African security and global militarism

ABSTRACT

This Special Issue asks: what is the current place of militarism in relation to security where Africa is concerned? It aims to contribute to emerging debates interested in critical inquiry of the relation between militarism and security, and to explore its diverse articulations in African settings. We advance an international political sociological (IPS) approach to militarism in order to explore militarised security politics as a field of contested practices and logics. We discuss why this approach enables us to uncover the interconnected historical patterns and power relations in which practices and logics of security and militarism become linked and grounded in simultaneously local and transnational African settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Militarism
• (in)security
• international political sociology
• Africa

Acknowledgements

This special issue is the result of much seen and unseen labour which we need to acknowledge and thank. We thank the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala for their support in hosting the workshop on ‘Unbridled Militarization in Africa?’ and all of the workshop participants for their insights and discussions. We are also grateful to Riksbankens Jubileumsfond in Sweden for the initiation grant that funded the workshop. A special thanks goes to Rita Abrahamsen, Philippe Frowd and Anna Stavrianakis for providing important feedback and comments on the Introduction. Any errors in the text are those of the authors. We thank the many reviewers who critically engaged with the contributions found in the Special Issue. Adam Sandor thanks the Käte Hamburger Kolleg Centre for Global Co-operation Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen which provided a stellar intellectual space for academic production and financial support, without which this work would have struggled to complete. Linnéa Gelot gratefully acknowledges the funding received from the Swedish research council (ref 2015-03476) and research assistance by Sophia Wrede, research officer at Folke Bernadotte Academy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Straus, ‘Wars do End!’.

2. Mama and Okazawa-Rey, ‘Militarism, Conflict and Women’s Activism’; Hutchful and Bathily, The Military and Militarism in Africa; Luckham, ‘The Military, Militarization and Democratization in Africa’, 24; Verweijen, ‘The Ambiguity of Militarization’; Abrahamsen, ‘Return of the Generals?’.

3. De Waal, Demilitarizing the Mind, 38.

4. Stavrianakis and Stern, ‘Militarism and Security’.

5. Basham et al., What is Critical Military Studies?; Stavrianakis and Selby, ‘Militarism and International Relations’; Stavrianakis and Stern, ‘Militarism and Security’.

6. Closing session discussion at workshop ‘African Security and Unbridled Militarization?’, on 22–23 November 2017 at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala.

7. Ibid., 4; Barkawi, ‘From War to Security’; Aradau, ‘Security, War, Violence’.

8. Wibben, ‘Why We Need to Study (US) Militarism’; Frowd and Sandor, ‘Militarism and its Limits’.

9. Dillon, Politics of Security.

10. Miles, ‘Deploying Development to Counter Terrorism’.

11. Stavrianakis and Selby, ‘Militarism and International Relations’; Shaw, ‘Twenty-First Century Militarism’; Mann, Incoherent Empire.

12. Luckham, ‘The Military, Militarization and Democratization in Africa’, 24.

13. Shaw, ‘Twenty-First Century Militarism’, 20; Shaw, War and Genocide, 106.

14. Cock, ‘Keeping the Fires Burning’; for an excellent defence of central ideological underpinnings of militarism, see Eastwood, ‘Rethinking Militarism as Ideology’.

15. Stavrianakis and Selby, ‘Militarism and International Relations’.

16. Dwyer, Soldiers in Revolt; Decalo, Civil-Military Relations; Onwudiwe, ‘Military Coups’; Kruit and Koonings, ‘From Political Armies’.

17. Enloe, Globalisation and Militarism, 16.

18. Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases.

19. See Wæver, ‘Politics, Security, Theory’; Aradau, ‘Security and the Democratic Scene’.

20. Owens, Economy of Force.

21. Stavrianakis and Stern, ‘Introduction’, 11.

22. Howell shares a similar critique of the concept of militarisation. The critique we outline here more specifically refers to African contexts and histories of direct forms of colonialism, conquest and rule by armed means.

23. Stavrianakis and Selby, ‘Introduction’, 10.

24. Thee, ‘Militarism and Militarization’, 301.

25. Abrahamsen, ‘Return of the Generals?’, 28.

26. Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars.

27. Kalyvas, ‘“New” and “Old” Civil Wars’; Cramer, ‘Homo Economicus Goes to War’; Malešević, ‘The Sociology of New Wars?’.

28. Stern and Öjendal, ‘Mapping the Security-Development Nexus’.

29. Chandler, ‘The Security-Development Nexus’.

30. Bachmann, ‘Policing Africa’.

31. Harkness, ‘Security Assistance in Africa’.

32. For critiques of this view, from a rationalist and post-structuralist perspectives, see Englebert and Tull, ‘Postconflict Reconstruction in Africa’ and Eriksson Baaz and Stern, ‘Being Reformed’, respectively.

