Defensive development, combative contradictions: towards an international political sociology of global militarism in Africa

Abstract

Drawing on international political sociology, this article shows how the merger of development and security has become part of the ideational architecture that facilitates a new ‘feel-good’ militarism in Africa. Contemporary international reform efforts are designed to restrain military power in the name of development, democracy and civilian oversight, but also to strengthen the coercive capacities of African security institutions and make them more efficient in the global fight against violent extremism. Such defensive development efforts have implications for the historically problematic relationship of the African state with modern forms of organised force, reconfiguring and recalibrating relations and dynamics between the state, military forces and external actors. The article concludes that defensive development is fraught with combative contradictions and risks becoming the handmaiden not only of increased militaristic violence, but also of oppression and the restriction of freedom and democracy.

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Defensive development, combative contradictions: towards an international
political sociology of global militarism in Africa
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DOI: 10.1080/14678802.2019.1688960
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Defensive development, combative contradictions:
towards an international political sociology of
global militarism in Africa
Rita Abrahamsen
To cite this article: Rita Abrahamsen (2019) Defensive development, combative contradictions:
towards an international political sociology of global militarism in Africa, Conflict, Security &
Development, 19:6, 543-562, DOI: 10.1080/14678802.2019.1688960
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ARTICLE
Defensive development, combative contradictions: towards
an international political sociology of global militarism in
Africa
Rita Abrahamsen
Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
ABSTRACT
Drawing on international political sociology, this article shows how
the merger of development and security has become part of the
ideational architecture that facilitates a new ‘feel-good’militarism
in Africa. Contemporary international reform efforts are designed to
restrain military power in the name of development, democracy
and civilian oversight, but also to strengthen the coercive capacities
of African security institutions and make them more efficient in the
global fight against violent extremism. Such defensive develop-
ment efforts have implications for the historically problematic rela-
tionship of the African state with modern forms of organised force,
reconfiguring and recalibrating relations and dynamics between
the state, military forces and external actors. The article concludes
that defensive development is fraught with combative contradic-
tions and risks becoming the handmaiden not only of increased
militaristic violence, but also of oppression and the restriction of
freedom and democracy.
KEYWORDS
Africa; militarism;
civil-military relations;
development; security;
security sector reform;
international political
sociology
In their classic volume on the military and militarism in Africa, Eboe Hutchful and
Abdoulaye Bathily lament the continuing ‘problematic relationship of the African state
with modern forms of organised force –the very basis of statehood’.
1
The state, they
observe, depends on such instruments for its survival, yet seems incapable of controlling
them once unleashed, or of maximising their efficiency, or of exercising a legitimate and
effective monopoly over them. Two decades later, the question of the state’s relationship
to organised violence is as pertinent and pressing as it was at the time of the volume’s
publication. When Hutchful and Bathily’s research programme began in 1988, the
military grasp on power in Africa appeared secure and even unassailable. By the early
1990s, as the wave of democratisation swept across the continent, military regimes
retreated, leading the more optimistic observers to comment that military rule had
suddenly gone out of fashion.
2
By the time the volume was published in 1998, the
continued power of military autocrats to blunt the process of democratisation was
already visible, as were the absence of demilitarisation and the reappearance of the
military coup.
3
Today militarism is again on the rise, although the geopolitical context
and the political dynamics have changed.
CONTACT Rita Abrahamsen rita.abrahamsen@uottawa.ca
CONFLICT, SECURITY & DEVELOPMENT
2019, VOL. 19, NO. 6, 543–562
https://doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2019.1688960
© 2019 King’s College London

This article follows in the tradition of Hutchful and Bathily’s study of militarism and
militarisation and seeks to capture some of the historical shifts and political and
ideational trends that influence and condition the contemporary problematic relation-
ship of the African state with modern forms of organised force. As many observers
have commented, present-day militarism –broadly defined as the preparation for war,
its normalisation and legitimation
4
–differs in important ways from that of the past,
especially in its relationship to the values and practices of development and
humanitarianism.
5
While ministries of defence and military establishments remain
key actors and promoters of militarism, they have been joined by a host of agents
normally considered to be in the service of international peace and development.
Various kinds of ‘do-gooders’, as Andrew Bacevich puts it, are often the most enthu-
siastic supporters of contemporary militarism, seeking to ‘harness military power to
their efforts to do good’.
6
The manner in which the merger of development and
security has constituted development and humanitarian actors as key vehicles of
a new global militarism has helped produce a normative space where military values
and force can be invoked in defence of civilian and humanitarian ends, and military
actors and solutions have penetrated and gained acceptance as natural, plausible and
legitimate within areas of social, political and economic life previously considered
outside their purview.
7
This ‘feel-good militarism’resulting from the marriage of
military force and development ideologies has important implications for the relation-
ship between the African state and modern forms of organised force, in large part
because it reconfigures and recalibrates relations and dynamics between the state,
military forces and external actors.
The article outlines the broad contours of these emerging relations and dynamics. Its
point of departure is international political sociology and the observation that militarism
is always historically constructed and context specific, produced in social interaction,
translation and competition between multiple and varied actors, norms, technologies and
agendas. Militarism must therefore be studied at the intersection of the global and the
local, with careful attention to their interaction and imbrication.
8
At a time when African
states are the target of wide-ranging international efforts to reform and strengthen their
coercive institutions and capacities, the article pays particular attention to the external
dimensions of militarism. In this respect it takes its inspiration from Charles Tilly’s
cautionary observations regarding the ‘external drift’of state formation.
9
Unlike the
‘internal’European state formation process described by Tilly, other states and military
organisations increasingly receive their resources and legitimacy from without and they
therefore do not need to forge the kind of mutual ties that constrained the relationships
between European rulers and ruled. This drift from the ’internal’to the ‘external’, Tilly
suggests, gives the managers of military organisations ‘extraordinary power’and strong
incentives to seize power.
10
Contemporary international reform efforts are in part designed precisely to prevent
such outcomes, and to restrain military power in the name of democracy, human rights
and civilian oversight. They are also, however, centrally concerned to strengthen the
coercive capacities of African security institutions, making them more efficient in the
global fight against violent extremism. As such, this form of defensive development gives
rise to a series of combative contradictions that strike at the heart of the problematic
relationship of the African state with modern forms of organised force and risks
544 R. ABRAHAMSEN

