Continuity and Change in Kenya’s Defense and Foreign Policies: The Impact of the New Security Dilemma

Abstract

Kenya’s defence policy is an integral part of the country’s foreign policy since it gained its independence. Kenya’s foreign policy has become more assertive due to globalization, which has significantly impacted the country’s defense policy. Globalization processes have produced new transnational non-state security threats. Hence the defense policy has become more forceful to accommodate these new security threats thereby producing new defense and foreign policy actors that significandy influence foreign policy behavior. This chapter is divided into five sections. The first examines the theoretical relationship between foreign policy analysis, globalization, and the new security dilemma so as to provide a framework that helps describe, analyze, and explain defense and foreign policy behavior in Kenya. The second provides a general account of the country’s foreign policy from 1963 to 2013 and indicates the way in which foreign policy has been realigned and how existing and new foreign policy actors have emerged. The third section looks at the relationship between globalization, constitutionalism, and the country’s defense policy with the aim of demonstrating how this relationship has produced new defense policy actors. The fourth section examines Kenya’s military intervention in Somalia as a radical outcome of the decision-making processes of the country’s realigned defense and foreign policies, while the fifth looks at this military intervention and its implications for security within the context of the new security dilemma and subsequently defense and foreign policies.