33. Abrahamsen, ‘Defensive Development, Combative Contradictions’.

34. See Fisher and Anderson, ‘Authoritarianism and the Securitization of Development’.

35. Krogstad, ‘Security, Development, and Force’.

36. Abrahamsen, ‘Defensive Development, Combative Contradictions’.

37. Gregory, ‘The Everywhere War’; Shaw, ‘Twenty-First Century Militarism’, 29.

38. Shaw, ‘Twenty-First Century Militarism’, 28–30.

39. For similar lines of argument see Lischer, ‘Military Intervention’; Bachmann, ‘Policing Africa’.

40. Desgrais, ‘Cinq Ans Aprés’.

41. Iñiguez de Heredia, ‘Militarism, States and Resistance’.

42. For more analyses of how militarism becomes embedded in civic spheres through political, developmental and legal forms of interventions, see Frowd, Security at the Borders; Khalili, In the Shadows; Kienscherf, ‘Beyond Militarization and Repression’.

43. Bachmann and Gelot, ‘Between Protection and Stabilization’, 130.

44. See UK Stabilisation Unit, ‘The UK Government’s Approach to Stabilisation’.

45. Hameiri, Regulating Statehood; Mac Ginty and Richmond, ‘The Local Turn in Peacebuilding’; Sabaratnam, ‘Avatars of Eurocentrism’.

46. Pugh, ‘Lineages of Aggressive Peace’; Charbonneau, ‘Intervention in Mali’.

47. Iñiguez de Heredia, ‘Militarism, States and Resistance’; Tull, ‘The Limits and Unintended Consequences’.

48. Khalili, ‘Gendered Practices of Counterinsurgency’.

49. As well as PMC/PSCs, and proxy fighting forces such as pro-government militias.

50. Owens, Economy of Force.

51. Gray, ‘The Geopolitics of Intimacy’; Bailliet, ‘“War in the Home”’; Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire.

52. See Charbonneau, ‘Intervention in Mali’; Sandor, Insecurity, the Breakdown of Social Trust and Armed Actor Governance.

53. In a similar vein, see Tull and Mehler, ‘The Hidden Costs of Power-Sharing’.

54. UK, ‘Elite Bargains’, similarly finds that the use of elite bargains has been fraught and has even planted the seeds of new rounds of conflict.

55. Abrahamsen, ‘Defensive Development, Combative Contradictions’.

56. Shaw, The Western Way of War; see also Mabee and Vucetic, ‘Varieties of Militarism’.

57. Stavrianakis, ‘Small Arms Control’.

58. McFadden, ‘Interrogating Americana’.

59. Cooper and Stoler, Tensions of Empire.

60. Mabee and Vucetic, ‘Varieties of Militarism’, 101.

61. Basham, ‘Liberal Militarism as Insecurity’.

62. Mann, States, War and Capitalism, 17.

63. Bachmann, ‘Policing Africa’.

64. De Waal, Demilitarizing the Mind.

65. Rigouste, L’ennemi interieur; Wasinski, ‘La volonté de réprimer’.

66. Baker et al., ‘Encounters with the Military’.

67. Shaw, ‘Twenty-First Century Militarism’, 20. The justificatory framework offered by ‘liberal democracy’ in part functions as a strategy to ‘blunt the edge of a critical consciousness’ within imperialist societies. McFadden, ‘Interrogating Americana’, 58.

68. See Rosow, ‘Toward an Anti-Disciplinary Global Studies’.

69. Wiley, ‘Militarizing Africa’; Grove, ‘The Stories We Tell’; Gusterson, ‘Anthropology and Militarism’.

70. See De Waal, ‘When Kleptocracy Becomes Insolvent’.

71. See Romaniuk and Durner, ‘The Politics of Preventing Extremism’; Burgess, ‘UN and AU Counterterrorism Norm Acceptance’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Linnéa Gelot

Linnéa Gelot is Senior Researcher at the Folke Bernadotte Academy, Sweden, and an Associate Professor in Peace and Development Studies at the School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University. Her research has focused on: peace operations, with a specialisation in African-led peace operations and their protection of civilians; global institutions, especially the legitimacy of African organisations and the African Union–United Nations peace and security relationship; and militarism. Her research project ‘African Union Waging Peace’ has employed the concepts of militarisation and security practice theory to study militarising institutional discourses and practices within African peace and security institutions.

Adam Sandor

Adam Sandor is Research Associate with the Centre FrancoPaix in Conflict Resolution and Peace Missions at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQÀM). His work examines the governance of borderless threats, political violence and international interventions in Africa, focusing particularly on the Sahel region.