Beyond neo-imperialist intentionality: explaining African agency in liberal peace interventions

Abstract

The extant critical literature on international interventions has not only discussed liberal peace interventions from Western subject positions but has also explained its drivers principally from the intention of Western actors to perpetuate neo-imperialism. This analysis, while not illogical, ignores the non-Western involvement in the liberal peace project and, therefore, cannot offer insights into how and why some non-Western actors equally commit to this enterprise. This article moves beyond Western subject positions of this discourse to focus on how and why African interveners engage in liberal interventions despite its Western neo-imperialist instrumentality. Drawing on official documents, interview data and the framework of hegemony, it uncovers African regional actors as practitioners of liberal peace interventions. It argues that they became involved in this practice mainly because they consented to the hegemony of the liberal world order as the only social vision suitable for maintaining domestic stability. Overall, the study offers a broad lens for understanding why the undertaking of liberal projects in many non-Western societies, especially in Africa, cannot be solely explained from the standpoint of Western neo-imperial intentions.

Keywords:

• Peace interventions
• liberal peace
• African agency
• hegemony
• The Gambia

Introduction

The scholarly debate on liberal peace intervention – which prioritises democracy, the rule of law and human rights as a strategy for peace reconstruction (Lemay-Hébert 2013) – has expanded rapidly in recent times. The critical component of this discourse attempts to locate the actors involved in this interventionist exercise and the driving force of their agency. The central submission of this scholarship, which draws on different critical theoretical orientations, is that Western actors are the practitioners of liberal peace intervention, and the rationales behind their commitment to this project in non-Western societies are informed by their intention to perpetuate Western neo-imperialism for stifling non-Western socio-political projects (Chomsky 1999; Ignatieff 2003; Wai 2014). This contention is set against the background that the idea of liberalism embodies a Western individualistic conception of how to organise society, which has never ‘been an account of the world but a project to be realized’ (Canovan 1990, 16). However, while this analytical claim is illuminating and not necessarily erroneous, it omitted an aspect of liberal intervention practices by being unable to capture the active participation of some non-Western interveners and the underpinning for their agency. The neo-imperialist intentionality framework that critical analysts often employ to explain the motivation behind liberal interventions cannot offer any analytical benefit when the interveners are non-Western agents. This becomes an issue as many non-Western interveners are increasingly involved in peace interventions that (aim to) entrench liberal normative values. Even though some analysts have censured the critical literature on (liberal) peace intervention for starting and ending with Western actors as subjects of inquiry and for claiming to be emancipatory and yet neglecting the subject positions of non-Western agents (Sabaratnam 2017, 38; Richmond and Mac Ginty 2015, 183), there is a paucity of effort at the time of writing this article to critically dissect the empirical practice and (the rationale for) liberal peace intervention from the subject positions of non-Western interveners. It therefore makes it difficult to account for their agency in critical theorising. Wodrig (2014, 214) once argued that ‘shifting the focus to “nonclassical” interveners can likewise contribute to disclosing a previously neglected perspective in the study of interventions’. Supposing we genuinely want to grasp the complex, holistic reality that propels the dominance and resilience of the liberal paradigm of action in the global intervention community, critical theorists must expand the subjects of their inquiry to include non-Western interveners.

This article seeks to contribute to the burgeoning critical scholarship on liberal peace intervention beyond the Eurocentric subject position. It does this by focusing on African regional interveners, who have committed to liberal peace as an ontological paradigm for peace reconstruction since the last decade of the twentieth century. It specifically uncovers how and why African interveners engage in liberal peace intervention despite its often-recognised Western neo-imperial instrumentality. While drawing on the framework of hegemony, the central argument of this article is that African interveners got involved in liberal peace interventions because they consented to the hegemony of the liberal world order as the only social vision suitable for inventing and sustaining societal peace. As a result of this consent, they are less concerned about the neo-imperial functionality of liberal peace in the matrix of global epistemological ordering and hierarchies (Mac Ginty 2008, 144). Fundamentally, the study reveals the limits of the neo-imperialist intentionality framework in discussing liberal interventions and underscores the reproductive power of liberal hegemony and the myth of emancipatory politics in (some) Global South intervention communities. Some years ago, Fanon (1963, 252, 254) warned that ‘For many among us [ie postcolonial actors] the European model is the most inspiring … [but] let us not pay tribute to Europe by creating states, institutions and societies which draw their inspiration from her’. The practicality of this line of reasoning and the extent to which postcolonial practitioners adhere to it in their intervention engagements have been under-researched. This article will explore this phenomenon by casting light on how and why the liberal ideological order, which the Western historic bloc historically championed, has become the sole documented framework for peace formation in the African regional community. The need for this analysis cannot be overemphasised, as Nkrumah (1965, 239) once advised that ‘it is necessary to study, understand, [and] expose… neo-colonialism in whatever guise it may appear … [for its methods] are subtle and varied’.

