This article was downloaded by: [University of Kent]On: 20 November 2014, At: 13:49Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

African Security ReviewPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscriptioninformation:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rasr20

Explaining and understanding securitycooperation in AfricaPaul D WilliamsPublished online: 12 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: Paul D Williams (2010) Explaining and understanding security cooperation in Africa,African Security Review, 19:2, 97-105, DOI: 10.1080/10246029.2010.503069

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10246029.2010.503069

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, ouragents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to theaccuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions andviews expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are notthe views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not berelied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylorand Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs,expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantialor systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply,or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of accessand use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

ISSN 1024-6029 print / 2154-0128 online© 2010 Institute for Security StudiesDOI: 10.1080/10246029.2010.503069http://www.informaworld.com

African Security Review 19.2, June 2010, 97–105

Paul D Williams is Associate Professor in the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University, Washington, DC (pauldw@gwu.edu)

Explaining and understanding security cooperation in AfricaPaul D Williams

Introduction

In their seminal discussion of the challenges of studying international relations,

Martin Hollis and Steve Smith identifi ed two intellectual traditions that dominate the

social sciences.1 Drawing its inspiration from the natural sciences, one tradition looks

at events from an outsider’s perspective and searches for explanations of what caused

them. The other, rooted fi rmly in the traditions of history and sociology, provides

more of an insider’s account by trying to understand what events mean for the actors

who participate in them. Thus while analysts seeking explanations of events look for

causes; those seeking to understand events try to interpret their meaning. For Hollis and

Smith, these two approaches cannot be synthesised to produce a single comprehensive

account of international relations. Rather, they conclude that there are always at least two

plausible stories to tell about political developments.

Keywords African Union, constructivism, peacekeeping, regional arrangements, security community

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f K

ent]

at 1

3:49

20

Nov

embe

r 20

14

98 African Security Review 19.2 Institute for Security Studies

These different approaches – explaining and understanding – are directly relevant to

analysts of Africa’s security cooperation. As analysts, we need to do at least two things

associated with these traditions: decide how best to understand the extent and nature

of contemporary security cooperation between African states and explain how the

current state of affairs came about. On both these counts, I think there are elements of

Benedikt Franke’s book2 which need to be contested. First, I am not convinced by his

conclusion that the current state of security cooperation between Africa’s states should

be understood as representing either a type of ‘security community’ in the sense used by

Karl Deutsch or a Kantian ‘culture of anarchy’ in the sense used by Alexander Wendt.3

Second, I would challenge some of his explanations of how the new African Peace and

Security Architecture (APSA) took shape in the late 1990s and early 21st century.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me fi rst say that Franke is to be congratulated for

writing an important analysis of Africa’s security dynamics. His is one of the only books

available that speaks directly to specialists on African security and a broader audience

interested in international relations theory and the dynamics of international cooperation

more generally. Both groups will benefi t from engaging with his arguments and analysis.

In substantive terms, Franke’s book does three things particularly well.

First, chapters 3–6 provide a concise but useful historical overview of Africa’s inter-state

security cooperation. One can quibble with certain points of emphasis and interpretations

of particular events but overall Franke develops a broadly persuasive analysis which

allows him to contextualise his primary focus on developments since the mid-1990s.

Second, chapters 7–9 offer detailed descriptions of the development of two important

institutions within the new APSA: the African Standby Force and the Continental Early

Warning System. These chapters add empirical fl esh to his theoretical claims about the

dynamics of international cooperation. However, since both of these institutions remain

work in progress, his description of them could only ever represent a snapshot which has

already been overtaken by events.

Third, and most signifi cant, his book highlights how constructivist concepts from

international relations theory – notably collective identity formation, norm diffusion,

social learning and community-building – are a necessary part of understanding

Africa’s inter-state security dynamics. Franke suggests that his constructivist approach

should be seen as complementing rather than displacing more traditional realist and

liberal accounts of inter-state cooperation. This is probably the appropriate position to

adopt since providing evidence in support of a constructivist account is not the same

as falsifying the arguments made by realists and liberals. Nevertheless, it would have

been useful for him to clarify which elements of realism and liberalism are compatible

with his analysis and which are not. Partly for the reasons outlined by Hollis and Smith

above, I doubt that these distinct theoretical approaches can be combined as easily as

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f K

ent]

at 1

3:49

20

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Book Symposium 99

Franke suggests. For example, is the neorealist conception of an anarchic international

system in which polarity (defi ned in terms of the distribution of material capabilities)

dictates action really compatible with the constructivist idea that anarchy is what states

make of it?