becoming the handmaiden not only of increased militaristic violence, but also of oppres-
sion and the restriction of freedom and democracy.
The article begins by outlining key elements of an international political sociology of
militarism, suggesting that this is an analytical approach ideally suited to capturing the
historically evolving relationship between states and militaries in Africa, as well as the
diversity of politico-military relations across the continent. The argument is situated at
the level of broad sociological and political change, rather than case study specificity, and
the second part of the article draws attention to the geopolitical and ideological shifts that
condition the new global militarism. More specifically, it shows how the ideational
merger of development and security is a form of global power/knowledge that signifi-
cantly conditions the contemporary relationship between the African state and military
force. Even as many of the policy prescriptions and interventions conducted in the name
of development and security remain focused on small-scale, everyday, bureaucratic or
humanitarian tasks, these practices help produce the insouciance towards military solu-
tions that is so characteristic of contemporary politics.
Towards an international political sociology of militarism
There is not one ‘International Political Sociology’, nor one methodology that must be
universally employed to qualify as a political sociology of the international. As the editors
of the Routledge Handbook on the discipline suggest, international political sociology is
a‘potentially emerging field of study’that is constantly in flux and that should ‘not coalesce
under a single epistemologico-methodologic banner’.
11
Instead, the editors encourage
plurality and interdisciplinarity, inviting an engagement with the three concepts that
make up its name –international, political, sociology –their connections, tensions and
independent lives.
12
Accordingly, what follows below is not a credo or methodological
manifesto for the study of militarism, but rather suggestions for how international political
sociology can provide thinking tools for its analysis and understanding.
As a problématique, militarism lends itself perfectly to explorations from an interna-
tional political sociology perspective. Many of the classic works on militarism originate
from within the discipline of historical and political sociology, linking the emergence of
different forms of militarism to particular types of social forces and historically formed
social relations between soldiers and civilians, militaries and states.
13
For Martin Shaw,
for example, militarism in any given period is shaped by two main determinants: ‘the
typical social forces mobilized in military power’and ‘the social relations of military
power’.
14
The first refers to the types of soldier recruited, whether conscripted or
voluntary, and the forms of economic, political and cultural resources mobilised to
engage various social constituencies, such as classes, peasants, ethnicities and religious
groups. The second determinant centres on ‘the always potentially antagonistic relation
between armed actors (combatants) and civilians (non-combatants)’, and includes the
relations and hierarchies between military institutions and society in times of peace as
well as war.
15
Such approaches accordingly do not subscribe to a strict civil-military
distinction, but focus instead on how military institutions, values and attitudes are
embedded, albeit to varying degrees, within society. It is this embeddedness in particular
societies that gives militarism its specificity; it is not static, nor ontologically given, but
always historically constructed and context specific.
CONFLICT, SECURITY & DEVELOPMENT 545

To date most sociological and political explorations have captured this specificity
through a domestic focus, studying militarism primarily as a national phenomenon and
a relationship of state-society and citizen-solider. This is the case with many analyses of
militaries, civil-military relations and military coups in Africa, and the South more
generally, which tend to recognise external influences mostly in passing or as specific
instances of foreign intervention.
16
Hutchful and Bathily, for example, clearly acknowl-
edge the importance of the geopolitical context, but most of the contributions to their
volume are single case studies and remain trapped within the territorial boundaries of the
nation state.
17
Similarly, Robert Luckham calls for an integrated approach, but notes that
discussions of African military establishments have continued to leave out or downplay
the international dimension.
18
Much as such single cases are important and provide
invaluable insights into the situation in particular countries, they frequently fail to
acknowledge the manner in which national articulations of militarism are deeply imbri-
cated with the global, shaped by geopolitics, alliance-making, and dominant international
norms, technologies and ideologies. At best, such connections are relegated to secondary
importance. An international political sociology, by comparison, would see militarism as
always simultaneously local and global, and a key challenge of studying the forces that
shape and structure contemporary militarism is accordingly to capture at one and the
same time the local and global, and their intersection in particular locations.
19
In African countries, such an approach would entail taking account of the historical
specificity of each country’s military institutions, and most importantly the manner in
which the colonial origin of military forces bequeathed a clear legacy and shaped the
relationship between state and society. Colonial armies were fashioned to serve the needs
of empire, and at the time of independence most armed forces were regarded as vestiges
of imperial rule; they generally had few high-ranking African officers, and for a variety of
reasons their recruits were often drawn from non-elite groups in rural and peripheral
areas.
20
This profoundly shaped the social relations of military power, albeit in different
ways in each territory. In Nigeria, for example, the punitive activities of the West African
Frontier Force (WAFF) during colonialism continued to colour the population’s atti-
tudes towards the army for years to come, especially in the north.
21
In Tanzania, the
Tanganyika Rifles earned the nickname of a ‘refuge for up-country illiterates’,
22
whereas
in Senegal and many other former French colonies where force had been organised along
territorial lines, independence often entailed the creation of new armies more or less
from scratch.
23
The transition from colonial rule to independence, and the subsequent attempts by
political leaders to fashion and control armed force, thus conditioned emerging state-
military relations.
24
Initially, as Ruth First observes, because most armed forces were
perceived as alien impositions they were not expected to play an influential role in the
newly independent countries.
25
In the immediate post-independence period, however,
Africa’s militaries expanded rapidly; the total number of soldiers increased from 199,000
in 1960 to over 1.3 million in 1986, a growth of over 684 per cent.
26
Within a short
decade, militaries were firmly established as prominent and often dominant features of
the continent’s political landscape, and during the 1960s, military coups became an
established route to political power. By the 1970s more than half of all African states,
and up to 65 per cent of the continent’s population, were governed by military regimes.
By the 1980s, civilian rule was ‘a statistical deviation’.
27
546 R. ABRAHAMSEN