The analysis here relies on relevant official documents and interview data. The documents I analysed in this regard include African regional instruments, peace frameworks, resolutions, declarations, communiqués, progress reports and speeches. To be specific, what I looked for in these written materials includes the historical junctures at which African regional actors collectively embraced liberal normative values of democracy, the rule of law and human rights as the primary principles for organising a (peaceful) society; why this was the case; and how this commitment subsequently shapes their interventions. Having access to these documents allows me to grasp specific answers to these questions. However, it does not allow me to ask follow-up questions. To this end, I strengthened this use of document analysis with interview data. Between August 2019 and February 2021, I conducted 38 interviews with experts who are either practitioners or observers of African peace interventions. These respondents, who were chosen through a combination of purposive and snowballing samplings, include African Union (AU) officials, representatives of African states and analysts who are knowledgeable about African engagement in (post-)conflict contexts. The identities of a few interviewees quoted or referenced here are anonymised because specific consent was not obtained for their names to appear in my final analysis. Overall, this methodological approach is suitable for the discussions that unfold in this article because it combines both written and verbal evidence, which are central to qualitative research.

The rest of this article is structured into four connected sections. The next section reviews the extant critical literature on liberal peace intervention to highlight how it exclusively focuses on Western actors as subjects of discourse and how its explanation for what motivates this undertaking does not offer a suitable analytical perspective for delving into the same practice when the interveners are non-Western agents. The following section discusses the (neo-)Gramscian perspectives on hegemony to show how it provides a nuanced analytical standpoint for dissecting the undertaking of liberal peace intervention by African interveners. The third section explores and demonstrates how African regional actors legitimise the liberal vision of order as the sole framework for African security governance within the context of the post-Cold War hegemony of Western liberal democracy. Finally, the fourth section empirically shows how this commitment to the liberal vision of order shapes African peace intervention in The Gambia.

Critical scholarship on liberal interventions: Western subjectivity, neo-imperialist intentionality and puzzling non-Western agency

The unmasking of the liberal paradigm as the single dominant framework for peace interventions in the post-Cold War era led to the rise of critical scholarship on liberal peace intervention (Paris 1997). This literature, which has become prominent in intervention discourse, could be placed within the analytical lens of what Cox (1981) refers to as ‘critical theory’. According to Cox’s (1981, 129) conceptual framing, critical theory ‘is directed towards an appraisal of the very framework for action … which problem-solving theory accepts as its parameters’. To this end, as he further maintains, it is a theoretical approach that stands ‘apart from the prevailing order of the world and asks how that order came about’ (Cox 1981, 129). In line with this perspective, the critical intervention literature presents a direct deconstruction of the practice of liberal interventions by refusing to ‘accept existing [liberal] policy parameters as a given’ and instead questioning ‘the interests they serve’ (Newman 2009, 38). Within this context, there is a central submission that Western actors are the practitioners of liberal interventions (Zaum 2012, 121). Thus, Richmond (2010, 667) asserts that ‘liberal peace [intervention is] directed by a Western core of states and international organisations’, and Mac Ginty (2011, 41) maintains that it ‘is directed from the global north and attempts to reproduce forms of peace and governance that mirror expectations from the global north’.

Stemming from this standpoint, a key question that the critical scholarship seeks to unravel is why Western actors are devoted to peace interventions that rely primarily on the conceptual thinking of liberal peace. At the heart of the explanation provided in this scholarship is the contention that Western interveners rely on the liberal peace framework because of their intention to invoke neo-imperialism in the global society. While contributing to this analysis, Paris (2002, 653, 654) maintains that the contemporary practice of liberal peace intervention constitutes nothing more than a mission civilisatrice – through which the Western core tends to dictate the liberal system of governance to the non-Western periphery of the global society. According to him, to the extent that the undertakings during peace interventions ‘reflect the ideological predilections’ of Western actors, the liberal approach to peacebuilding is ‘a new phase in the ongoing and evolving relationship between the core and the periphery … with the core continuing to define the standards of acceptable behaviour’ (Paris 2002, 653). Sharing a similar perspective, Pugh (2004, 39, 49) asserts that the impulse driving the political economy of Western liberal intervention is based on a desire to advance the ‘superiority of [Western] liberal ideology’ within the broad ‘framework of liberal imperialism’.

Arguing from this purview, Ignatieff (2003, 3) maintains that the nation-building engagement of Western interveners, which relied on the liberal transformative framework, was ‘for imperial reasons: to consolidate … [Western] global hegemony, [and] to assert and maintain … [Western] leadership’ through a re-ordering project. For him, the ‘ostensible motive that sustains these [liberal] nation-building projects may be humanitarian, but the real principle is imperial: the maintenance of [Western] order over [non-Western] barbarian threat’ (Ignatieff 2003, 22). According to him, it reflects the ‘desire [by Western agents] to imprint … [their] values, civilization and achievements on the souls, bodies and institutions of another people’ (Ignatieff 2003, 42). The new empire that Western actors are trying to build through this process, according to Ignatieff (2003, 17), is one ‘held together by common elements of … the idea[s] … of democracy … human rights … [and] equality before the law’. Contributing to this discussion, Chomsky (1999, 11) contends that the commitment of Western actors to the enterprise of liberal peace projects is ‘under the cloak of good intentions but in pursuit of interests that have a very familiar ring outside the realm of enlightenment’. For Chandler (2006), the invasive form of liberal state-building intervention that Western actors often practise is a manifestation of ‘Empire in Denial’, which allows Western actors to regulate non-Western societies and, at the same time, deny such a practice. This analysis is not limited to White critical scholars. Wai (2014, 483) also argues that the operationalisation of liberal interventions by Western interveners, particularly in Africa, is ‘a neo-imperialist posture driven by a Western will to domination and desire to restructure the world in line with the ideological preferences of liberalism’.

