Ademola Araoye
The post-colonial state system in Africa is in crisis. For some, hopefully a terminal one that would in the longue duree herald the emergence of a structure of consolidated continental social organization that uplifts the peoples of the continent from the tangents into the mainstream of global developments. Against this backdrop, the advocacy in the week by Julius Malema for the actualization of the continental republic as the ultimate solution to the myriad of Africa’s problems was timely. Meanwhile, in the face of the crisis, state establishments motorized by the entrenched culture of partisan interest articulation of the respective dominant political elites, have resorted to the panic button. In a classic response of the modal post-colonial state to the dystopian consequences of significant derogation of the legitimacy of the state and the turbulence deriving from the decay of the fundamentals across the universe of enfeebled states, there has lately been in West Africa, and preeminently in Nigeria, undue focus on establishing new transnational military commands. The deployment of military force has long been touted as the ultimate instrument to safeguard national security, however that nebulous term is conveniently defined. Yet, after historic failures of brute kinetic interventions by both local and international forces to defeat irresolvable crisis of the post-colonial state, it is strange that the futility and paradox of expanding the killing fields of West Africa to combat sprawling insecurity has yet to dawn on policy makers. Along with this is the call for the development of new military doctrines. These have been accompanied by exhortations directed at the military institutions to play the role of the clean-up lady of the mess traceable to historic irresponsibility and blatant criminality of the political elites. Admittedly, the top military hierarchy is part of this group. These elites have undoubtedly been largely responsible for the parlous state of the African state. The constant recourse to the instruments of coercion, in conceptual expressions and in practical engagements, though erroneous as the main policy instrument, is conventionally understood as the panacea to immutable comprehensive structural frailties of the state in the context of the decomposition of statehoods across the global universe.
There is perhaps a redeeming caveat to all this. The difficult state of affairs of African statehood may not be unrelated to the timing and manner of its emergence in the trajectory of the Westphalian state as the dominant model of social organization of society. The post-colonial polity is the last variant in the evolution of the Westphalian state. This genre of state was mechanically inspired rather than through an organic evolutionary trajectory. It emerged at a time when the legitimacy of the use of force in state and, in particular, interstate relations had climaxed in a catastrophic global conflagration a second time within half a century in the twentieth century. The centrality of the state was therefore on a back foot, even as international commerce in interstate relations created new impetus for global relations. In that evolved setting, the rise of liberalism as a governing principle of human interaction was whittling down the use of force even within the state. It was at this time that the incipient post-colonial state inherited force as a repudiated, antiquated and delegitimized instrument to build the state and forcibly forge a new nations out of the chaos of post WWII. The new mechanical states imitated the old fashioned modalities of state building of older states such as Italy, France and Germany. Even while there remained a residual tolerance for force in the early years of its formation, the tragedy is that the new leaders of post-colonial states turned out to be wounding pioneers who appropriated state power to build personality cults and consolidate familial and ethnic hegemonies. Their objective was to assure their personal or familial perpetual control of the state. Hence, from the very inception, nation building went awry in producing states that had deconsolidated their capacity as potential nations. With the state was delinked from the people, coercion acquired the character of the main instrument for control. Contemporary approaches to instability have reflected that unfortunate legacy.
Recent pronouncements emanating from institutional strategic policy mills on national security have been consistent with this legacy. Frameworks for managing and resolving conflict would seem to deliberately deflect consequential elemental realities on ground. These deflections are associated with the fixations on the culture of the awry beginnings of the state described earlier. There is thus delink between the facts and the conveniently assumed sources of state instability. This analytic disconnect across all realms, including defense, national and regional insecurity and state power in relation to society. Such laxity in orientation to empiricism to social problem solving in a millennium with vastly transfigured relationship between the state and the citizen easily counts as a cardinal deficiency of the policy formulation process. In the calculus of state decay as well is a radically changed external environment populated by powerful non-state interest formations whose activities impinge and have proven definitive to the bumpy trajectory of statehoods across the globe. The reconfigurations impact both at the level of international and national security. Basically, the doctrine of national security, the favorite alibi of failed establishments, focuses mainly on internal dynamics within the nation state. The concept, a paradox in the post-colonial setting, came at a time when the nation state was viewed as not only the dominant actor but virtually the only actor recognized in the international system. The ascent of liberalism in post WWII diluted the legitimacy of unimpeded use force in internal affairs of the state that was championed under a receding dominance of realist philosophy.