Many accounts of this period, and of military coups in general, are tinted by a degree
of condescension and steeped in a modernisation paradigm that depicts African mili-
taries as backwards, unprofessional and as failing to live up to western standards of civil-
military relations.
28
By comparison, an analysis informed by international political
sociology would not necessarily, and in my opinion should not, eschew political judge-
ment and possible condemnation of militarism, military coups and violence, but rather
than expect African politico-military relations to conform to a pre-defined norm or
pattern, it would seek explanations grounded in a country’s particular (colonial) history
and socio-economic development. It would, in other words, seek to understand Africa’s
forms of militarism as the outcome of specific social forces and historically formed
relations between soldiers and civilians, not as a form of deviance or failure as measured
against an already established universal norm. As such, it would follow in the broad
tradition of analysis mapped out by Hutchful and Bathily, by situating the question of
military power in the context of how social and political orders are assembled, how they
endure and how they change over time.
The importance of colonialism in understanding militarism and civil-military rela-
tions in Africa also points to the centrality of the global. International influences did not
end with independence. Far from it. As Sunday Abogonye Ochoche notes, a key aspect of
Africa’s militarisation in the post-independence period was ‘its highly dependent
nature’.
29
Local production of arms was almost non-existent, and the continent accord-
ingly relied on external actors for most of its advanced weapons and armaments.
Education and training of the rapidly expanding forces similarly continued to be pro-
vided externally, mostly by the former colonial powers and by the USA and the USSR.
Highly sought-after opportunities at prestigious military academies like Sandhurst and
St. Cyr ensured that the armed forces –more than any other institution on the continent –
continued to look to the outside world for professional reference groups and ideologies.
30
In the words of Robert Price, ‘the ideologies, values and traditions’that were ‘carefully
impressed on the students’were ‘those of the European military’. While such external
socialisation was inevitably tempered by national traditions and values, it is evident in
various ways across the continent, including in never-colonised Ethiopia, which turned
to the Swedes to set up the air force, the Norwegians to build the navy, while the British,
Americans and Russians were centrally involved from the 1930s onwards.
31
Geopolitics was another crucial factor. African states were born into a bipolar world and
the Cold War and its attendant international political economy had a profound influence
on the continent’s emerging forms of militarism. Marek Thee, for example, argues that
great-power militarism was ‘largely the root cause and the driving force behind the global
spread of militarism’in this period,
32
and the ideological struggle between the East and the
West conditioned key aspects of militarism, including arms transfers and coup d’états. The
consequences of such external relations were multiple, although not easily disentangled
from domestic forces and dynamics. While Cold War geopolitics sometimes led to external
support and encouragement for military intervention, and also determined military assis-
tance, it by no means entailed the passivity or lack of agency on behalf of African militaries
and political leaders, although it structured and conditioned their room for manoeuvre.
Price, for example, speculated that the officer corps’strong peer group association with
former colonial powers could have serious implication for state stability, contributing to
the military overthrow of Ghana’sfirst President Kwame Nkrumah in 1966.
33
External
CONFLICT, SECURITY & DEVELOPMENT 547

dependence and global influences do not, in other words, negate local agency. Rather, an
international political sociology encourages the abandonment of the inside/outside dichot-
omy in favour of an analysis that seeks to capture the relative power and authority of each
actor within global assemblages that defy territorial boundaries.
34
An international political sociology of militarism would not focus only on the actors,
but also the ideas, discourses, norms, values and technologies that make it possible and
powerful. Militarism is a notoriously slippery concept, and the relationship between
military ideologies and military practices is differently perceived within the abundant
definitions of the concept. Among the many centred on ideology and beliefs, the most
well-known is found in the seminal work of Alfred Vagts where militarism is defined as
that ‘complex of feelings which rank military institutions and ways above the ways of
civilian life, carrying military mentality and modes of acting and decision into the civilian
sphere’.
35
Others focus less on the ideological ‘glorification’of military power and more
on militaristic behaviour, including military spending and the utilisation of armed
force.
36
The propensity to utilise force to resolve conflict, or to prefer military over
non-military means of conflict resolution, are needless to say salient aspects of militar-
ism, as are policy outcomes such as increased military spending and militaristic violence.
As Anna Stavrianakis and Jan Selby argue, however, a focus on outcomes alone risks
overlooking the sociological, ideological and political processes that underpin militarism
and that may lead to militaristic behaviours.
37
Michael Mann’sdefinition is helpful in this respect. For him, militarism involves both
‘a set of attitudes’(or what might otherwise be called ideology and beliefs) and ‘social
practices’that ‘regard war and the preparation for war as a normal and desirable social
activity’.
38
A key question thus becomes which social actors transmit militaristic attitudes
and values into society, embed them within institutions and make them relevant and
influential in particular settings at particular times?
39
For this to happen, neither ideas,
nor practices alone will suffice; the ideational is important for the social practices of
militarism to take hold, and ideas and values create political subjects willing to acquiesce
and support military practices, including increased military spending, more frequent use
of violence, and expanded recruitment. Militarism, in other words, is not only about acts
of military violence, and its power and legitimacy can be entrenched and sustained by
relatively pacific contexts and actors.
40
As Vagts reminds us, militarism ‘flourishes more
in peacetime than in war’, when its ends are not necessarily identical with ‘the winning of
victory’.
41
In this sense, militarism entails an acceptance of the notion that ‘being
supportive of the military –and the nation itself –means categorically accepting and
supporting whatever uses of the military the government deems necessary’.
42
Contemporary global militarism unfolds in a different geopolitical climate from that
of the immediate independence period and the Cold War. There are of course conti-
nuities, as illustrated for example by the manner in which armaments still flow to the
continent primarily via the global arms trade and by military support for allies in faraway
places.
43
Friend or foe, however, is now determined primarily by the seemingly never-
ending ‘war on terror’rather than by Cold War dynamics, invoking different ideological
narratives, new protagonists and antagonists, and multiple plots and sub-plots playing
themselves out in numerous settings. Today’s global militarism is also underpinned and
legitimised by different ideas, values and norms of development and humanitarianism,
and transmitted into society and embedded within institutions by different actors than in
548 R. ABRAHAMSEN