As we can see from this analysis, there is a convergence in the critical discourse that Western actors are the practitioners of liberal peace interventions and that their agency in this operation is informed by their intention to invoke a new form of imperialism that would ‘disqualify Southern political projects as inadequate, lacking or backward’ (Duffield 2001, 32). While this dissection is commendable, there are two connected issues associated with it. First, it focuses exclusively on Western players as subjects of liberal intervention discourse. By so doing, it overlooks the involvement of non-Western interveners in this exercise. Since many non-Western actors equally participate in this hegemonic ordering project, this analysis needs to be broadened beyond a fixated Western subjectivity. Second, the explanation offered cannot perform its explanatory role when the actors involved are non-Western agents. Just as Cox (1981, 128) argues that ‘theory is always for someone and for some purpose’, this neo-imperialist intentionality framework does not offer a suitable analytical perspective for delving into the non-Western agency in the liberal peace project. If the critical minds agree that liberal interventions are summarily Western neo-imperialist campaigns, the question then is: how do we account for the involvement of non-Western practitioners? In what follows, I discuss the (neo-)Gramscian perspective on hegemony and how it helps us to cast light on this development.

Hegemony and its reproductive powers

The theory of hegemony, as advanced by Antonio Gramsci, offers an in-depth vantage point for comprehending the reproduction of a particular social vision within a given society. In Gramsci’s theorising, hegemony occurs when the ideological, political and intellectual values held by a particular social group turn out to be the prevailing ordering principles widely accepted and embraced by other social groups. In this regard, hegemony entails the dominant social group creating a constitutive social order so that its standards become diffused as a natural way of thinking to the extent that they influence the (in)actions of other social groups (Femia 1981, 116). The operation of hegemony is not basically within the realm of ‘political society’, which is directly controlled by ‘the State’, but within the ‘civil society’, a different superstructure that involves the larger public (Mouffe 1979, 179, Femia 1981, 24). Even though there are operational interconnections between the superstructures of the ‘political society’ of the state and ‘civil society’ of the ‘private’, the exertion of hegemony is within the latter’s domain. While leadership in political society is ordinarily maintained via coercion, hegemony within civil society is invoked through consent. To this end, a social group acts to maintain hegemony not merely by exercising coercive power but, more importantly, by adding the creation of consent that foregrounds the ‘intellectual and moral leadership’ of the historic bloc (Gramsci 1971, 57).

What is central in reproducing the order, as historically created by the dominant social group, is the transformation of its ideology into common sense. By common sense, I mean the prevailing beliefs shared by the generality of actors in a given historical period, but which in a real sense comprise ‘a conception of the world’ that is ‘imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group’ (Gramsci 1971, 12, 323). It embodies the dominant way of thinking at a given time and, therefore, a taken-for-granted truth (Hopf 2013, 321). Because it constitutes ‘popular beliefs’, common sense often acts as a social force for (re)producing the widespread consent that supports the hegemonic order (Gramsci 1971, 165). It affirms and spreads hegemonic practices and ensures commitment from nonhegemonic groups. In this case, when the ideology of the dominant social group metamorphosed into common sense and a set of non-dominant actors consented to it, it often prevented them from operating outside the prescriptions of the hegemonic order (Taylor 2010, 166; Green and Ives 2009, 9; Hall 1988, 8). This is because consenting to common sense of the hegemonic order makes alternative thinking difficult (Augelli and Murphy 1988, 20) and, in the process, circumscribes actions (Cox 1992, 179).

This framework of hegemony can help unpack the agency of (a group of) nonhegemonic actors in the remaking of hegemonic orders. It offers a heuristic analytical tool for dissecting how the historic bloc created its ideological dominance and why nonhegemonic actors may be involved in its reproduction process. This article contends that one needs to understand the intricate workings of the wide acceptance of liberal values to delve into the puzzling complexity that invokes the commitment of many non-Western actors to the liberal formation of peace. Even though the modern liberal world order was a historical-political project of Western actors based on their preponderant material possessions, it has gained the status of hegemony and acceptance across many non-Western societies. This is an aspect of liberal peace intervention that critical analysts often avoid talking about.