As with any debate the point is to clarify differences of opinion as well as the common

ground. Suffi ce it to say that I agree with much of what Franke has written, including his

primary argument that constructivism offers a useful set of concepts for understanding

security dynamics within the African society of states. But as I noted above, I am not

convinced that we should understand contemporary Africa as a series of overlapping

security communities embedded within a Kantian culture of anarchy. Nor do I agree

with all of his explanations for the emergence of the new APSA. In the rest of this review

I will elaborate on both these points.

Understanding the new architecture

Franke is correct to point out that how we understand the current state of African

security cooperation is important. But I think he makes two dubious claims. First, he

suggests that the construction of the new APSA means that we should understand the

African Union as constituting (in Adler and Barnett’s terminology) a ‘loosely-coupled’

security community.4 He also describes the Southern African Development Community

(SADC) as a security community (pp 226–230) and implies that other regional

arrangements such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and

the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) would also qualify (p 235)

but he does not discuss these cases in as much detail. Second, and as a consequence, he

maintains that African states inhabit a Kantian culture of anarchy in the sense used by

Alexander Wendt.

While African governments can be said to have formed a society, it is too early to conclude

that they have formed a community. The central difference is that while states in a society

agree on shared procedural rules and norms for interaction this is a qualitatively different

condition from forming a community based on a consensus on substantive political

values related to understandings of justice, peace, democracy, security, and so forth.5 In

my own work, I have suggested that the contemporary African society of states can be

understood as undergoing a period of signifi cant normative turbulence precisely because

disagreements over substantive values remain evident. Specifi cally, a debate continues

over the degree to which African regimes should behave according to liberal values.6

Although some African governments have certainly tried to promote liberal conceptions

of governance and more human-centred ideas of security, overall it is clear that liberal

values have been internalised extremely unevenly among the AU members. This is not

surprising on a continent which houses some of the world’s most repressive regimes.7

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f K

ent]

at 1

3:49

20

Nov

embe

r 20

14

100 African Security Review 19.2 Institute for Security Studies

Franke is correct to note that compared to the regime constructed by the old Organisation

of African Unity, elements of the new APSA have moved in a distinctly liberal direction,

especially with regard to the greater emphasis placed on democratic forms of governance

and the need to promote human (not just regime) security. But we should not exaggerate

the political impact of the new institutional architecture. Put simply, these emerging

institutions and instruments have not fundamentally altered the nature of the African

state. Perhaps they will over the longer term, but so far the APSA has involved African

governments agreeing to build a range of interlocking institutions to address a range of

challenges. These challenges, however, have been defi ned in generic and abstract terms.

This obscures the lack of substantive consensus within the AU over which specifi c events

should trigger the use of these new instruments. The Union’s deep reluctance to invoke

article 4(h) of its Constitutive Act over Darfur – in spite of overwhelming evidence that

‘grave circumstances’ (as the AU defi nes them) were present – is a case in point.8 Thus, to

date, the APSA has involved African governments and their donors in building a range

of instruments without a political consensus over when or how to use them.

If communities in general require agreement over their core political values, then security

communities should require agreement over the fundamental issues of war and peace.

Franke argues that the defi ning characteristic of a security community is that its member

states agree not to engage in ‘bellicose activities’ (p 31). He then deploys Raimo Väyrynen’s

distinction between comprehensive security communities (where peace prevails at both

the inter-state and inter-societal levels) and inter-state security communities (where

member states are at peace with one another but large-scale violence is still possible within

them) to argue that the AU represents a security community despite the prevalence of

civil wars across the continent (p 33). There are three problems with this approach.

First, it is inaccurate to suggest that the AU’s members have dependable expectations of

peaceful relations with their fellow members. Since the AU was launched in 2002 there

have been armed confrontations between Ethiopia and Eritrea, Eritrea and Djibouti,

Sudan and Chad, Uganda and Rwanda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo

(DRC), and Ethiopia and the de facto authorities in Somalia.

Second, even when African governments have not fought openly with one another, they

have a long tradition of supporting insurgency movements to wage armed struggles

against neighbouring regimes. Prominent examples of such bellicose activities include

Sudan’s support for the Lord’s Resistance Army, Uganda’s support for the Sudan People’s

Liberation Movement/Army, Eritrea’s support for al-Shabaab and the Ogaden and Oromo

liberation fronts, the DRC’s support for the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda,

and Rwanda’s support for the National Congress for the Defence of the People.