the past. A contemporary international political sociology of militarism accordingly
requires an understanding of the merger of development and security,
44
and the manner
in which various actors on the continent are empowered by today’s militarism and able to
shape and mould it to their own advantages and distinct interests. With an eye to how the
problematic relationship of the African state with modern forms of organised force
currently manifests itself, the rest of this article is dedicated to unpacking the contours
of how development and security actors respectively influence this relationship and help
transmit militaristic attitudes and values into society, embed them in institutions and
make them relevant and influential.
In the name of development
In his provocatively entitled book Today We Drop Bombs, Tomorrow We Build Bridges,
Peter Gill declares foreign aid ‘a casualty of war’.
45
Gill shows how the war on terror has
politicised development assistance to an extent never seen before, and how this in turn
has eroded the much-treasured neutral space for humanitarian action. As a result, aid
workers are now increasingly an active target in conflict, perceived by diverse insurgents
as partial participants or belligerents advancing the interests of Northern countries rather
than helping civilians and innocent victims of war. Gill’s analysis is undoubtedly correct
but the relationship can also be reversed: it is not only that foreign aid has become
a casualty of war. Foreign aid and development discourses have also on occasion
facilitated war and more generally supported the extension of military activities and
the penetration of military actors and solutions into more and more areas of the globe.
From today’s vantage point it is easy to forget the relative novelty of this merger of
development and security and hence underestimate the extent to which ‘dropping bombs
and building bridges’have become fused in an all-encompassing vision of intervention
and state-building. Of course, security and development have never been entirely
divorced; suffice to recall Robert McNamara’s argument in 1968 that in ‘a modernizing
society security is development [. . .] Security is development and without development
there can be no security’.
46
Prescient as this statement by the then US Secretary of
Defence undoubtedly is, it belies the actual separation of security and development at
the time. In the past, security issues were rarely considered an intrinsic part of develop-
ment policy, and the idea that aid money would be spent on police and militaries was
anathema to a development approach centred on economic and social improvements.
Development workers would generally withdraw when conflict occurred, and even at the
height of the Cold War, when aid was conditional on ideological allegiance and geopo-
litical support, development projects focused on welfare and growth, not security.
47
The
close association between aid allocation and crude power politics during the Vietnam
War cemented this division: a plethora of US development agencies provided assistance
as part of the American military effort, and many NGOs and government agencies like
USAID came to be viewed as agents of US foreign policy.
48
The result was a deep
‘institutional crisis’within the development sector in the early 1970s, and a subsequent
realisation of the need to defend development budgets with reference to the development
needs of the recipient rather than the security interests of the donors.
49
Today, by contrast, development assistance is no longer justified simply with reference
to poverty reduction and the needs of distant others. It is also about national defence, and
CONFLICT, SECURITY & DEVELOPMENT 549

must therefore make an ‘optimal contribution to national security within its overall
objective of poverty reduction’, as the UK’s Strategic Defence and Security Review
emphasised in 2010.
50
Former US President Barak Obama similarly forcefully defended
a view of development assistance as not only a ‘moral imperative’, but also ‘a strategic and
economic imperative’.
51
This insistence that development assistance must ‘kill two birds
with one stone’by simultaneously supporting poverty reduction and the national security
of the donor state has its origin in the merger of development and security, and the
gradual securitisation of underdevelopment.
52
Initially this merger entailed a critique of excessive militarisation in the South, but
over time the conceptualisation of security and development as the two sides of the same
coin helped produce a normative space where development is valued for its contribution
to national security and where military force can be invoked in defence of civilian and
humanitarian ends. As part of this process development discourses and actors have
become crucial vectors for the transmission of militaristic attitudes and values, and the
merger of development and security has also embedded military and security actors
within development practices, making them both recipients and implementers of assis-
tance and giving them a strong voice within development programming. Together, often
working side by side, development and security actors thus help expand and entrench
military responses as legitimate solutions to a variety of challenges previously considered
the exclusive purview of development.
Security sector reform (SSR) is a prime example. Since its emergence as an entirely new
form of development intervention in the 1990s, SSR has expanded rapidly and according to
OECD data, Western donors in 2011 carried out SSR projects worth almost US$1 billion,
representing a tripling since 2005.
53
By now virtually every African country has imple-
mented some version of this reform package,
54
although the nature and focus of reform
have changed significantly over time. When SSR first appeared on the development scene,
it represented an effort to curtail excessive security spending. Military expenditure in poor
societies was seen as wasteful, if not morally reprehensible, and SSR sought to transform
militaries and police forces by subjecting them to democratic, civilian control and instilling
respect for human rights among officers and soldiers alike.
55
For this reason, Robin
Luckham in 1995 described the process as ‘demilitarization by default’.
56
Two decades later, close observers speak of the militarisation of SSR.
57
The objective of
curtailing and restraining oppressive forces in the name of human security and democ-
racy has not been abandoned, but it is by now well-documented that SSR has increasingly
come to emphasise the ‘harder’aspects of security. After the attacks of 9/11, in particular,
interventions have gradually veered towards ‘hard’security and the technical dimensions
of ‘train and equip’have come to dominate over the more developmental and political
aspects focused on democratic oversight, transparency and accountability.
58
This shift from softer to harder forms of security interventions has important potential
implications for the ‘problematic relationship’between the African state and modern
forms of organised violence. Prime among these is the possibility that the current
direction of SSR will empower military and security actors (both public and private)
vis-à-vis the state and civilian oversight mechanisms. SSR and related forms of interven-
tions target military and security establishments and thereby position them as mediators
or brokers with the global. Their centrality to international agendas and their access to
foreign resources, in the form of equipment, training and prestige, risks strengthening
550 R. ABRAHAMSEN

