Eradicating African wars: from political ambitions to military leadership and constructive military forces

Abstract

As the Cold War and its military emphasis paled towards the late 20th century, the use of military forces to conduct multiple missions below the threshold of war tended to marginalise destructive war fighting as a policy option. In some ways it appears that war fighting in its traditional mode seems to render increasingly limited benefits in a strategic environment no longer all that conducive to military coercion. More recently African political leaders also began to craft security policies and arrangements that called for military forces that could operate in a more constructive and cooperative manner below the threshold of competitive war fighting. In some way, the African Union even envisages warless futures where war is no longer an option. Avoiding a potential disequilibrium between the aforementioned political outlooks and executive military establishments is an important leadership responsibility. Closing this potential void is now growing more crucial in the light of the emergent African defence architecture to support political ambitions of eradicating African wars. However, the military contribution to terminate wars on the African strategic landscape is dependent upon a military leadership that is able to interface political ambitions judiciously with military shifts towards less destructive mission profiles. The conceptual shift at the political level has to be matched with organisational and material adjustments at the military level, which will not be devoid of difficulties.