The third problem is that Franke’s usage of security community has followed the recent

academic fashion of signifi cantly watering down Deutsch’s original understanding of the

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f K

ent]

at 1

3:49

20

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Book Symposium 101

concept. For Deutsch, the ultimate unit of analysis was people, not states. He therefore

rejected the idea that a security community could exist in territories where large-scale

internal violence occurred. In this sense I agree with Laurie Nathan’s argument that

‘domestic stability, defi ned as the absence of large-scale violence in a country, is a

necessary condition of a security community’.9 Understood in this manner, the claim that

Africa – the continent which during the last 20 years has suffered the highest proportion

of armed confl ict on the planet – should be characterised as the site of overlapping

security communities, makes a mockery of the term. To say that Sudan–Chad, Rwanda–

DRC, Ethiopia–Eritrea, etc, share relationships that are qualitatively similar to those

between the US–Canada, the Scandinavian states, or members of the European Union

(Deutsch’s original examples of pluralistic security communities) obscures far more than

it reveals and signifi cantly dilutes the concept’s analytical utility.

My second concern is that Franke’s approach to the concept of security communities

leads him to suggest that contemporary African security cooperation refl ects a Kantian

‘culture of anarchy’ in the sense used by Alexander Wendt (pp 25–26, 281–282). The

central problem here is that while Franke suggests that ‘a high degree of cooperation’

(p 25) between states is suffi cient to constitute a Kantian political culture, for Wendt

the key point was that states interacting within a Kantian culture had developed bonds

of friendship to the extent that ‘non-violence and team play are the norm’.10 I have

already noted how the contemporary African society of states falls short on the norm of

non-violence. But it also falls short with regard to friendship and team spirit. Can we

really see friendship between Museveni and al-Bashir or Déby and el-Bashir, Meles and

Isaias, Kagame and Kabila, Zuma and Mugabe? (The list could go on.) I would venture

that mutual mistrust between African leaders is as common as genuine friendship. Can

we really decisively conclude that because of the APSA, African governments view their

neighbours’ military assets only as common resources rather than as potential threats? I

think not. Similarly, when African governments have come under attack from domestic

insurgents we have rarely seen a unifi ed and consistent response from ‘Team Africa’.

Instead, the more common reaction has been that the continent fractures into camps

– some states supporting the incumbent regime, others lending support to the rebels.

Nor has a Team Africa approach been evident on other important issues related to

peace and security. In the recent debates about how best to reform the United Nations

Security Council, for instance, African governments were unable to agree on which

two states to nominate as the African representatives in a newly organised council.11

With regard to the responsibility to protect principle – the idea that it is unacceptable

for governments to massacre their own citizens and other states must work to prevent

this – African governments have exhibited directly opposing perspectives.12 And most

recently of all, we have witnessed open dissent from Team Africa’s decision (made at

the AU summit in Sirte in July 2009) to oppose the International Criminal Court’s

indictment of Sudan’s President, Omar el-Bashir, on charges of war crimes and crimes

against humanity.13

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f K

ent]

at 1

3:49

20

Nov

embe

r 20

14

102 African Security Review 19.2 Institute for Security Studies

Although none of these examples is to suggest that it is impossible to detect elements

of Kantian relationships among some of the continent’s states, to suggest the continent

operates according to a Kantian culture is deeply misleading.

Explaining the new architecture

In terms of explaining how the new APSA came about, Franke makes many sensible

points. Nevertheless, I think he overplays the signifi cance of the end of the Cold War,

underplays the impact of two crucial episodes in Somalia (1993) and Rwanda (1994), and

has a rose-tinted view of the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring

Group (ECOMOG) operation in Liberia (1990–1996) and its implications for the new

APSA.

Franke argues that ‘the end of the Cold War’ represents the “master variable” that helps

to explain many of the root causes’ of Africa’s contemporary security cooperation (p 102).

More specifi cally, he suggests that it ‘changed many of the underlying dynamics’ (p 214)

and ‘thus represented a watershed in how African states interacted with each other’

(p 215). He is correct in several respects: the end of the Cold War did reduce Africa’s

geostrategic importance, it did open up an opportunity to emphasise democracy and

human security issues, and it did generate some attempts to reform the OAU’s confl ict

management structures, most notably through the creation of the 1993 Mechanism for

Confl ict Prevention, Management and Resolution.

