Book contents
- African Military Politics in the Sahel
- African Studies Series
- African Military Politics in the Sahel
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Spatial Semantics in African Military Politics
- 2 Combating ‘Sahelistan’
- 3 Challenging the ‘Regions’ of the African Standby Force
- 4 Security and Intelligence Cooperation in the ‘Sahelo-Saharan Region’
- 5 African Military Coalitions and the ‘Core Countries’ in the Sahel
- 6 Towards a Critical Geopolitics of African Military Politics
- Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
- African Studies Series
Introduction
Making Room for War
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 November 2023
- African Military Politics in the Sahel
- African Studies Series
- African Military Politics in the Sahel
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Spatial Semantics in African Military Politics
- 2 Combating ‘Sahelistan’
- 3 Challenging the ‘Regions’ of the African Standby Force
- 4 Security and Intelligence Cooperation in the ‘Sahelo-Saharan Region’
- 5 African Military Coalitions and the ‘Core Countries’ in the Sahel
- 6 Towards a Critical Geopolitics of African Military Politics
- Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
- African Studies Series
Summary
The introduction puts forward the argument that African military politics are essentially spatial. It provides the precondition to understanding how an African elite of presidents, diplomats, and bureaucrats from regional organizations has been ‘making room for war’ in the Sahel since 2012. We are urged here to move past conventional notions of social space as static and instead conceptualize it as relational and in flux. Space is (re-)created by actors as they shape and alter the relations amongst themselves. It is not a change in space, but a change of space. Based on an analysis of the literature debates on African military deployments, the introduction argues to foreground the politics surrounding these interventions over discussions about effectiveness. Actors negotiate who is ‘close’ or ‘distant’ to a security concern, who is a legitimate intervener, and who is included or excluded in a common military response. They do so by invoking naturalized narratives about space as the analysis shows of the many Sahel strategies or the comparison of the intervention in Mali to that in Afghanistan. From this departure point, the politics around African-led military deployments for the Sahel are analyzed throughout the book.
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- African Military Politics in the SahelRegional Organizations and International Politics, pp. 1 - 33Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023