Accordingly, under the transformed circumstances brought on in part by the technological and associated transitions to the digital age, principles underpinning policy and strategy resting on the deployment of coercion within the state are suspect. The decision to seek to build a regional force of over a quarter of a million to fight terrorism and the call for a New African Defence Doctrine, announced at the maiden of a presumably continental African Chiefs of Defence Staff Summit by President Bola Tinubu goes against the grain of contemporary progressive thinking in socio-political engineering for enduring peace. In any case, it is submitted that beyond the gimmickry of summits for domestic flexing, the critical strategic imperatives and undercurrents of continental politics render such formations impractical at this time. Indicative are recent manifestations of dissonances in political values and approaches to radical political developments in West Africa at the African Union. The week before, the Chief of Defense Staff was propagating the doctrine of citizen self-defense in the face of the frustrating inability of the Nigerian state to definitively contain rampaging alien terrorists, (sorry bandits) that have ransacked whole regions. These elements have defied perennial declarations of victory over them by coercive instruments of the state. In this, he reaffirmed the position of a respected old Chief of Staff who called on his people to arm themselves for self-defense as their assailants had done under the nose of the military deployed to protect their communities. The ECOWAS plan to mobilize 260 young men under arms dedicated to the fight against terrorism may thus need a rethink. The proposed counter-terrorism structure is projected to cost $2.5 billion. In all this, the ranking concerns relate to the seeming rejection of a determined search for alternative non-lethal ideas to direct conflict management and resolution: Where are the Think Tanks of the kinds to enunciate and permanently revise strategies to contain, if not resolve, emerging challenges to social order? On the physical side, where are the credible platforms that aggregate scientific thinking, even if puny for now, into practical assets to solve the challenges peculiar to us? And where are the foundations created by the more endowed in society to advance benevolent visions that expand our policy horizons? As I write our university professors are engaged in pre-strike protests across the nation to warm up in readiness for another cycle of perennial closures of our feeble bastions of intellectual explorations.
In the meantime, a few preliminary observations to advance salient delineations may be apt to precede the other substantive illuminations central to this discourse. To begin, the concepts of defense and national security are often confused. Conflating the two concepts has been a traditionally troublesome way of thinking. Yet it is pervasive across the universe of strategic thinkers. In literal terms, the doctrines developed around the two frameworks were validated by the context of the then incipient Cold War with the convenient narrative of strife between competing ideological camps. The reality, however, was that the ideological bifurcation of West and East blocs was a contest between powerful, militarized states with hegemonic ambitions seeking to divide the world into orbits of uncontested control. In that endeavor, neither side sought to balance power, apology to a faux tradition, but rather hegemony. Under the ambit of the two intertwining doctrines of securing the nation and defense of democracy the United States affirmed that it would provide political, military and economic assistance to all “democratic nations” perceived to be under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. The essence of the doctrine however was that it established the principle of the U.S. commitment to preventing the takeover of any nations by communist regimes. These external defense postures were linked to an expanded interpretation of protecting the security of the homeland-national security. The perimeters of national security operations dove tailed into disparate territorial defense operations abroad. The United States and its allies or subordinated European bloc defined what regime was communist or not. As far as Africa was concerned, it did not matter what the true nature of the local regime was. Under completely different circumstances, faced with myriad of both similar and dissimilar challenges that are both internal and those that traverse state boundaries as well as linked to its immediate sub region, global platforms, including trainees in the art form from post-colonial environments appropriated the thinking of the intellectual overlords. Otherwise, the parameters defining the concepts of national security and defense are distinct. The police and para-military bodies handle the former. In Nigeria, while the police lead on the physical front, other dimensions of national security are pursued by such diverse bodies as the Directorate of State Security (DSS), National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). The Armed forces are responsible for the latter. The intelligences services are at the intersection of both national security and territorial defense.
Meanwhile, as Ronald Steele highlights, even before profound structural and contextual transformations diminishing the centrality of coercion in relation to state and society brought on by the digital revolution, the idea of national security has been central to the apparatus of government. Notions of keeping the state safe had been preeminent in the calculus of national security given the brutal realities of international life and sober perspectives that emerged at the end of the Second World War. The consequences of the failure of the League of Nations, the first global inter-governmental organization founded in 1920 to maintain world peace and promote international cooperation further demonstrated the bankruptcy of unimpeded and unregulated use of force-war. Arising from basic theoretical assumptions of the anarchic character of the external environment in the states system, state defense is externally focused. However, the danger that an eye for an eye maxim could render the whole humanity had sunk in. The imperative to study the phenomenon of force became a distinct discipline as generals and politicians alike became mindful of the devastating consequences of lethal conflict. Lawrence Freedman notes that thoughtful statesmen and generals turned to members of the academy for help in devising policies that avoided both war and appeasement. That underlined the necessity to develop frameworks to balance between war and suasion. International security thus addresses concerns related to force: its nature, its use, resistance to it and modalities of its calibrated deployment, including its limits with a view to rekindling robust human interactions that embrace and integrate non-lethal complementary instruments of conflict resolution. The Geneva Convention and laws of war expound some of these. Beyond treaties and protocols, an emerged and engaged international society, which is distinct from international community of states, is predictably vocal on breaches of informally acknowledged limits by warring parties and, more importantly, even in relations between the state and society. The formalized informal bodies also monitor egregious violations of the terms of the social contract within states.
*Professor Ademola Araoye is a retired official of the United Nations and former Director of Abuja Leadership Center, a TETFUND Center of Excellence in Public Governance and Leadership at the University of Abuja. He is author of Sources of Conflict in the Post- Colonial African State (AWP, 2012).
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