However, there were at least two important things the end of the Cold War did not

change. First, it did not fundamentally change the local political dynamics in Africa’s

many weak states (weak in terms of their domestic legitimacy). Regimes in such

countries continued to operate according to the logic of neo-patrimonialism in which

regime survival remained the primary goal.14 The only notable difference was that the

game took place on a new playing fi eld where offi cial recognition of the virtues of ‘good

governance’ and human rights became an important part of maintaining donor support.

This is important because although many of Africa’s armed confl icts were unavoidably

caught up in superpower politics, they were not fundamentally about the ideological

struggle between capitalism and communism. Consequently, the local political struggles

at the heart of these confl icts did not end with the passing of the Cold War. In relation

to the APSA, this means that the new architecture has been constructed on many of the

same political foundations as the old OAU structures. Second, apart from a signifi cant

spike between 1990 and 1994, the number of major armed confl icts on the African

continent remained roughly consistent during the 1980s and the period 1995 to 2002

(approximately 12 per year).15 This reminds us that ideas about how to deal with a post-

Cold War disorder cannot adequately explain the emergence of the new peace and

security architecture.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f K

ent]

at 1

3:49

20

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Book Symposium 103

In addition to the ending of the Cold War, two episodes were particularly important in

stimulating the emergence of the new APSA and infl uencing the form it has subsequently

assumed. The fi rst was the ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident of October 1993 when 18 US

soldiers were killed in Mogadishu during a botched attempt to arrest associates of the

Somali leader Mohammed Farrah Aidid. This episode left the US government (and

some of its allies) deeply allergic to the idea of deploying signifi cant numbers of their

own soldiers to Africa’s confl ict zones. It also increased their support for policies which

would allow African states to handle the continent’s peacekeeping needs without Western

soldiers. For their part, African governments learnt that the US was not prepared to

suffer even relatively minor political costs in the cause of ending Africa’s wars. Indeed,

in Somalia, the US was happy to leave behind basically the same situation which had

stimulated its intervention in the fi rst place: a country at war with itself and generating

huge levels of humanitarian suffering. Finally, the episode also generated a powerful

lesson for the people whom Christopher Clapham has dubbed the ‘peacekept’.16 In

particular, it suggested that if local belligerents could kill some (preferably Western)

peacekeepers, this might cause the entire mission to collapse. This tactic worked in

Rwanda in April 1994 when ten Belgian peacekeepers were killed and it nearly worked

in Sierra Leone in April 2000 when hundreds of peacekeepers were taken hostage by

the Revolutionary United Front rebels. All these factors have shaped the contemporary

debate about confl ict management in Africa.

The second crucial incident was the 1994 Rwandan genocide. This had several important

ramifi cations for African security cooperation. First, it showed that the UN was deeply

unreliable when it came to protecting civilians from mass atrocities. Although African

governments also did little to rescue the genocide’s victims, the episode highlighted how

politics at the Security Council made that body highly unlikely to ever conduct effective

civilian protection operations, especially in a strategically insignifi cant part of the

world like Africa. Second, it provided the central wake-up call to at least some African

governments. I think it was this tragedy more than any other which caused African

governments to re-assess their collective approach to confl ict management. Third,

Rwanda’s genocide meant that unlike the old OAU structures, the new APSA would

have to be designed with at least the potential to engage in collective enforcement action

in the face of mass atrocities against civilians. Fourth, Western guilt over the genocide

meant that fi nance, logistics and training support for African peacekeepers would be

available even if Western troops were unlikely to materialise.

My third concern about Franke’s explanation of the new APSA is the status he affords

to ‘the successful precedent set by the ECOWAS intervention in Liberia’s civil war in

August 1990’ (pp 213ff, 65–66). Although this operation was successful inasmuch it

demonstrated that a multinational African force could deploy to a confl ict zone, it was

a dire failure in several important respects.17 Consequently, it should not be used as a

model for thinking about contemporary peace operations. First, the manner in which

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f K

ent]

at 1

3:49

20

Nov

embe

r 20

14

104 African Security Review 19.2 Institute for Security Studies

the ECOMOG operation was established and authorised broke ECOWAS’s internal

rules and procedures. Second, it was not an intervention in the sense meant by article