Delegitimising plurality of orders in the context of hegemony

The constitution of the African regional society in the early postcolonial era was based on the principle of plurality of orders. While some African polities organised themselves according to the dictates of a socialist system, others chose their respective preferences from other models such as one-party systems, military rule and democracy. Because each of these governance models has different value systems, African regional leaders consciously avoided a decision that would impose a particular form of order on every African society, especially when designing the Charter of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963. To this end, the issue of a unified regional adherence to the liberal democratic principles of multi-party democracy, the rule of law and human rights was a no-go area. As Tieku (2017, 128) reminds us, during this period, ‘practices and procedures such as elections, political parties, and free press, which are used in Western democracies to encourage participation in political processes, were seen as divisive and alien to African cultures’. Young (2004, 34) argues within this context that the ‘single-party system dominated African [socio-political] landscape’. In other words, the operative reality of African regionalism in the postcolonial era was based on the co-existence of alternative orders rooted in different socio-political and ideological orientations.

However, with the end of the Cold War, there was a fundamental shift in African regional construction. Things moved against the plurality of orders to favour the only game in town (ie liberal democratic order) (Tieku 2017, 129). By this time, the liberal order, which the Western historic bloc championed, had become the dominant framework of thinking in the global society. It marked a point when Western liberal ideology gained the status of hegemony and became the conception of the world that could no longer be easily resisted by many non-Western actors, particularly those historically disempowered in the face of colonialism. Informed by its hegemonic ascendancy, liberal ideology transmuted into common sense and influenced epistemological approaches to global and domestic problems. Fukuyama recognises this development when he notes that ‘[w]hat we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War … [but] the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government’ (Fukuyama 1989, 4). This assertion was based on his recognition that ‘the victory of liberalism has occurred primarily in the realm of ideas and consciousness’ (Fukuyama 1989, 4). While I do not agree with Fukuyama’s end of ‘mankind’s ideological evolution’ thesis, I concur that this period marked a historical point when the liberal order appeared to be ahistorical and natural based on the popular acceptance of its organising principles.

A consequence of this metamorphosis was the emergence of what Taylor (2010, 165) describes as liberal peace common sense: a prevailing notion that it is only a liberal democratic polity that is capable of sustaining peace. The major global arena where this liberal peace common sense was officially announced is the United Nations (UN). Of course, as Cox (1983, 172) pointed out, global organisations are the major mechanisms through which hegemony is expressed and legitimated. This is because they ‘embody the rules which facilitate the expansion of hegemonic world orders … [and] absorb counter-hegemonic ideas’ (Cox 1983, 172). In this regard, the then Secretary-General of the UN, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, made it unequivocal in 1992 that ‘[t]here is an obvious connection between democratic practices … and the achievement of true peace’ and that ‘[d]emocracy within nations [which] requires respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms … is essential to attain peace’ (Boutros-Ghali 1992, paras 59, 81, 82). Kofi Annan (1998, 83), who succeeded Boutros Boutros-Ghali, announced the same prevailing thinking when he noted that commitments to institutionalise the ‘respect for human rights and the rule of law’ as an integral component of liberal democracy ‘are necessary components of any efforts to make peace durable’. In this case, ‘the hegemony of liberal values … reigns in global politics’ (Taylor 2010, 156), but this was not without a history.

This transformation of the Western social vision to a popular way of thinking impacted policy choices across many non-Western worlds. Evidently, the African regional society was not left out. Across many African polities, there was a rise of local popular movements for multi-party democracy that is grounded in respect for the rule of law and individual human rights. As African regional leaders were searching for how to respond to the spate of instability in Africa during this period, they found it uneasy to resist the discussion of the prescriptions of the liberal order in the context of its hegemony, which has equally received endorsement across different African socio-political spaces. Thus, in July 1990, the then Secretary-General of the OAU, Salim Ahamed Salim, presented a report on The Fundamental Changes Taking Place in the World and Their Implications for Africa to the OAU Council of Ministers and the OAU Assembly. The report contained an assessment of post-Cold War global developments, challenges facing Africa, and what could be done as an African response (Djinnit and Wane 2020, 10). An integral element of the report emphasises the global triumph of Western democracy and African shortcomings in democratic practices (Djinnit and Wane 2020). After deliberating on the report, African leaders issued a declaration. The global fetishisation of liberal values manifested in the declaration. Unlike in the past, they accepted the ordering principles of the liberal order as universal and inevitable (Jordaan 2016, 494). In the declaration, they maintain that:

We are fully aware that in order to facilitate this process of socio-economic transformation and integration, it is necessary to promote [the] popular participation of our peoples in the processes of government and development. A political environment which guarantees human rights and the observance of the rule of law …. We accordingly recommit ourselves to the further democratisation of our societies and to the consolidation of democratic institutions in our countries …. We therefore assert that democracy and development should go together. (my emphasis; OAU 1990, 2)

As aptly argued by some analysts, it was a declaration that ‘formalized … [African] continental commitment to a liberal agenda broadly associated with democracy, the rule of law and human rights’ (Wiebusch et al. 2019, 16). The role of the superstructure and its social forces in this process could further be pinned down when dissecting the address delivered by Salim Ahmed Salim in July 1990, during which he presented the report to the OAU Assembly. In his speech to the July 1990 Summit, Salim notes that:

