Military interventions by powerful nations into lesser ones, such as now continues in Mali (and Afghanistan), and is being urged by many into the Syrian civil war, are inherently reckless since even the most powerful states can have the whole project blow up on them.
The intended outcome is rarely achieved. We won't talk about Iraq, saved from Saddam Hussein (at the price of hundreds of thousands of casualties) and abandoned to Iran's influence. The first American intervention in Afghanistan, in 1978-79, when the Carter administration used the CIA to provoke a Russian invasion (intended by Washington to give Russia "its own Vietnam"), ended in Taliban rule, al-Qaida's installation in Afghanistan and an American invasion following 9/11, which is scheduled finally to end next year (in U.S. withdrawal and unacknowledged failure).
How will France do in Mali? At least the French were invited in, greeted with joy, and rapidly liberated the country from its Islamist invaders. Now what to do?