4(h) of the AU Constitutive Act because it was initiated with the consent of the Liberian

government (headed at the time by Samuel Doe). In addition, the primary motive

behind ECOMOG was political (to protect Doe’s regime from Charles Taylor’s rebels)

rather than humanitarian (to ease the suffering of Liberia’s civilians). Third, ECOMOG

was a strategic failure because it ultimately failed to prevent Taylor from assuming the

presidency. Fourth, the high levels of ill-discipline, misconduct, theft and summary

executions of prisoners carried out by Nigerian soldiers, who constituted the bulk of the

ECOMOG force, stand as an important reminder of the dangers of using unprofessional

African armies to conduct peace operations. So, while it is important to remember the

ECOMOG mission in Liberia, it should be viewed as a cautionary tale of how not to

conduct peace operations in the future.

Conclusion

I would like to end by stressing my agreement with one of Franke’s central conclusions

– that the majority of African states have shown relatively little political and fi nancial

commitment to the current project of continental security cooperation. Franke

correctly notes that this uncomfortable fact ‘erodes the illusion’ that this is a genuinely

‘Pan-African project’ (p 264). In my view, what it suggests instead is that the extent

of genuine cooperation between African governments is relatively weak. The result is

that the continent’s new peace and security architecture has been built without a strong

consensus over its political foundations. Until such a consensus exists, Africa’s new

security institutions will have feet of clay and attempts to ensure peace and security on

the continent should not rely on African governments alone.

Notes

1 Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, Explaining and understanding international relations, Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1991.

2 Benedikt Franke, Security cooperation in Africa: a reappraisal, Boulder, Colo: FirstForumPress, 2009.

3 See Karl Deutsch, S A Burrell, R A Kann, M Lee Jr, M Lichterman, R E Lindgren, F L Loewenheim and

R W van Wagenen, Political community and the North Atlantic area, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press, 1957; Alexander Wendt, Social theory of international politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1999.

4 See Emanuel Adler and Michael N Barnett (eds), Security communities, Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1998. It was notable that this volume’s case studies did not include an example from Africa.

5 To cite Hedley Bull and Adam Watson’s classic defi nition, an international society refers to ‘a group

of states (or, more generally, a group of independent political communities) which not merely form a

system, in the sense that the behaviour of each is a necessary factor in the calculations of the others, but

also have established by dialogue and consent common rules and institutions for the conduct of their

relations, and recognize their common interest in maintaining these arrangements’. Hedley Bull and

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f K

ent]

at 1

3:49

20

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Book Symposium 105

Adam Watson, Introduction, in Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (eds), The expansion of international society,

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984, 1.

6 Paul D Williams, From non-intervention to non-indifference: the origins and development of the African

Union’s security culture, African Affairs 106(423) (2007), 253–279.

7 See Freedom House’s annual publication, Freedom in the world, http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.

cfm?page=15 (accessed 10 November 2009).

8 See United Nations, Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to the Secretary-General,

pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1564 (2004) of 18 September 2004 (UN doc S/2005/60, 25 January

2005).

9 Laurie Nathan, Domestic instability and security communities, European Journal of International Relations

12(2) (2006), 277.

10 Wendt, Social theory of international politics, 297ff.

11 James Traub, The best intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the era of American world power, New York:

Picador, 2006, 400.

12 Paul D Williams, The ‘responsibility to protect’, norm localisation and African international society,

Global Responsibility to Protect 1(3) (2009), 392–416.

13 The most notable dissent has come from Botswana, South Africa and Uganda. See Human Rights Watch,

Memorandum for the eighth session of the International Criminal Court Assembly of States Parties, November 2009,

9, http://www.hrw.org/en/node/86458 (accessed 30 November 2009).

14 See Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz, Africa works, Oxford: James Currey, 1998.

15 See Monty G Marshall, Confl ict trends in Africa, 1946–2004: a macro-comparative perspective, London:

Department for International Development, 2006.

16 Christopher Clapham, Being peacekept, in Oliver Furley and Roy May (eds), Peacekeeping in Africa,

Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998.

17 See, Herbert M Howe, Ambiguous order: military forces in African states, Boulder, Colo: Lynne Rienner,

2001, chapter 4; Adekeye Adebajo, Liberia’s civil war, Boulder, Colo: Lynne Rienner, 2002; Katharina P

Coleman, International organisations and peace enforcement, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007,

chapter 3.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f K

ent]

at 1

3:49

20

Nov

embe

r 20

14