Militarism, Authority and Resistance: Exploring the Patterns in Power Relations between Africa and World Politics through Peace and Security Interventions

The last couple of decades have seen military and political interventions in Africa addressing issues threatening the global security agenda and particular commercial and strategic interests. They have also reflected the long history of Western-led interventions in three aspects: their militarised or violent approach; their aim at transforming, reforming or bypassing the political authority in place; and the engendering of resistance. These continuities do not suggest that nothing has changed since colonisation or that these interventions are neo-colonial enterprises, but that the way of exercising power internationally continues to be through violence and through the fostering of particular institutions of authority, where the state is paramount. They also illustrate that resistance is not a marginal effect but constitutive of political order. Patterns of power relations in global politics are based on the triad state-military-authority, implying a violent hierarchical order that is resisted. The paper explores this argument with several European Union-sponsored operations in issues as varied as protecting fishing privileges, protecting borders, intercepting people smugglers, and peacebuilding. It also explores different forms of resistance in Somalia and the DRC