Deane-Peter Baker

The AU standby force and the challenge of Somalia : commentaries

Let us recap. In December 2006, in response to what seemed like the imminent fall of the southern city of Baidoa to the forces of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), Ethiopian troops launched an offensive into Somalia in support of the country’s beleaguered interim federal government. Apparently catching the UIC off-guard, Ethiopian soldiers – backed by tanks, artillery, attack helicopters and fi xed-wing ground attack aircraft – quickly drove the UIC forces out of Mogadishu and most of the territory it had previously occupied. The remnants of the UIC fl ed to a rugged, forested corner of southern Somalia on Kenya’s border.

SADCBRIG intervention in SADC member states: Reasons to doubt

Territorial disputes, armed ethnic conflicts, civil wars and externally instigated armed rebellions are some of the main threats to subregional peace and security. These threats require a rapid response from a well-trained military entity that can be deployed to intervene in a conflict zone while a political solution to a crisis is being sought. Any subregional response to a conflict situation by member states requires synchronised political and military operational procedures in order to achieve a timely intervention. The military interventions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Lesotho crises illustrate past divisions among SADC member states on when and how it is prudent to take rapid military action as a group.

Taylor and Parfit on personal identity: a response to Lötter

In this paper the author attempts to show that Lotter is not justified in ignoring orthodox views of personal identity on the basis of arguments offered by Taylor. It is argued that Taylors arguments against the orthodoxy do not establish what he, and Lotter, hope they establish, namely, that the orthodox position, represented by the work of Parfit, fails to account for personal identity. The author also attempts to show the importance of this area of debate between orthodox theories of personal identity and the concept of personal identity offered by Taylor, Lotter, and others.

Private military/security companies and human security in Africa

Mercenaries and private military/security companies (PMSCs)1 are different entities both in form and in substance. While PMSCs have over the years arguably proved to be useful in the restoration of peace and security, mercenaries are the antithesis of what Wright and Brooke call the ‘peace and stability operations industry’ in their contribution to this issue of the African Security Review. There is no doubt that mercenary activities continue to destabilise the African continent while at the same time PMSCs are increasingly seeking to establish themselves as legitimate service providers.

Rebellion and African Ethics

ABSTRACT In this paper I draw on Thaddeus Metz’s pioneering work in African ethics, and particularly his account of the concept described by the terms ubuntu (Nguni languages), botho (Sotho-Tswana), hunhu (Shona) or utu (Swahili), to sketch an African normative understanding of the act of rebellion against the authority of the state. Most commonly articulated in the phrase “a person is a person through other persons”, ubuntu is interpreted by Metz as a unique communitarian moral principle which can be described in its essence as the claim that “actions are right, or confer ubuntu (humanness) on a person, insofar as they prize communal relationships, ones in which people identify with each other, or share a way of life, and exhibit solidarity toward one another, or care about each other’s quality of life”. On the face of it, this principle appears at odds with rebellions against state authority. Following Metz, I argue, however, that a deeper grasp of this principle does, in fact, provide a justification for instances of civilian rebellion against state authority, under appropriate circumstances.

ENHANCING ETHICAL PERFORMANCE IN MILITARY FORCES THROUGH EMBEDDED EXCELLENCE

In this article, I propose the creation of what I will here call the Joint Ethics Development Initiative (JEDI). The title is, of course, offered partially in jest, but the image of the Jedi warrior of the Star Wars saga is intentional. At the heart of the proposed initiative is the development of a new, rigorous and highly demanding qualification and associated training programme. Graduates (‘JEDI warriors’) will have demonstrated excellence in a range of capabilities necessary for success in today’s complex operational environments, but most centrally they will have demonstrated excellence of character and the capability to make clear, sound and well-reasoned ethical judgments under highly challenging conditions. The proposed qualification should be viewed as playing a similar role as that played by the US Army’s Ranger qualification. It would indicate a special degree of competence and mark the bearer as someone to whom peers, superiors and subordinates can reliably turn for guidance in that area of competence. Just as the Ranger programme allows for the embedding of excellence in small unit leadership and tactics in units across the Army, the JEDI programme would allow for the embedding of excellence in ethical awareness and judgment across the Joint Force.

‘Dreams of Battle’: A Small Window into the Evolution of us Army Tactical Ethics, 1921–2009

E. D. Swintons The Defence of Duffers Drift: A Lesson in the Fundamentals of Small Unit Tactics, originally published in 1904, uses the device of a series of recurring but progressive nightmares to teach a set of tactical lessons that Swinton derived from his service in the Second Anglo-Boer War. Now a minor classic, The Defence of Duffers Drift has had an enduring and international impact. The books popularity has also led to the publication of several narratives inspired by the original, many of them authored by serving members of the US Army. Although this subset of the ‘progeny’ of Swintons work are focused on teaching tactical lessons, read together they provide a small but fascinating window into the evolution of the US Armys understanding of the ethics of armed conflict at the tactical level. The texts that are the focus of this paper span a period of 88 years, covering the post-First World War emphasis on positional warfare, through the shift to a focus on large-scale mechanized warfare that reached its apogee in the Cold War, to the early approach to fighting insurgents in Iraq and, ultimately, to the population-centric approach of counterinsurgency propounded by General Petraeus and his advisers.

THE FUTURE OF WARFIGHTING

It has become commonplace among analysts of all persuasions to insist that in recent years warfare has changed radically. Of course change in warfare is nothing new – like any human activity it is subject to the powerful influences of societal and technological change. But this is different. The shifts that these analysts point to are, they insist, radical. That is to say, they contend that these changes represent a fundamental altering of the nature of warfare.

EXTENDING JUST WAR THEORY: THE JUS AD BELLUM AND THE CAPABILITIES APPROACH TO ARMED CONFLICT

As the nature of armed conflict continues to change, so the living ethical tradition that is just war theory has to adapt to meet new challenges. This paper offers a proposal for extending just war theory by incorporating into its framework a human capabilities-based ethic drawn from the work of Martha Nussbaum. This new approach is analysed in the light of two important recent challenges to just war theory: David Rodin’s critique of the principle of national defence, and the emerging doctrine of humanitarian intervention. While the results of this analysis can only be considered to be preliminary, the authors argue that indications are that supplementing just war theory with Nussbaum’s human capabilities-based ethic, or something similar, could yield significant benefits for the ethical analysis of contemporary armed conflicts.

Conflict management for peacekeepers and peacebuilders

Africa Center for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD), 2008, ISBN 978-0-9802704-3-3