Why does France continue to intervene militarily in sub-Saharan Africa despite repeated commitments, both in practice and in rhetoric, to disengage and adhere to strict non-intervention? Although many accounts of France’s African security policy have been put forth, few have analyzed French foreign policy choices through the decision-making process itself, let alone exclusively applied International Relations (IR) theories to understand those decisions. Synthesizing a narrative approach with an ontological security interpretation, which understands states as having identity security needs on top of their physical ones, I propose an alternative framework for understanding France’s security-seeking, threats to identity, and how they shape the foreign policy decision-making process. I assess the impact ‘anxiety’ had upon the interventionist debates surrounding two recent crises during the Hollande administration: the terrorist threat in Mali and the humanitarian catastrophe in the Central African Republic (CAR) in 2013. My conclusions are two-fold. First, anxiety can be seen as both an inhibitor and enabler of change. Anxiety over being labeled a neocolonial power was initially conducive to bolstering the normalization of Franco-African security relations initiated at the start of the 21st century and advocated by the Hollande administration. However, as the meaning of each crisis was discursively debated and subsequently re-interpreted, the policy of non-interference became a source of anxiety itself; ontological insecurity, in each case, enabled the behavioral change that anxiety initially prevented. Second, French actors were conflicted over having to choose between contradictory identity preferences in their response to the crises. As such, decision-makers activated narratives surrounding France’s role as a puissance d’influence, using historical analogies and references to proximity in order to quiet anxieties, smooth out dissonance, and restore ontological security. In the end, I argue that French ...