France still has a top-10 military and maybe the most effective overseas force projection capabilities outside the US and Great Britain (maybe China, we'll see how effective their navy is, sooner or later). Not to mention a long-standing nuclear arsenal. If Europe—any of it, at least in the EU or NATO—is attacked from the East, the French will be on the front lines, and landing on beaches. Turkey, on its own or as a puppet of (probably—god, they've wanted it for like 200+ years at this point) Russia, is increasingly a realistic threat. Plus Russia itself.
Like other major European former-colonizer states, France maintains strong ties to many parts of the world and is relied on, or considers itself responsible for, security in those regions. Algeria is attacked? France will surely show up to the party. Algeria decides to take some kind of Cuba-like action against French property? France will likely be there, in a very different capacity. They have strong interest in Lebanon (threatened, potentially, by Syria and Turkey, among others) and much of West Africa, as well, where, if you follow international news, their foreign legion and special forces are often deployed and quite active.
Sidebar: They're also possibly the most experienced torturers in the West. You see them called in for it sometimes, if you read between the lines a bit. Yikes.
See also: Libya, and Italy's leadership there (for better or worse). France has similar ties to a dozen or more countries in Africa and the Levant. Warranted or not from some broader perspective, they'll tend to see intervention in conflicts there as obligatory and desirable.