France and missions de paix

Since the end of the Cold War, France has been arguably the most active of the Security Council members and the most active European state in UN military operations (missions de paix). France has made much of the alignment between the nature of those operations and France's historic role as a global player and nation phare, and in missions de paix France has found a contemporary context for French exceptionalism and a modem expression of the colonial mission civilisatrice. However, as Marie-Claude Smouts has pointed out: