Uncertainty, militarism and politics of regime survival

Scholarship on African politics underscores the persistence of militarism across the continent in form of coups d’état, civil and transnational armed conflicts, foreign military interventions amid growing global militarism in the continent and military roles in development.

In countries like Mali and Guinea-Conakry, recurrent coups reflect legacies of militaristic approaches to governance. In others like Rwanda, Uganda, South Sudan, civil wars brought ruling regimes to power, causing military authority to be constituted and operationalised.

Beyond the 1995 Constitution, militarism also deviates from the democratic principles promised under the National Resistance Movement (NRM)’s Ten-Point Programme and international rules.

Existing explanations

Understanding persistent militarism amid the pretence of democratisation is vital to unravelling the nuances of autocratic rule. The institutionalist explanation contends that weak institutions such as political parties, legislatures, bureaucracies, judicial and conflict resolution mechanisms; and civil society create governance lacunae in which militaries become gap-fillers.

In much of Africa, ‘the military is one of very few technically capable large institutions’ with logistical, professional, and technical capabilities to contain daunting governance problems. Accordingly, militaries are better structured, and organised, with a more coherent ethos of respect for authority, vis-à-vis civilian institutions.

When other state institutions fail, more organised institutions like armed forces claim both the legitimacy and organisational wherewithal to restore order in an otherwise disorderly governance space. This argument has merits.

First, institutional weaknesses breed uncertainty, even anarchy, providing incentives for organised actors to seek to restore order. Second, militaries tend to perceive them- selves as better organised than civilian institutions because of their rigid hierar- chical structure and disciplinary nature, making it easier for them to impose or- der than the more competition-riddled civilian institutional actors.

Third, militaries view themselves as relatively more cohesive because the nature of their work demands cohesion and unity. This creates incentives to impose unity and predictability to an uncertain socio-political space.

The institutionalist explanation, however, hardly reveals how and when civilian institutions acquire the wherewithal to replace militaries as embodiments of organised politics. It is unclear why it re- mains problematic to strengthen civilian institutions in militarised polities.

The argument takes institutions as natural, not as evolving from deliberate and lengthy processes of socio-political transformation in which powerful actors’ choices and behaviours inform institutional metamorphosis. Institutional weakness may result from regime uncertainty when regime elites fear, even work against, an established, elite-constraining, institutional order.

The second explanation, the personality thesis, avers that personal likes, dislikes and characteristics of an influential leader are key to understanding regime behaviour. Accordingly, President Museveni is both a military leader and a believer in militarism. Some analyses show that Museveni’s personality, whims, motives and interests tend to overrun the legal-rational rules and structures he has crafted.

Thus, rule-based structures become channels for pursuing leaders’ interests not for establishing a rules-based order. For such a leader,rules are bendable; leasers’ interests cannot be sacrificed.

Museveni’s proclivity for seeking military solutions to most governance problems is seen in his consistent appointment of military officials to positions he considers critical to regime survival. His might-is-right attitude is demonstrated in his insistence on settling political questions of the 1970s and 1980s through armed rebellion, militarily neutralising armed opponents, including the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), militarised response to non-traditional security threats, terrorism, crime and urban riots, and military presence in civilian state structures.

Against this bias on Museveni’s part, the failure to strengthen civilian institutions like Parliament and his tolerance for military corruption become comprehensible. Recent research reveals tolerance for military corruption is not as a sign of failure but a means to regime sustenance. While having some merit, this view fails to underline the basis and sources of leaders’ preferences for militarism.

Leaders are part of ruling-elite groups that constitute a regime. By interrogating the nature of regimes and conditions under which they rule, we can uncover the motives and interests that hatch and nurture militarism.

Alternative argument

Regime uncertainty breeds and/or perpetuates militarism.

The growing military autocracy in Uganda is traceable to increasing regime uncertainty: the more the regime feels uncertain about its grip on power and the safety of its leaders, the more it resorts to militarism. This is especially true after deviating from the ‘Bush-War’ promises, the 1995 Constitution, and amid growing demands for accountability for abuses over the years and opposition to perpetual rule. Uncertainty stifles efforts to make Uganda’s military politically neutral, and non-partisan, contrary to the promises and platitudes about professionalisation.