Aspiration for democracy and freedom knows no color of race, it has no geographical boundaries. It is a universal aspiration. Democratic freedoms and fundamental human … rights are acquired rights by humanity …. The reality is there is a global consensus on the good sense of democracy and its universal values …. We should … guard against the imposition on any society of a particular model of democratic practices while affirming at the same time the relevance of universal democratic principles. (my emphasis; Djinnit and Wane 2020, 12)

From this moment until the early 2000s, the liberal vision of order technically displaced its rival alternatives in the collective African policy discourse – although African regional actors usually avoid mentioning the word ‘liberal’ (Tieku 2017, 129). This notwithstanding, it involved some regional debates and classes of interests, as Thomas Tieku (2004) pointed out. A dimension of this development manifested in African regional consensus on liberal peace (ie that the only pathway to peace in (post-)conflict African societies is through the promotion of democracy, the rule of law and human rights.¹ A close look at their institutionalised framing of peace reconstruction will suffice to accentuate this phenomenon. In paragraph 15 of the preamble to the protocol relating to the establishment of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the AU, African leaders emphasise that ‘the development of strong democratic institutions and culture, observance of human rights and the rule of law … are essential for the promotion of collective security, durable peace and stability’ (African Union 2002). To demonstrate that this position was not a mistake, they further assert in the protocol that they shall ‘promote and encourage democratic practices, good governance and the rule of law, protect human rights and fundamental freedoms … as part of [their] efforts for preventing conflicts’ (African Union 2002, Article 3(f)). To make this more explicit, they state that in the event of peace intervention, they shall specifically ‘assist in the restoration of the rule of law, establishment and development of democratic institutions and the preparation, organization and supervision of elections’ (African Union 2002, Article 14(1)). To wit, as some analysts remind us, African regional actors unambiguously place the establishment of democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law at the centre of their conceptual approach to peace reconstruction (Vines 2013, 108; Tieku 2017, 175). Alex Vines (2013, 108) argues, therefore, that the overall peace architecture designed by African interveners ‘is clearly based on a liberal peace model’. By so doing, they politically delegitimise and extinguish alternative socio-political projects in their conceptualisation of peace reconstruction.

As a caveat, the issue here is not whether the liberal framework is good or bad as an ontological standpoint for societal reconstruction. Rather, the point is that to understand how/why this ideological transition came about in African regionalism demands paying attention to the hegemonic ‘historical moment … [that] left its indelible mark upon this purported universalist science’ (Cox 1985/1996, 57). The commitment to liberal values within the African regional community resulted from the consent to a way of doing that has become widely accepted. Certainly, this is by no means to argue that African actors lack agency – that would be an erroneous assertion (Brown and Harman 2013, 3). The point is that their agency in this account was not immune from the prescriptions and constraints of the superstructures. This buttresses the contention by Karl Marx that ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past’ (Cox 1989, 38). The ideological transition in African regionalism, which favoured the liberal vision of order, was birthed due to African actors’ consensual responses to the hegemony of the Western liberal order that reigned in the aftermath of the Cold War.² Even though this liberal conception of order is often difficult to practice in African contexts (Taylor 2007), African interveners have accepted its ordering principles as ‘the best basis to organize society’ (Harrison and Mitchell 2014, 144). While commenting on this subject, one of my respondents, who is a prominent African scholar, submits as follows:

Unlike in the 1960s or 1970s, there seems to be a broad consensus among African [regional] elites both at the political and technical levels that liberal values are the only game in town …. So, [the] AU is [promoting] and undertaking liberal peacebuilding because the organisation is cognitively positioned as a liberal institution to reinforce a liberal system …. [To this end, one could say that] imperial rule went through the front door but then came back through the back door.³

Putting consent into practice: African liberal interventions in The Gambia

As demonstrated in the previous section, African interveners have embraced the liberal order as the only ideological pathway for devising peace. Stemming from this regional legitimisation, they have made specific efforts to put this thinking framework into practice. From Somalia to South Sudan to The Gambia, one can pin down the African agency in liberal interventions. Evidently, this is not to argue that they always mobilise resources to promote the liberal order. For instance, at the time of writing, many African polities cannot be categorised as (liberal) democracies. However, when they intervene in society for peace reconstruction, they often endeavour to create a kind of order that conforms to the dictates of liberalism, except it is evident that such a move cannot (immediately) be made possible. As a representation of this undertaking, my empirical analysis in this section focuses on the case of The Gambia. Among other things, it will give a flavour of how African regional consent to the liberal order has moved from institutionalisation to empirical actions.

The Gambia is one of the countries where African regional actors recently intervened to promote peace and stability. This intervention was against the backdrop of the crisis that erupted in the country in late 2016 when President Yahya Jammeh, who was defeated during The Gambia’s 2016 presidential elections, refused to accept the election outcome (Kreß and Nußberger 2017, 239). The intervention could not have been prevented since the underlying ontological orientation of African security regionalism is based on the principle that the problem of one is the problem of all.⁴ As a way of de-escalating the crisis that engulfed the country, the first major action by African interveners was directed towards ensuring the consolidation of democracy in the country. On 10 December 2016, the day after President Jammeh rejected the outcome of the elections, the Chairperson of the AU Commission, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, released a statement on behalf of the African community on The Gambia. In the press release, she emphasised the necessity for ‘Gambian stakeholders to strictly comply with the rule of law’ and ensure an orderly transfer of power to the newly elected president (AU Commission 2016). In its communiqué on 12 December 2016, the AU PSC articulated the same point on the ‘imperative need for the concerned Gambian stakeholders to strictly comply with the rule of law and the respect of the will of their people as clearly expressed during the … December 2016 presidential elections’ (AU PSC 2016, para. 4). Through the same PSC communiqué, African interveners further underscore their spirited resolve to ‘take all necessary measures’ to restore and protect democracy in The Gambia (AU PSC 2016, para. 12).

As a follow-up to this stance, they positioned the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as a mechanism to take the lead in restoring democracy in the country (AU PSC 2016). The initial effort centred on making use of high-level mediation. Thus, on 13 December 2016, an ECOWAS high-level delegation was dispatched to The Gambia to persuade President Jammeh to step down to allow steady democracy and peace in The Gambia (Hartmann 2017, 88). Despite the personalities involved, the mission did not yield the expected outcomes. Nonetheless, they decided not to give up on this diplomatic effort. On 17 December 2016, West African leaders under the umbrella of ECOWAS appointed President Muhammadu Buhari and President John Mahama as the Mediator and Co-Chair, respectively, to restore democratic normalcy in The Gambia (ECOWAS 2016). This culminated in the second African high-level mission visit to The Gambia on 13 January 2017 for the same goal of prevailing on President Jammeh to obey the rule of law by relinquishing power based on the outcome of the December 2016 presidential elections (Helal 2017, 916). The repetition of this pro-democratic diplomatic engagement could not convince President Jammeh of the need to hand over power. Instead, on 17 January 2017, President Jammeh declared a state of emergency and, a day later, the Gambian Parliament extended the term of his presidency by 90 days (BBC News 2016). Because this mediation did not work out as expected, African leaders within the ECOWAS mobilised troops into The Gambia on 19 January 2017 to enforce their pro-democracy decisions in the country (Perfect 2017, 329). This ‘operation restore democracy’ (Nwangwu et al. 2019, 122) eventually forced President Jammeh to agree to a peaceful democratic transition, and he went into exile on 21 January 2017 (Helal 2017, 919). With this development, the elected president, Adama Barrow (who had been inaugurated in The Gambia Embassy in Senegal on 19 January 2017), returned to The Gambia on 26 January 2017.

In furtherance of their commitment to peace reconstruction in the country, African interveners re-directed their intervening operations to the social engineering of The Gambia’s polity. In this regard, they resolved to focus on transforming the security structures of The Gambia and the country’s human rights and the rule of law institutions. In the communiqué of the AU PSC on 15 June 2017, they agreed to ‘provide all necessary support for Security Sector Reform in The Gambia, including the immediate secondment, by AU Member States … of five (5) staff officers to support the reorganization of The Gambian Armed Forces’ (AU PSC 2017, para. 10). They also agreed to ‘deploy three (3) Human Rights Experts, as well as a Senior Rule of Law Adviser in The Gambia and other Experts to assist in the process of transitional justice’ (AU PSC 2017). By concentrating on this ‘technical’ project, African interveners resolved to modernise the country’s socio-political structures in areas of security, human rights and the rule of law to regulate the character of its polity in favour of liberal peace. Accordingly, in September 2018, the African Union Technical Support to The Gambia (AUTSTG) – a team of 10 expert members – was officially deployed by African actors to The Gambia (Khadiagala 2021, 208). According to one of my respondents, the key idea that guided this deployment of the AUTSTG is not unconnected to the African Solidarity Initiative (ASI) framework that foregrounds the ethos of ‘Africa Helping Africa’.⁵ The AUTSTG, which comprises military advisers, human rights expert(s) and rule of law expert(s) (AU CMPCRD 2018), was designed to offer expert advice to The Gambia’s government on how to advance the course of democracy, the rule of law, human rights, security reform and transitional justice.⁶

Within the context of these operations, African interveners, through the AUTSTG, attempted to liberalise The Gambia’s socio-political structures. As a centralised operation, AUTSTG experts were positioned in different strategic institutions. Some of these national institutions were the

Office of the National security Adviser, Office of the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Defence, Office of Chief Defence Staff of the Gambia Armed Forces (GAF), Ministry of Internal Affairs, National Human Right Commission, Truth Commission, and the Constitutional Review Commission. (AU CMPCRD 2018, 4)

The key methods adopted by the AUTSTG in revamping and liberalising the security, human rights and rule of law sectors of The Gambia include capacity building, offering of expert advice, policy development and establishment of institutions.⁷ In the aspect of capacity building, workshops were being organised to modulate the orientations of The Gambia’s local actors in a way that conforms to the global best practices. With respect to offering expert advice, policy development and institution establishment, the AUTSTG utilised these methods to reformat The Gambia’s security, justice and human rights architecture in a way that could support the creation of a liberal form of peace. The mission facilitated the launch of The Gambia’s National Security Policy, drafting of The Gambia’s National Security Council Act, and re-organisation of The Gambia’s defence strategy (African Union 2020, paras 16, 17, AU PSC 2019). To firmly establish the rule-of-law culture in The Gambia, the AUTSTG coordinated the restructuring of The Gambia’s police force and prisons system (African Union 2020, para. 18). As a means of embedding the principle of human rights in The Gambia’s polity, the AUTSTG supported the operationalisation of The Gambia’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the review of its establishing act to conform to the global best practices (African Union 2020, paras 19, 21).

The intervening effort to create a liberal form of order in a conflict-affected society is often designed to strengthen the institutions needed to support democracy, security, human rights and the rule of law. This, in a way, propels many analysts to characterise externally coordinated capacity-building of these institutions as an embodiment of the liberal interventionist project (Chandler 2007, 594; Paris 2006, 434). Duffield (2001, 11) notes in this regard that the act of reforming social, security, legal, civil and representative institutions of a post-conflict state for stability purposes is a constitutive element of conceptual liberal peace. In other words, a way to confront the myth thesis of Selby (2013) on what constitutes liberal peace intervention is to uncover the values it seeks to entrench. Lemay-Hébert (2013, 242) further corroborates that the ‘liberal peace’s main components … include democracy promotion, the rule of law … [and] promotion of human rights’. I cannot agree more with this analysis. The operation of African interveners in The Gambia is the quintessence of liberal peace intervention. They not only defended democracy in the course of this intervention but also attempted a modernisation and social engineering of the country’s key institutions that would allow the entrenchment of the cultures of democratic governance, respect for human rights and the rule of law (Khadiagala 2021, 208).

One may still want to ask: why did African intervention in The Gambia prioritise the institutions of democracy, the rule of law and human rights, which, in a way, reinforces African interveners’ commitment to the liberal peace project? Roger Mac Ginty (2008, 144) perhaps envisaged this type of question when he noted: ‘Rather than provide a counter-hegemonic force against dominant Western approaches to peacemaking, the African Union and its leading members largely conform to the Western peace-making template’. Definitely, as the evidence gathered revealed, it is not because African policymakers have specific neo-imperial intentions. The point is that the hegemonic social structures created by the liberal world order have technically extinguished or suffocated alternative political projects. Sabaratnam (2013, 269) describes this development when she avers that ‘the deeper framework of philosophical Eurocentrism denies the possibility of any real political exteriority to … [its] broad category of ideas’. The appealing ordering vision presented by the modern liberal world order has become the intersubjective, consensual and prevailing way of thinking and doing. Even though it is not always easy to practise in many African societies, African actors, at both regional and local levels (at least until recently), have accepted its model as the only sustainable framework for organising society. This is an aspect of the driver of liberal peace intervention that many critical scholars often neglect to analyse. This consensual dimension of the discourse is central to understanding ‘the willing acquiescence of postcolonial elites to the expectations of [liberal ideological] hegemony’ (Pasha 2013, 146). Of course, this analysis is not aiming to discount the material aspect of this development. As a matter of fact, the Western liberal project could not have metamorphosed into the global hegemonic order without the deployment of material capabilities. The argument, however, is that consent plays a leading role in shaping this outcome.

As I previously discussed, African interveners had embraced the liberal framework as the overarching paradigm for devising peace before intervening in The Gambia.⁸ They collectively subscribe to the popular closure that the only society suitable for nurturing peace is the one organised according to the fundamentals of liberalism and democracy (Fisher 2019). To make this commitment unequivocal, they institutionalised its basic assumptions as guiding standards for their peace operations (see African Union 2002, 2006). Willett (2005, 573) characterises this development as African ‘Regionalisation of the liberal peace/security complex’. So, when The Gambia descended into a political crisis in 2016, African interveners simply operationalised their existing consent to the prevailing liberal order.⁹ To this end, when they were making the initial decision to defend democracy in The Gambia, they made it emphatic that their decision was premised on ‘the relevant provisions of the AU Constitutive Act, as well as those of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, on the total rejection by the AU of unconstitutional changes of government’ (AU PSC 2016, para. 5). Similarly, when they were deciding what should be their further approach to peace in The Gambia on 15 June 2017, they advanced their framework of action through the same lens.¹⁰ They agreed to focus on the technical transformation of The Gambia’s security sector and its institutions of human rights and the rule of law (AU PSC 2017, para. 10).

Some of my respondents further buttressed this interplay of the accepted way of doing and the framework of action in African intervention in The Gambia. One of my interviewees noted that

at a more epistemological level, deploying technical expertise for institution-building in The Gambia as a way of building peace receives acceptance and strong enthusiasm within the institutional space of the African Union … [and] on the ideological level, this pattern of African actors’ intervention in The Gambia is a reflection of their embraced worldview on how peace could be reinvented and sustained.¹¹

Another respondent, a senior AU official, told me that African regional actors ‘have subscribed to certain shared [liberal] values and when those shared values are challenged as it happened in The Gambia […] African continent is obliged to’ act accordingly.¹² Similarly, while focusing on the AU as an African mechanism, another respondent submitted that:

[the] AU has not been able to fundamentally move away from that particular [liberal peace] project …. [Its] emphasis has always been on the re-engineering of the state … in a way that the state becomes a classic liberal Western state with all the trappings of sovereignty …. Why is the AU doing this? … [This is because the] AU is a collection of elites who have been socialised to think that the liberal [peace] model is the only game in town.¹³

The central point here is that the acceptance of the liberal order within the context of its hegemony is at the centre of why African interveners committed to its social vision during peace interventions. To further demonstrate this reality, the actions of African interveners in The Gambia did not contradict the aspirations of the preponderance of Gambians. On the contrary, there was harmony between the existing African regional consensus on peace formation strategies and the desires of most of the local population in The Gambia, particularly based on their awful experience during the two decades of Yahya Jammeh’s administration. In this case, most of the Gambians equally aimed at a reformist interventionist programme that would alter the structural configuration of The Gambia’s polity to allow a liberal democratic form of order where democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights could easily thrive. To show this harmony, on 29 March 2017, The Gambia’s government specifically requested the technical assistance of the African regional community in this direction (AU CMPCRD 2018, 4). In a way, this shared consent to the liberal vision of order played a key role in what precipitated African social engineering operations in The Gambia. A senior AU official I interviewed drew attention to this development when he noted:

At the moment we [African actors] are supporting the Gambian government with a technical support team … we responded to a request from the government of The Gambia to provide them support in four key areas: transitional justice, the rule of law, human rights and improving the economy. Improving the economy is not our area, so we focus on the [first] three.¹⁴

Conclusion

In a situation where the ‘neo-imperialist intentionality’ framework is only suitable for unpacking Western agency in liberal interventions, what appropriate tool should we use to deconstruct the non-Western agency in the same transformative operation whenever it is spotted? An attempt to respond to this question has been the preoccupation of this article. This article has specifically explored how and why African interveners engaged in liberal peace interventions, despite its often-recognised neo-imperialist instrumentality. While drawing on official documents, interview data and the framework of hegemony, it uncovered African regional actors as practitioners of liberal peace interventions and argued that they became involved in this practice mainly because they consented to the hegemony of the liberal world order as the only social vision suitable for maintaining domestic stability. Essentially, this article provides a broad lens for understanding why the undertakings of the liberal peace project in many non-Western societies, especially in Africa, cannot be explained solely from the standpoint of Western neo-imperial intentions.

This study has serious implications. Overall, it suggests that any attempt to dissect liberal interventions exclusively from the purview of the Western subject positions would miss some important but complex realities. For a balanced discussion on the driver(s) of the modern liberal peace interventions to be provided, the agency of some non-Western actors must be taken seriously. The (re)production of the liberal order during peace interventions has transcended the mere intention of Western actors. Increasingly, as this article has established, the popular intersubjective acceptance of the social vision of the liberal order does play a central role in sustaining the continuity of liberal peace as the paradigm for peace formation in post-conflict societies. Cox (1992/1996, 151) once argued that ‘Hegemony expands and is maintained by the success of the dominant social strata’s practices and the appeal they exert to other social strata’. The normative propositions of liberal democracy have attained the status of hegemony in the ordering of the global society, and their social structures have not receded from defining the framework of action. As Lehti and Pennanen (2020, 29) noted, ‘Liberal peace formed the cornerstone of the refashioned, more global, Western-led liberal order’. It does not make it less neo-imperialist when operationalised in a non-Western society. However, its fundamental driver can only be located within the realm of its transformation from being a Western project to an intersubjective conception of how to organise society.

Acknowledgements

I thank Nicolas Lemay-Hébert, Jeremy Youde, Mathew Davies, Maria Tanyag and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the earlier versions of this manuscript. This research was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Babatunde F. Obamamoye

Babatunde F. Obamamoye is a sessional academic in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University and a faculty member at the Obafemi Awolowo University. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the Australian National University. His research interest focuses on African peace interventions, decolonial interventions, critical theory and world order(s).

Notes

1 Interview, researcher, Frankfurt, 1 July 2020.

2 Interview, scholar, Cape Town, 18 May 2020.

3 Interview, scholar, Canada, 19 May 2020.

4 Interview, African Union official, Addis Ababa, 6 August 2019.

5 Interview, African Ambassador to the AU, Addis Ababa, 18 September 2019.

6 Interview, AU official, Addis Ababa, 29 August 2019.

7 Interview, analyst, Pretoria, 3 June 2020.

8 Interview, scholar, Canada, 19 May 2020.

9 Interview, AU official, Addis Ababa, 29 August 2019.

10 Interview, analyst, Pretoria, 3 June 2020.

11 Interview, scholar, Pretoria, 3 June 2020.

12 Interview, AU official, Addis Ababa, 29 August 2019.

13 Interview, scholar, Canada, 19 May 2020.

14 Interview, AU official, Addis Ababa, 29 August 2019.