How recent are we talking? The French were involved in Vietnam before the US was and in the Suez Crisis around the same time, and a few years after that they fought a protracted and seriously nasty asymmetrical war in Algeria. More recently they’ve also been party to the Islamist civil wars in northern Africa, most importantly against Boko Haram in Mali, and to a number of other postcolonial squabbles.
They don’t get a lot of press in the Anglosphere, but theirs is probably the most active Western military after the US’s.
How recent are we talking? The French were involved in Vietnam before the US was and in the Suez Crisis around the same time, and a few years after that they fought a protracted and seriously nasty asymmetrical war in Algeria. More recently they’ve also been party to the Islamist civil wars in northern Africa, most importantly against Boko Haram in Mali, and to a number of other postcolonial squabbles.
They don’t get a lot of press in the Anglosphere, but theirs is probably the most active Western military after the US’s.