A politicised military helps to shock-absorb the uncertainties surrounding the regime, hence incentives for sustained militarised autocratisation. Regime uncertainty is a political-security situation in which a ruling regime, in a given polity, lacks clarity about the political survival of its leaders and the resilience of its public-ideological claims around which its rule has been justified. Uncertainty creates incentives to forge and sustain overly coercive approaches to governance.

While civilian society can behave militaristically, especially where counterinsurgency operations emphasise military solutions, or where foreign policy is defined in terms of warfare, armed forces are the core embodiment of militarism. Since the military is the most coercive state organ, uncertain ruling regimes have incentives to exploit the institution as a cushion against uncertainty.

This begets militarism, the tendency to rely on military solutions to political-governance problems. In Uganda, the military’s usurpation of civilian governance spheres, and the regime’s reliance on military means to impose order, signifies political and person- al uncertainty and indefensibility of the ideological claims of post-1986.

Uncertainty inheres in the NRM’s mistrust of civilian structures to maintain power, and in Museveni’s deliberate subjection of state institutions to military influence. While focused on Uganda, this chapter reveals elite behaviour that is symptomatic of uncertain regimes in the developing world.

The conceptual and empirical analysis here has important implications for framing the imperatives and motives of militarism, one of the major embodiments of autocratisation and a persistent antidote to democratic developments in and beyond Africa.

Regime uncertainty

Militarism can be traced from regime uncertainty within domestic politics, in the context of national power struggles. The concept eludes a unanimous definition.

Any ‘universal definition of militarism is likely to be meaningless’, for militarism entails and transcends ‘acceptance of the theory of the inevitableness of warfare, and of the policy of military preparedness’ for war as classically defined.

Philosophically, militarism entails the ‘glorification of military values, a propensity towards the use of force to solve problems, increases in the military apparatus’, and the definition of states as coercive Leviathans as cushions against the war of man against man.

This ‘exceptionalist militarism’ implies the tendency of a state to stand the ultimate test of sovereignty: war.

Other dimensions also underscore the (re)production of justifications for, as well as the creation and sustenance, thereby, of military infrastructure (ideas, rules, processes, structures, technologies and practices of warfare) that typify intra- and inter-Leviathan relations.

Practically, militarism involves deliberate reliance on military structures and personnel to run most state affairs, leading to ‘the increasing influences of the military in civilian affairs’.

This tendency begets militarisation, a process whereby militaristic traits are assimilated into social structures and individuals, leading to the use of military strategies and actions, deployment of military weaponry and personnel, military involvement in internal security and policing, shoot-to- kill orders and attacks against perceived threats in non-war situations, and deployment of military officials in civilian bureaucracies.

Thus, militarism creates incentives for militarisation (the process), leading to what is called a ‘Garrison State’, in which specialists in violence become dominant actors in society. A natural antonym of militarisation is ‘demilitarisation’, a process of shedding off militaristic traits, beliefs in military centrality and achieving civilian control over the military institution.

Militarism is a practical phenome- non, part of everyday political practice. Both the tendency and practice give rise to (a) societal forces – economic, political, and cultural resources – being mobilised for military power (militarising society); and relations of military power be- come recurrent and unambiguous; (b) Mobilisation of social forces and reproduction of social relations of military power enable the military to infiltrate, influence or usurp civilian governance realms; (c) The military becomes the central locus of political contests despite rules-based structures created to facilitate non-military political processes; (d) The military’s usurpation of civilian functions does not “civilianise” the military; instead, it militarises civilians by making them imbibe, adopt, military traits and attitudes.

These features arise from regime uncertainty, which has both political and elite-security dimensions. Politically, regime uncertainty involves a lack of clarity regarding power and the exercise thereof, power transitions, succession and continuity or change.

Uncertainty can be about how long the ruling group will hold power or how it should exercise its power and the consequences the- reof; the bases of its power and how they may be maintained, strengthened and/or consolidated; and how much power can be shared, diversified and/or decentralised to other entities and groups.