their power and influence relative to other sectors of society, including civilian leaders
and politicians. Military and security elites may accordingly be able to bend political and
economic directions to their advantage, or alternatively establish new alliances and
expand their influence in social, economic and political affairs.
This ‘external drift’in state formation merits careful attention in light of the historical
dominance of executive and elite control over security matters on the continent. African
parliamentarians, past and present, generally exercise little genuine oversight of the military,
and have been relatively marginal actors in defence management and oversight, despite
constitutional provisions.
59
Evaluations of SSR have shown that at the domestic level the
reform effort has been driven primarily by the executive branch of governments and by
donors, to the exclusion of parliaments and civil society actors.
60
Democratic reform of
security sectors has frequently been resisted by governments and national elites as an
infringement of sovereignty –and as contradicting their interests and weakening their
power and control. As Paul Jackson observes, any introduction of democratic oversight, at
least in theory, shifts control over security institutions from the few to the many, and thus
potentially undermines the power of the elite.
61
Such reform is also a long and difficult
process, and recent research suggests that even when attempted, there is little evidence that
reform efforts have yielded much success, nor been consistently and comprehensively
implemented.
62
In this way, SSR risks reinforcing historically established patterns of execu-
tive, elite control, and despite the continued normative emphasis on democracy and human
rights the end result may be the entrenchment of authoritarian and non-democratic power
structures supported by better trained and better supported security forces.
63
Donors’propensity to prioritise the technical or harder aspects of SSR and to focus on the
effectiveness of security institutions has thus often been welcomed by African leaders and
security establishments, who have also been highly selective in exactly how they implement
the package of reforms associated with SSR. There is, in other words, a convergence of
interests. For domestic actors, security assistance is vital and much-needed support in the
fight against violent extremism and an opportunity to strengthen their military capacities and,
by implication, their hold on power. For development partners, the emphasis on strengthen-
ing the functional capacity and efficiency of African security institutions ensures that their
assistance meets the criteria of defending national security. For civilian populations, the
benefits are more contingent. If the result is the prevention or decline of extremist violence,
local populations undoubtedly stand to gain, but without simultaneously improving demo-
cratic oversight mechanisms SSR also risks strengthening the power and influence of
securocrats. In the words of Adedeji Ebo, ‘operational efficiency without effective democratic
oversight is a recipe for the brutalisation and oppression of the population by armed and
security forces, particularly of the poor and vulnerable’.
64
This is not to say that the ‘softer’side of SSR has disappeared, or that donors and
recipients are unaware of the challenges and risks of security assistance.
65
Many of the
security activities conducted under the auspices of development still belong to a fairly
bureaucratic family of interventions designed to build capable, legal-rational Weberian
states with a legitimate monopoly of the use of force and an ability to control borders and
maintain order, stability and justice in a manner that respects human rights and
democracy. As such, they are a far cry from direct militarisation in the quantitative
sense, and most lack any overt ‘glorification’of military values and action. Instead, they
are often routine and mundane, having little connection to the direct application of
CONFLICT, SECURITY & DEVELOPMENT 551

military violence.
66
Such interventions may nevertheless serve to support militarism by
expanding the social acceptability of military actors, values and solutions. Militarism is,
as noted above, a slippery concept, and so is its practice. No clear demarcation can be
drawn between ‘military’and ‘civilian’, and these boundaries are historically constructed
and also profoundly political and productive of subjectivities. However mundane,
bureaucratic and non-violent, security assistance advanced in the name of the progressive
values of development and humanitarianism will affect power relations and can alter the
balance of forces within societies.
Indeed, this is one of the combative contradictions of defensive development: as an
increasing number of NGOs and civil society actors have embraced the merger of
development and security, the balance of power has tilted in favour of security activities
and the number of critical voices has declined and the space of active resistance shrunk.
There is of course still criticism: a coalition of European NGOs in 2016 protested against
the widening of the OECD/DAC definition of Official Development Assistance (ODA) to
include more security-related spending and efforts to counter violent extremism –and
lost. In Kenya, civil society associations have successfully pushed back against harsh
counter-terrorism legislation, despite pressure from international partners.
67
Many more examples could be given, but such resistance and dissenting voices aside, the
normalisation of security and military spending as an intrinsic part of development is
irrefutable. The fact that NGOs rely on governments and international organisations for
asignificant part of their funding adds a clear economic incentive to joining the ideological
consensus and the majority of development NGOs have been willing and influential
participants in the production of a normative space where military and security activities
and force can be invoked in defence of civilian and humanitarian ends.
68
As such, the turn
to a more defensive form of development also constitutes a form of self-defence on behalf
of NGOs and various development actors that need to survive in an increasingly compe-
titive funding environment. In the process, they have become complicit in a global
militarism produced in part through a series of seemingly innocuous small-scale, everyday,
bureaucratic and humanitarian interventions, and also helped produce the insouciance
towards military and security solutions that is so characteristic of contemporary politics.
Defence as development
Today’s global militarism is not only characterised by the active involvement of devel-
opment and humanitarian actors, but also the seemingly contradictory defence of devel-
opment budgets by military establishments. Thus, when the newly elected Trump
administration in 2017 signalled its intention to drastically reduce spending on interna-
tional development, the strongest plea for continued development engagement came
from the Pentagon and the top echelons of the armed forces. In a forceful submission to
Congress, 16 former four-star generals and admirals argued ‘that development aid is
critical to America’s national security’.
69
‘Strategic development assistance’, they argued,
‘is not charity; it is an essential, modern tool of U.S. national security’. Severe cuts to
USAID ‘would only increase the risk to Americans’as ‘military power alone cannot
prevent radicalization’. Accordingly, congress should reject the proposal to half devel-
opment assistance, and instead seek to engage ‘the U.S. government, nongovernmental
organizations and the private sector to synergistically prevent conflict and promote
552 R. ABRAHAMSEN

