Postcolonial Security Research Articles

Postcolonial Security: Britain, France, and West Africa's Cold War by Marco Wyss

<i>Postcolonial Security: Britain, France, and West Africa's Cold War</i> by Marco Wyss

Marco Wyss. Postcolonial Security: Britain, France, and West Africa’s Cold War.

In this rich, thoroughly researched account, Postcolonial Security: Britain, France, and West Africa’s Cold War, Marco Wyss compares French and British approaches to African decolonization during the period 1958 to 1966. After World War II, France and the United Kingdom—the preeminent colonial powers—used their resource-rich colonies to rebuild their war-ravaged economies and to secure once again their status in the world arena. They were challenged in this endeavor by the emerging Cold War superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Africa became a Cold War battleground, and the Western alliance fractured. France, a long-time rival of the United Kingdom, perceived threats in the new anglophone powers—the United States, especially, but also Nigeria, which played a growing role on the African continent. As African colonies obtained political independence in the 1960s, France and the United Kingdom embraced different strategies to protect their interests. This book investigates the postindependence security roles of the two European powers in their most important former colonies: Côte d’Ivoire (France) and Nigeria (United Kingdom). It focuses on the period including the transfer of power and the early years of independence. Comparing the divergent strategies pursued by the one-time imperial powers, the book also shows how African leaders played on Cold War and intra-alliance tensions to promote their own interests.

A constitutional based transformative approach to reform the security sector in Africa's post liberation war countries

ABSTRACT The article reviews contemporaneous security sector reform (SSR) models and proposes an Afrocentric human security oriented alternative, a constitutional based transformative approach. The post-colonial security sector in African countries continues to struggle with converting and infusing the nationalist liberators’ underlying values into the new institutions and this has kept post-independence security provision skewed in favour of the new political elite. Post-liberation war African countries have undergone series of SSR that depicted some semblance of stability during the transition from violent liberation struggles that were mostly fought from exile, yet the possibility of intractable conflict is real. Decades after the retreat of colonialism, the national security apparatus in the region remains a source of both instability and insecurity in many countries. This proposed SSR constitutional based transformative framework is underpinned by three core concepts: participation; accountability and transparency that undergird the core of a participatory anchored security sector governance (SSG) approach. These elements are critical factors for influencing the transformation and decolonising of the post-colonial security sector in Africa into human security focused systems.

Explaining the security of the global South: Western and Non-Western approaches

Dominant security theories, being mostly Western by their origin, are concentrated on the Western experience and security models, with minimal attempts to analyze the postcolonial security landscape of the global “South” which heavily affects the security agenda. The predominant part of modern conflicts (with some exceptions) take place precisely in the developing countries of the global South Western and non-Western approaches to security are distinguished by an expanded (comprehensive) understanding, but in both cases the emphasis is different. Various readings of security create a conflict of perception and, according to many non-Western experts, reflect the Western strategy to initiate a new colonization. At the same time, neither Western understanding nor alternative non-Western critical security theories can claim to be universal. The article describes the dynamics of theoretical approaches to the conceptualization of security, mainly in the context of the dominant Western school of International Relations, demonstrates and explains the marginality of non-Western security issues, and provides an overview of key security issues and threats to the developing world. In addition, relatively new Western concepts of security (humanitarian intervention, human security, responsibility to protect) are being analyzed, which cause strong opposition from the entire developing world and are perceived by non-Western societies as a direct threat. The weakness of the “postcolonial” states, their apparent inability to cope with internal development problems and disorders, and to ensure the safety of the population within their borders, serve as a reason for becoming an object of political influence and interference. At the same time, the West and the non-West are making efforts to speak the same political language of security because of the indivisibility of the current threats. However, the Western practice of world regulation is rejected by the developing world, especially by rising powers. Considering the weight and significance of “the rest of humanity” in such conditions, it is difficult to hope for a rational dialogue on global issues if the discourse, interests, and ambitions of the two poles differ considerably.

Üçüncü Dünya Güvenlik ve Postkolonyal Güvenlik Yaklaşımları Arasındaki Farklılıklar: Devlet, Kültür ve Modernite

The aim of this article is to discuss the differences between the theoretical outlooks of the Third World security approaches and the postcolonial security approaches to security studies. This article is composed of four parts. In the first part, the article investigates what the Third World security approaches and the postcolonial security approaches understand of the concepts of the Third World and postcolonialism. Subsequent three parts discuss differences between the critiques of these two approaches to security studies with respect to three concepts of state, culture, and modernity. Thus, this article compares the critiques of these approaches to security studies and their contributions to critical approaches to security.

