's and decides to try and really place Brazil on the world stage. When the inveitable economic crisis emerges-due to government mismanagement-the leader needs a short victorious war. Meanwhile, relations with France have soured and there are a few anti-French protests going on in French Guyana. Brazil invades, propping up a puppet government. France declares war.

And the war could get really violent. Would France win? I mean, they have to launch a fairly large invasion half a world away.
 
The prob lem with a war betwen France and Brazil,is that the war is going to be a land war in the midle of the forested brazilian north and south french Guiana.Although we could see naval batles,i do not see how it wiil be a naval war,exept if Brazil try to blockade teh Guiana.
 
Wouldn't any Mexican attack on Clipperton Island draw NATO in through Article 5/6 of the alliance?
 
If France goes to war over a colony, surely the war will be with the most evil state in world? By which I mean New Zealand of of course.

(I'm joking, don't get upset!)

I did once write a story where a bunch of New Zealand civilians, upset by the Rainbow Warrior, and led by an imaginary All Blacks rugby player, took to the sea, and decided to invade French territory to stop further nuclear tests.
 

Archibald

Banned
Well, there's President Janio Quadros of Brazil, who was allegedly planning to invade French Guyana in 1961.

Maybe if he's president for a few more months and convinces the military that France won't counterattack, or that they can win a short victory before the French strike back...

Otherwise, in my TL he tries that and is overthrown by the Generals, but that could be prevented.

Never heard of that before. So my scenario was maybe not totally ASB...
I think the Kourou spaceport may be a good pretext.

For example, some crazy Brazilian dictator might get interested in long range ballistic missiles, but lacks the whole knowledge and industrial base.
He decides Ariane might be useful, and invades French guyana.
(for info, Ariane is quite similar to the USAF Titan ICBM; two-stage, storable propellants for long-term storage / quick strike. Hmm, a nuclear-tipped Ariane...)
 

Archibald

Banned
I like it, nice scenario. I really think this is a possible way to go in regard to this challenge, too. I mean, Brazil had dictatorships, and let's face it, there are a ton of example where dictatorships due really stupid things. The POD can be really easy-some other random military officer gains control of Brazil in the 1970's or 1980's and decides to try and really place Brazil on the world stage. When the inveitable economic crisis emerges-due to government mismanagement-the leader needs a short victorious war. Meanwhile, relations with France have soured and there are a few anti-French protests going on in French Guyana. Brazil invades, propping up a puppet government. France declares war.

And the war could get really violent. Would France win? I mean, they have to launch a fairly large invasion half a world away.

The big hole in this scenario: too much USN hardware (Forrestal, F-18s, S-3 Viking). I have to replace that by russian hardware (Kuznestov or Varyag, Mig-29K, big honkin antiship missiles)
 
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