security’. While the generals’defence of development is laudable, their intervention
illustrates with striking clarity the extent to which the justification for development
and military assistance has become one and the same: in the generals’logic, the main
reason for development assistance is not poverty alleviation, but its centrality to US
national security and counter-terrorism efforts.
As part of such counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency programmes, military and
security actors are increasingly engaged in a range of ‘soft’development activities to win
hearts and minds. US military civilian affairs teams, for example, build, repair and expand
public facilities such as schools, water catchment systems, and health care facilities as they
seek to win the trust of local populations.
70
AsJanBachmannnotes,suchprojectsarehighly
ambivalent in the sense that they frequently respond to the everyday needs of local popula-
tions, while at the same time contributing to the normalisation of military approaches and
solutions to social and political problems in societies that have long histories of violence and
militarisation.
71
Adam Branch makes a similar observation with reference to US ‘militarised
peace interventions’in Uganda, arguing that the deliberate blurring of military and civilian
activities may ultimately lead to further violence and insecurity.
72
Western militaries’development activities are, however, dwarfed by their core business
and the last decade has seen an unprecedented expansion of foreign military engagement
across the continent.
73
The US, UK, France, Japan, China, the EU, as well as Russia, Turkey
and the Gulf states have all increased their security presence and cooperation with African
states. The largest number of UK Armed Forces personnel outside Britain is now found in
Africa. This includes the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK), a training support
unit that consists of around 100 permanent staffand a reinforcing short tour cohort of
another 280 personnel.
74
It also includes a new British Defence Staff(BDS) in West Africa,
as well as the British Military Advisory and Training Team (BMATT) in Nigeria, which
together provide training and assistance to Nigeria and countries in the Lake Chad Basin,
primarily in the fight again Boko Haram.
75
France has always maintained a strong military
involvement with its former colonies, and its coercive entanglements on the continent have
deepened with recent counter-terrorism operations. ‘Operation Serval’,launchedin
January 2013 in response to the situation in Mali, included 4,000 French troops. This
was followed by ‘Operation Barkhane’, which entails a long-term commitment of 3,000
French troops operating from bases in Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Mali and Mauritania, or
the ‘G5 Sahel’. One outcome of these increased military activities in West Africa has been
a closer integration of French and US forces in the region, who now co-habit at a number
of facilities and have adjoining drone facilities at Niamey in Niger.
76
In terms of density of military actors and networks, no location rivals Djibouti. The tiny
but strategically located country hosts not only the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) with
about 4,000 troops and a long-standing French deployment, but also the first overseas
Chinese base. Add the Japanese and the Italian bases, as well as the German and Spanish
contingents assigned to the EU’s counter-piracy operations, and the small country is
a patchwork of military bases and a microcosm of Africa’s new global militarism.
In addition to its Djibouti base, the US has numerous so-called ‘lily pads’or co-
operative security locations (CSLs) in at least 10 countries.
77
CSLs are generally main-
tained with little or no permanent US personnel, but located at strategic points they
provide a foothold for conducting full-scale military operations when necessary. These
arrangements have given the US an unprecedented military footprint on the continent,
CONFLICT, SECURITY & DEVELOPMENT 553

and the reluctance to put boots on the ground after the 1993 Black Hawk-incident in
Somalia when 18 American soldiers were killed, has been replaced by frequent joint-
operations, patrols and training exercises –increasingly conducted by special forces, or
the US Special Operations Command Africa (SOCAFRICA). In the 10 years from 2006 to
2016, deployments of the Special Operations Command to Africa have climbed by
a staggering 1,600 per cent.
78
As part of these operations, air strikes against militants
have also escalated: in 2018 the US staged 47 such attacks against al-Shabaab targets –
almost one a week –killing at least 326 suspected militants and between 84 and 98
civilians in Somalia in what has been dubbed America’s‘secret war’due to the lack of
information and public awareness.
79
Despite the obvious warlike qualities of these military activities, they are frequently justified
in the language of development, referencing the idea that there can be ‘no development
without security’. The proliferation of various forms of military-to-military cooperation, for
example, are described as ‘partnerships’designed to train, professionalise and equip African
forces, while the UK Army advertises its ‘continuing support for developing countries in
Africa by supporting their people and helping them improve their security [. . .]’.
80
This
appropriation of development discourse by military actors is strikingly illustrated by the US
Africa Command (AFRICOM), by far the most extensive military partnerships of the post-9/
11 era. Marking its 10
th
Anniversary, the website celebrates that the ‘U.S. Africa Command has
worked by, with, and through our African partners to help establish a secure, stable, and
prosperous African continent’.
81
Its core mission is ‘to help African nations and regional
organizations build capable and professional militaries that respect human rights, adhere to
the rule of law, and contribute more effectively to stability in Africa’.Insodoing,AFRICOM
has ‘worked to advance U.S. security and prosperity by helping African nations enhance their
own security through our development across many sectors including governance and
economic development for the past ten years’. AFRICOM’s website thus exudes a discourse
akin to what Merje Kuus describes with reference to NATO as a ‘cosmopolitan militarism’,
that is, a militarism that uses globalist imaginaries to frame military approaches to political
problems as enlightened, good and necessary.
82
Put differently, AFRICOM claims not only to
protect US national interests, but to do so in a manner that simultaneously benefits the
security and development of African states and citizens.
There is no doubt that defeating or reducing violent extremism would improve the security
of millions of African citizens, and that assistance to strengthen the capability and efficiency of
the continent’s armed forces would significantly improve the development prospects of many
countries. Hence, my argument is not that security and military assistance in the name of
developmentisinandofitselfwrong,butthatitneedstobeconsideredinlightoftheAfrican
state’s historically ‘problematic relationship’with modern forms of organised force. The
continent has undergone a period of intensified militarisation in the last decade or so, fuelled
and facilitated in large part by external partnerships. Military spending has escalated in
a number of countries, and two out of three countries substantially increased their military
spending in the last 10 years, while combined continental expenditure grew by 65 per cent
overthesameperiod.
83
Yet there has been regrettably little success in reducing the number of
terrorist attacks on the continent, while the authoritarian grip on power has strengthened in
many countries involved in the fight against violent extremism, including Chad, Djibouti and
Uganda.
554 R. ABRAHAMSEN

