Last week President Obama and NATO
secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, agreed measures to increase the
North American Treaty Organisation’s military capacity in Europe.
NATO’s
military officers and its member states’ political leaders are again
talking of deploying troops to mainland Europe to prevent Russian
aggression. An obvious question therefore arises: What happens to
Kenya’s mission in Somalia if external funds dry up as a result of a
long-term shift in European defence priorities?
This is
not an imminent threat; NATO is not going to go to war over Crimea and
there are many other reasons why all sides in the current dispute will
do all they can to avoid any recurrence of the polarisation of the Cold
War era.
Nevertheless, the words of Obama and
Rasmussen are a reversal of the prevailing current of Western military
strategy over the past two decades.
For much of the
period since the end of the Cold War and particularly since 2001 the
strategic focus of Western militaries has been on what can be loosely
(and often misleadingly) termed ‘stabilisation’: the use of military
force against states believed to pose threats in terms of terrorism or
contravention of humanitarian norms.
There was much
evidence of a declining Western enthusiasm for stabilisation missions
even before the Crimean crisis. Under Obama, the military planners who
designed the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan have lost their influence.
American-led attempts to stage a military
intervention in Syria came to naught. France has been largely
unsuccessful in its efforts to persuade allies to provide greater
support to its campaigns in Mali and the Central African Republic.
Nevertheless,
the spokesmen and women of NATO and its member states will doubtless
argue that they are not confronted by a choice between global
stabilisation and European defence. But the reality is quite different
.
.
The
political pressures from within NATO member states to concentrate on
European defence are strong. The perceived threat to security posed by
Russia is more immediate than that attributed to countries such as Iraq,
Afghanistan or Somalia.
Perhaps most important of all,
Western politicians and voters have become accustomed to shrinking
defence budgets. There is neither the will nor the way to finance any
significant increase in military spending so as to be able to afford
renewed, increased commitments to European defence alongside
stabilisation missions on a scale witnessed over the past decade.
FUNDING MAY DECLINE
So
what does this mean for Kenya? Its mission in Somalia is part of the
stabilisation agenda. Although it has its own motives for its military
intervention in Somalia, Kenya is also acting as a proxy for Western
interests.
EU members, in particular the UK, consider
Somalia to represent a significant, direct threat to their own security.
Put simply, they think that the lack of state authority in Somalia has
created a vacuum that has allowed for the growth of a radical Islamist
terrorist organisation that poses a threat to the security of their
citizens.
That argument has led to significant
European funding for the AMISOM mission, including picking up the bill
for the allowances paid to Kenyan troops while they are in the field.
However,
the importance — and therefore the funding — attached to Somalia may
soon decline as the era of stabilisation comes to an end.
To
a certain extent, the solution to this potential problem is simple:
Kenyan troops can be withdrawn across the border at very short notice.
But that ignores the much more dangerous war that is building at home
and which has the potential to last much longer than the military
mission in Somalia.
Operation Linda Nchi has,
ironically, meant an increase in insecurity in Kenya. As it stands, the
government cannot guarantee the security of its citizens in Eastleigh
or in Westlands, in Nairobi, Mombasa or Garissa. Shoot-to-kill orders
and mass arrests are indicative only of intelligence and security
officers who have no idea who is behind the recent spate of terrorist
attacks.
Such indiscriminate tactics, history tells
us, are undertaken by almost every state when faced with such terrorist
threats. But history, not least that of Britain and its empire, tells
us that indiscriminate measures of the sort we are witnessing today in
Kenya only serve to discredit the state and unify the presumed enemy.
Kenyan
is entering into a war of attrition that is unsustainable, particularly
in the event of changing global defence priorities.
At
the end of the Cold War, governments across the African continent were
taken by surprise by the new concerns of their Western allies.
As
we again can see the beginning of a new but less dramatic shift in
external priorities, those in power would do well to think about the
possible outcomes.
dan.branch@gmail.com
No comments :
Post a Comment