Nigeria 2013-2017

[jmm99]

Remember that we impose upon ourselves the burden of believing that all civilians are innocent.

This is a subject which badly needs discussion - not in this thread, I'll add; but in one of the threads looking at the policies and resultant rules concerning civilians and who may be targeted for neutralization (kill, detain, convert). Now, eventually back to the thread, but first.

Your link to The Art of Coercion: The Primitive Accumulation and Management of Coercive Power (Amazon) was broken (at least for me). After reading the Amazon blurb, and this book review by Dale Walton:

Giustozzi clearly appreciates the complexity of historical formation, collapse, and reformation of polities—and that this progression is not inevitably a “one-way” street. Thus, he digs deeply into the historical record to understand how coercive power is accumulated, translated into power over a geographical area, and progressively expanded outward.

He advances a number of interlinking hypotheses regarding how this occurs.

First, he asserts “that institution-building is a key aspect of any process of taming violence” (p. 7).

Second, he claims that “pre-empting hostile collective action through co-option, alliances, manipulation and intimidation is as important as the mere accumulation of means of coercion, and entire agencies of the state have been developed historically to implement this task” (p. 9).

Third, Giustozzi believes that the primitive accumulation of power generally is a ruthlessly violent process, with civil conflict continuing until one faction can establish a monopoly on violence—but, notably, even that monopoly may be broken, causing the process to begin again.

Fourth, he says, “Often in civil conflicts, violence is employed according to a logic and is therefore only seemingly indiscriminate. But sophisticated military political actors clearly understand what kind of violence is counter-productive,” with sophistication meaning at least some actors in a conflict comprehend this reality, even if that is not the case with all of them (p. 12).

Fifth, says Giustozzi, “Policing is a specific strategy of consolidating the monopoly of violence” (p. 14).

Sixth, he asserts that “the renegotiation of the terms of the political settlement, which may include changes in the command and control structure within the coercive apparatus, may weaken the ability of the ruling elite to operate in a coordinated fashion and endanger the monopoly of violence” (p. 16-17).

His final, and no doubt most controversial, hypothesis “is that external intervention, even in its milder form of advice and support, is most likely to be counter-productive in achieving and maintaining the monopoly of violence” (p. 18).

Given the general thrust of his hypotheses, it is unsurprising that Giustozzi has a rather grim view of the process of state-building; he straightforwardly challenges some of the core assumptions undergirding liberal interventionism, and his critique reflects the views of a writer who has an insightful and nuanced understanding of the issues at hand. It is striking that even most of the supposed successes of liberal interventionism are at best decidedly incomplete, according to Giustozzi.

I ordered a used hardcover version. If Walton is accurate, Giustozzi describes what I've concluded in looking at Norman England and the Ile de France of the period ca. 1100-1450.

Also, since I been an opponent of "liberal intervention" from 1964 (Hal McMaster's Dereliction of Duty and Bill Corson's The Betrayal tell it true of that one - IMO, of course), Giustozzi has to be something of "friendly" territory for me.

While waiting for the book to come, I did chase down Giustozzi a bit (who's written mucho on Astan); but, I thought this more general article, Double-edged swords: armies, elite bargaining and state building - An overview paper (2011, CSRC, 34pp.), might be a fair sampler of his book:

Conclusion: organisation vs. coercion

The case studies for this overview paper, which will be published in a separate volume, allow us to make a number of points.

The first one is that even ‘virtuous’ techniques of civilian control over the military and of institutionalisation of the armed forces can lead to unexpected negative results, particularly if the civilian counterpart is weak and divided. In other words it is inappropriate to see techniques as good or bad per se, since their impact depends on the wider political and social context. Given a context not conducive to the establishment of what North et al. (2009) call ‘open access orders’, these techniques are not necessarily better or more appropriate than any other.

Therefore, a wider range of techniques for taming violence has to be explored in order to identify realistic options to secure at least some conditions that are necessary for a developmental take-off: the consolidation of a state monopoly over violence; the reaching of a political settlement; and the establishment of a relatively effective state machinery. Any particular technique or strategy has trade-offs; none work in every circumstance or suit every need.

It is also obvious from our case studies that elite bargaining can come at the expense of the effectiveness of the agencies of coercion. Like other agencies of the state, the armed forces often become the object of the distribution of the spoils during the formulation of the bargain. Alternatively, the army will be formed through the incorporation of separate militias, which were until recently fighting each other and which are linked to the different partners in the bargaining process.

This is particularly the case when the ruling elite is not organised around a solid political organisation with a wide social base, either developed as an insurgent organisation or as an expression of sectors of civil society. A solid political party might be able to mediate the formulation of the elite bargain and incorporate factions and individuals in a more regulated, institutionalised way, as arguably was the case in Tanzania. ...

In looking at the other CSRC papers, we have on "elite bargaining", specifically in an African context, these three by Stefan Lindemann:

Do inclusive elite bargains matter? A research framework for understanding the causes of civil war in Sub-Saharan Africa (2008, 33 pp.).

Inclusive elite bargains and civil war avoidance: The case of Zambia (2010, 64pp.).

Exclusionary elite bargains and civil war onset: The case of Uganda (2010, 80pp.)

In the CAR thread, KingJaja said:

Africa's problems are for Africans to solve. My point is that after the seemingly endless cycle of violence and external intervention - at a certain point, some unstable states will either fall apart permanently or work out an indigenous solution to their teething problems.

CAR for example, has bifurcated - it a essentially a "Christian" enclave in the South and a much smaller "Muslim" enclave in the North. No amount of elections will change that essential reality. And international community is wasting time by impeding the process of formation of two independent separate states in that part of the World.

In my native Nigeria, we are preparing for a National Dialogue, a three month discussion on what different ethnic nationalities want from the Nigerian state. This goes beyond mere elections, Africa's artificial states have flawed foundations and the best way forward is for locals to proactively discuss these challenges and build a state that caters to their needs (not a mere ex-colonial administrative unit).

KJ: What is your opinion of these Westerners' competence in addressing contemporary African state development ? Are they merely junk science or do they at least understand the African picture ?

Regards

Mike