In the case of Chad, President Idriss Deby, who came to power through a coup in 1990,
and has successfully used foreign military assistance to secure his regime and supress any
sign of military and political opposition.
84
In Djibouti, President Ismail Omar Guelleh
was re-elected in 2016 for a fourth term with 87 per cent of the vote in a disputed ballot
boycotted by the main opposition parties and after having previously abolished legisla-
tion restricting him to two terms. In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni continues to
out-manoeuvre both donors and opposition parties, while entrenching his regime and his
family’s hold on power.
85
Undemocratic governments in Algeria and Mauritania have
also been able to normalise their international relations by appearing as useful allies. As
Richard Reeve and Zoë Pelter observe, ‘the pursuit of counterterrorism operations and
basing or logistics infrastructure’is dependent on maintaining relationships and status of
forces agreements with national governments, and as a result these states have become
‘largely immune from pressure to improve their repressive treatment of citizens and
political opponents’.
86
Four of the countries where AFRICOM has its closest counterterrorism partnerships
have experienced successful or attempted military coups in recent years –Mauritania
(2005 and 2008); Niger (2010); Mali (2012) and Burkina Faso (2014 and 2015).
87
In the
case of Mali, the coup was led by Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo, a participant in several
US military training programmes, while the leader of the last coup attempt in Burkina
Faso, General Gilbert Diendere, was the country’s point person on the US Trans-Sahara
Counter Terrorism Partnership. While there is no indication or suggestion that external
actors in any way encouraged or facilitated these actions, they are a striking reminder of
the strength of the military relative to political and civilian institutions. They also
underline the complexity and risks of relying on the military as a partner.
Another feature of many countries involved in the fight against violent extremism is
the increasing prominence of military and security personnel in public life. Military
forces have for example been awarded important economic roles in Ethiopia, Uganda
and Rwanda, and there is a discernible trend towards militarisation of the police forces
with generals appointed as chief of police in several countries. In Uganda, the military has
been put in charge of Operation Wealth Creation; a multi-billion presidential initiative
designed to improve household incomes, eradicate poverty and create wealth and overall
prosperity through sustainable commercial agriculture. The issue here is not whether or
not such programmes and initiatives may yield positive results. What is at stake is the
extent to which military and security actors and solutions have penetrated and gained
acceptance in areas of social, political and economic life previously considered outside
their purview, and the extent to which international efforts to strengthen and reform
African militaries have further complicated the problematic relationship of the African
state with modern forms of organised force.
Combative contradictions
From the perspective of international political sociology, militarism is always historically
constructed and context specific, produced in social interaction, translation and compe-
tition between multiple and varied actors, norms, technologies and agendas. Militarism
must therefore be studied at the intersection of the global and the local, with careful
attention to their interaction and imbrication. This article has sought to map the broad,
CONFLICT, SECURITY & DEVELOPMENT 555

general contours of such an analysis, while being mindful of the diversity and multiplicity
of potential outcomes. Focusing on the new, ‘feel-good militarism’it has sought to
capture the various ways in which the contemporary merger of development and security
influences the historically ‘problematic relationship of the African state with modern
forms of organised force’. The large-scale international efforts currently targeting African
security institutions are in part designed precisely to tackle and improve this relationship,
seeking to enable states to control force ‘once unleashed’and to exercise ‘legitimate and
effective monopoly over them’.
88
But they are also centrally concerned to strengthen the
coercive capacities of Africa’s security institutions, making them more efficient partners
in the global fight against violent extremism. Over time the demilitarising and demo-
cratic impulse of these various partnerships have receded, as the interests of Northern
states and African political and military elites have increasingly converged in favour of
the harder aspects of security assistance.
The result has not been an unbridled militarism, and the emerging forms of state,
military and global relations are as diverse as they are fraught with contradictions. Many
interventions undertaken in the name of development and security remain focused on
the mundane and bureaucratic, and demilitarisation and militarisation can be promoted
side by side, within the same country and by the same institution. But as I have argued,
militarism is not defined with reference to behaviour and policy outcomes alone, nor can
it be reduced or confined to militaristic violence and the material quantities of guns and
tanks. It is instead a subtle and incremental process, marked by sometimes imperceptible
shifts in general societal values, public discourses and peoples’self-images.
89
It is clear that international development has become part of the ideational architec-
ture that enables actors to embed military values and practises within institutions and
make them relevant and influential in diverse African settings.
90
This ‘external drift’in
state formation
91
has further empowered military and security actors vis-à-vis political
and civilian institutions, and the risk is that contemporary interventions undertaken in
the name of development and security may end up the handmaiden not only of increased
militaristic violence, but also of oppression and the restriction of freedom and democ-
racy. Avoiding this outcome would require not only careful attention to each country’s
specific political and civil-military relations, but also a more involved and interventionist
approach than either donors or recipient governments would welcome or approve. The
future of defensive development is thus fraught with combative contradictions.
Notes
1. Hutchful and Bathily, ‘Introduction’, III.
2. Zewde, ‘The Military and Militarism in Africa’, 257.
3. Hutchful and Bathily, ‘Introduction’,II.
4. Stavrianakis and Stern, ‘Militarism and Security’.
5. Bacevich, The New American Militarism; Mann, Incoherent Empire.
6. Bacevich, The New American Militarism, 25.
7. Abrahamsen, ‘Return of the Generals?’.
8. Ibid.
9. Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States.
10. Tilly, ‘War Making and State Making’, 186.
11. Guillaume and Bilgin, ‘Introduction’.
556 R. ABRAHAMSEN

12. Bigo and Walker, ‘International, Political, Sociology’.
13. Mann, States, War and Capitalism; Shaw, Post-Military Society; see also Mabee and Vucetic,
‘Varieties of Militarism’.
14. Shaw, ‘Twenty-First Century Militarism’, 23.
15. Ibid.
16. See e.g. Decalo, Civil-Military Relations; Onwudiwe,‘Military Coups’; Kruijt and Koonings,
‘From Political Armies’.
17. Hutchful and Bathily, ‘Introduction’.
18. Luckham, ‘The Military, Militarization and Democratization in Africa’, 15.
19. Kuus, ‘Cosmopolitan Militarism?’, calls for the study of militarism beyond the nation-state,
whereas Bernazzoli and Flint, ‘Power, Place and Militarism’, demonstrate the need for grounded
studies.
20. Gutteridge, The Military in African Politics.
21. Ibid.
22. Luanda, ‘The Tanganyika Rifles’, 186.
23. Diop and Paye, ‘The Army and Political Power in Senegal’; Hutchful and Bathily,
‘Introduction’.
24. On the continued influence of colonialism, see Iniguez de Heredia, ‘Militarism, States and
Resistance’.
25. First, The Barrel of a Gun.
26. Ochoche, ‘The Military and National Security in Africa’, 107.
27. Decalo, The Stable Minority,2.
28. For example, Zolberg, ‘The Military Decade in Africa’; Welch, Soldier and State in Africa.
29. Ochoche, ‘The Military and National Security in Africa’, 108.
30. Price, ‘ATheoretical Approach to Military Rule’, 405.
31. Zewde, ‘The Military and Militarism in Africa’, 260–261.
32. Thee, ‘Militarism and Militarization’, 301.
33. Price, ‘ATheoretical Approach to Military Rule’.
34. Abrahamsen and Williams, ‘Security beyond the State’.
35. Vagts, AHistory of Militarism, 13.
36. Eide and Thee, Problems of Contemporary Militarism; Kinsella, ‘The Global Arms Trade’.
For a review of definitions, see Stavrianakis and Selby, ‘Militarism and International
Relations’,3–18.
37. Stavrianakis and Selby, ‘Militarism and International Relations’.
38. Mann, Incoherent Empire,16–17.
39. Shaw, ‘Twenty-First Century Militarism’.
40. Stavrianakis and Selby, ‘Militarism and International Relations’.
41. Vagts, AHistory of Militarism, 15.
42. Bernazzoli and Flint, ‘Power, Place and Militarism’, 401.
43. See SIPRI for data on military spending. For the global arms trade, see Kinsella, ‘The Global
Arms Trade’.
44. See Abrahamsen ‘Return of the Generals?’.
45. Gill, Today We Drop Bombs.
46. McNamara, The Essence of Security, 149.
47. See Ekbladh, The Great American Mission; Uvin, ‘The Development/Peacebuilding Nexus’.
48. Essex, Development, Security, and Aid, 49; Ekbladh, The Great American Mission; McCleary,
Global Compassion.
49. Essex, Development, Security, and Aid, 49.
50. HM Government, ‘Securing Britain in an Age of Uncertainty’, 11.
51. White House, ‘Remarks by the President’.
52. Abrahamsen, ‘Return of the Generals?’.
53. Eckhard, ‘The Challenges and Lessons Learned’, 18. The figure excludes forms of military
and police support that remains outside OECD statistics.
54. Hutchful and Fayemi, ‘Security System Reform in Africa’;Ansorge,‘Security Sector Reform’.
CONFLICT, SECURITY & DEVELOPMENT 557