The Challenge of Western Neutralism during the Cold War: Britain and the Buildup of a Nigerian Air Force

In the wake of decolonization, Britain wanted to maintain its strategic interests in Nigeria and to keep the newly independent African country in the Western orbit. Having abrogated a defense agreement in reaction to Nigerian domestic opposition, the British government counted on military assistance to secure its postcolonial security role. The British thus hoped to gain responsibility for the buildup of a Nigerian air force, which the authorities in Lagos wished to establish for national prestige and protection against potential enemies such as Ghana. The Nigerians, however, first tried to secure the requisite assistance from Commonwealth countries other than Britain before opting for a West German air force mission. The Nigerian government aimed to reduce its dependence on Britain and thereby burnish its neutralist credentials. Yet London was challenged by a Western version of neutralism, similar to Western neutrality, because the Nigerians never attempted to approach the Soviet bloc about military assistance.

THE UNITED STATES, BRITAIN, AND MILITARY ASSISTANCE TO NIGERIA

AbstractIn Nigeria, Britain asserted its post-colonial security role during and immediately after the transfer of power, and remained responsible for assisting the Nigerian armed forces. While the Americans recognized Nigeria's potential as an important partner in the Cold War, they preferred to focus on development aid. Washington was thus supposed to complement British assistance, while leaving the responsibility for the security sector to London. But with the escalation of the Cold War in Africa, the Nigerians’ efforts to reduce their dependency on the United Kingdom, and Nigeria's growing significance for the United States in African affairs, this Anglo-American burden-sharing was increasingly questioned in Washington. The United States thus eventually decided to militarize its aid policy towards Nigeria. In analysing the militarization of US aid policy towards Nigeria, this article will, first, assess the Anglo-American relationship in the early 1960s; secondly, position Nigeria in American Cold War policy towards Sub-Saharan Africa; thirdly, question the role of military assistance in Washington's policy towards Nigeria and Africa; and fourthly, discover the regional and local factors that influenced policy-makers in Washington and London.

Anti-terrorism Legal Regime of Pakistan and the Global Paradigm of Security: A Genealogical and Comparative Analysis

Pakistan is often criticized for its anti-terrorism legal regime—which institutionalizes preventive indefinite detention, special courts, and speedy trials. Pakistani officials, on their part, rebut this criticism by pointing to the Anglo-American anti-terrorism legal regimes, and generally to “the global paradigm of security.” Interestingly, should we trace the genealogy of the anti-terrorism legal regime of Pakistan, we find rich historical-juridical linkages between the Pakistani and Anglo-American regimes. These linkages converge on, or at least begin from, the British law of high treason. This law was adopted in certain colonial regulations in the early 19th century. In this article I demonstrate how the legal form and substance of the high treason law and of certain other colonial regulations traveled through colonial and post-colonial security laws, such that they have recently come to converge with the global paradigm of security.

Encountering knowledge production: the International Crisis Group and the making of Mexico’s security crisis

After nearly seven years of ever-escalating violence related to the Mexican ‘war on drugs’, in 2013 Mexico entered the International Crisis Group’s (icg) ‘observatory’ of countries facing a violent crisis. In this article we critically interrogate this ‘Mexican turn’ of the icg, as well as its accompanying forms of crisis knowledge production. By applying analytical insights from critical policy analysis and postcolonial security studies, we highlight the Western-centrism embedded in the icg’s perspective on Mexico’s security crisis. In analysing this perspective on questions of drug trafficking, statehood and indigenous justice, we demonstrate how this Western-centrism produces a de-politicising and overly technocratic crisis narrative. The article concludes that, through its Western-centric ‘Mexican turn’, the icg has been able to reaffirm its standing as a uniquely influential and internationally recognised crisis expert by showcasing its awareness of newly emerging crisis situations, as well as its possession of the necessary crisis-solving expertise.

Tsunami Waves of Destruction: The Creation of the “New Australian Catastrophe”

Tsunami Waves of Destruction: The Creation of the “New Australian Catastrophe”

A subaltern critical geopolitics of the war on terror: Postcolonial security in Tanzania

Currently, hegemonic geographical imaginations are dominated by the affective geopolitics of the War on Terror, and related security practice is universalised into what has been called “globalized fear” ( Pain, 2009). Critical approaches to geopolitics have been attentive to the Westerncentric nature of this imaginary, however, studies of non-Western perceptions of current geopolitics and the nature of fear will help to further displace dominant geopolitical imaginations. Africa, for example, is a continent that is often captured in Western geopolitics – as a site of failed states, the coming anarchy, passive recipient of aid, and so on – but geopolitical representations originating in Africa rarely make much of an impact on political theory. This paper aims to add to critical work on the so-called War on Terror from a perspective emerging from the margins of the dominant geopolitical imagination. It considers the geopolitical imagination of the War on Terror from a non-Western source, newspapers in Tanzania.