55. OECD-DAC ‘Handbook on Security System Reform’; Abrahamsen, ‘Exporting Decentred
Security Governance’.
56. Luckham, ‘Dilemmas of Military’.
57. Albrecht and Stepputat, ‘The Rise and Fall’.
58. See Scheye, ‘Realism and Pragmatism’; Jackson, ‘Introduction: Second-Generation’;
Hutchful and Fayemi, ‘Security System Reform in Africa’.
59. Hutchful and Fayemi, ‘Security System Reform in Africa’.
60. Ibid.; Ansorge, ‘Security Sector Reform’.
61. Jackson, ‘Introduction: Second-Generation’,3.
62. Ibid.
63. Wilen, ‘Examining the Links’; Hutchful and Fayemi, ‘Security Systems Reform’.
64. Ebo, ‘The Challenges and Opportunities’, 29.
65. For an interesting case, see Raineri, ‘Security and Informality in Libya’.
66. Frowd and Sandor, ‘Militarism and Its Limits’.
67. Whitaker, ‘Compliance among Weak States’.
68. Gelot and Hansen’scontribution to this Special Issue, ‘They are From Within Us’, provides
an interesting case study of how Somali NGOs become imbricated in forms of global
militarism.
69. Mullen and Jones, ‘Why Foreign Aid is Critical’.
70. Bachmann, ‘Militarization Going Places?’; Bradbury and Kleinman, ‘Winning Hearts and
Minds’.
71. Bachmann, ‘Militarization Going Places?’.
72. Branch, Displacing Human Rights, Chapter 7.
73. Between 2003 and 2009, the US military implemented over 150 development projects worth
almost US$ 7 million in Kenya. By comparison, Kenya received more than US$ 29 million to
train and equip its forces for counterterrorism and stability operations (so-called Section 1206
funds) between 2006 and 2009. Moore and Walker, ‘Tracing the US Military Presence in Africa’.
74. ‘The British Army in Africa’:https://www.army.mod.uk/deployments/africa/ [Accessed 18
February 2019].
75. MOD and FCO, ‘UK International Defence Engagement Strategy’:https://assets.publishing.
service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/596968/
06032017_Def_Engag_Strat_2017DaSCREEN.pdf [Accessed 18 February 2019].
76. Reeve and Pelter, ‘From the New Frontier to New Normal’; Moore and Walker, ‘Tracing the
US Military Presence in Africa’.
77. Ibid; Schmitt, ‘Using Special Forces’; Turse, Tomorrow’s Battlefield.
78. Turse, ‘The Year of the Commando’.
79. Wilson, ‘US Ramps up Air Strikes’; Bureau of Investigative Journalism: https://www.thebur
eauinvestigates.com/projects/drone-war/charts?show_casualties=1&show_injuries=1&show_
strikes=1&location=somalia&from=2018-1-1&to=now [Accessed 18 February 2019]; Morgan,
‘Behind the US Secret War in Africa’.
80. ‘The British Army in Africa’:https://www.army.mod.uk/deployments/africa/[Accessed 18
February 2019].
81. United States Africa Command, ‘U.S. Africa Command 2007–2018ʹ:https://www.africom.
mil/our-tenth-anniversary [Accessed 18 February 2019].
82. Kuus, ‘Cosmopolitan Militarism?’, 545.
83. The Economist,‘Defence Spending’; See also the SIPRI database. Aggregate data conceal
massive variations, and the highest spenders are generally countries that are fighting violent
extremism either within their borders or in their neighbourhood.
84. Hansen, ‘ADemocratic Dictator’s Success’.
85. Abrahamsen and Bareebe, ‘Uganda’s2016 Elections’.
86. Reeve and Pelter, ‘From the New Frontier to New Normal’, 27.
87. Ibid.; Moore and Walker, ‘Tracing the US Military Presence in Africa’.
88. Hutchful and Bathily, ‘Introduction’,III.
558 R. ABRAHAMSEN

89. Lutz, ‘Militarization’, 320. Linnea Gelot makes a similar observation with reference to
civilian protection. See Gelot, ‘Civilian Protection in Africa’.
90. In this sense, contemporary development illustrate with particular clarity Cynthia Enloe’s
observation that militarising practices can be embedded within the very institutions con-
sidered the hallmarks of civil and democratic governance. See Enloe, Maneuvers, 289.
91. Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Rita Abrahamsen is Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and the
Director of the Centre for International Policy Studies (CIPS) at the University of Ottawa.
ORCID
Rita Abrahamsen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9001-3782
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