The London School of Economics and Political Science Re-Thinking The
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The London School of Economics and Political Science Re-thinking the liberal peace: anti-colonial thought and post-war intervention in Mozambique Meera Sabaratnam A thesis submitted to the Department of International Relations of the London School of Economics for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, London, December 2011 1 Declaration I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the MPhil/PhD degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work other than where I have clearly indicated that it is the work of others (in which case the extent of any work carried out jointly by me and any other person is clearly identified in it). The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. I declare that my thesis consists of 104,148 words. 2 Abstract Whilst much of the world has been formally decolonised, the ways we think about international relations often remains Eurocentric. This is evident in the critical debate on the liberal peace, which problematises the politics of post- war intervention. In this debate, it is argued that donors conduct invasive liberal social transformations in the name of conflict management and good governance. Although insightful, these critiques have tended to ignore the target society as a subject of history and politics in its own right. In response, the thesis turns to anti-colonial thought for strategies to reconstruct the target society as a subject of politics and source of critique. Drawing on the thinking of Césaire, Fanon and Cabral, these approaches offer philosophical re-orientations for how we understand the embodied subject, how we approach analysis, and how we think about political ethics. I use these insights to look at the liberal peace in Mozambique, one of intervention’s ‘success stories’. First, ‘Mozambique’ is itself re-constituted as a subject of history, in which the liberal peace is contextualised within historical forms of rule. Second, political subjecthood is reconstructed through thinking about ‘double consciousness’ on issues of governance and corruption. Third, I look at forms of conscious transactionality and alienation in the material realities of the liberal peace. Finally, I explore the historically ambivalent relationship of the peasantry with the state, which highlights alternative responses to neoliberal policy. The conclusions of the thesis suggest that the problem with the liberal peace is not so much that it is an alien form of rule which is culturally unsuitable but an alienating form of rule which is politically and economically exclusionary. The kind of critical ethical response that this demands is not based on the assumption of unbridgeable ‘difference’ between the West and its Others, but of the potential and actual connections between embodied political subjects who can listen to and hear each other. 3 Table of Contents Images......................................................................................................................... 7 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................. 10 Introduction: Renewing the critical imagination in world politics .................... 12 I. What is critique, and who are its subjects? ................................................... 13 II. The ‘liberal peace’ debate as intellectual terrain ........................................... 16 III. Anti-colonial thought as a resource for critique ........................................ 19 IV. Pursuing critique through an extended illustration ................................... 23 V. The central question and structure of the thesis ............................................ 27 Chapter One: The liberal peace? A brief intellectual history of international conflict management, 1990-2010 ............................................................................ 31 I. UN Peacebuilding, the early years: from social justice to state collapse ..... 32 II. Managing Global Chaos? The emergence of a field .................................... 35 III. Institutionalisation: the turn to governance ............................................... 38 IV. Turbulent Peace? Reconciliation and healing in the wake of conflict ..... 40 V. The consolidation of ‘liberal peace’ interventions ........................................ 42 VI. Leashing the Dogs of War! 9/11 and state-building reloaded ................... 44 Conclusion: The liberal peace as global conflict management tool .................. 48 Chapter Two: Critiquing the liberal peace: anti-imperialism and the non-entity of the non-Western subject ..................................................................................... 50 I. The liberal peace: from discourse to technology of power ........................... 52 II. The liberal peace, critical theory and life welfare ......................................... 58 III. The ethics of liberal-local engagement and a post-liberal peace .............. 62 IV. The liberal peace as illiberal statebuilding ................................................ 69 V. Discussion: where are the subjects of the liberal peace? .............................. 72 Conclusions ....................................................................................................... 84 Chapter Three: Re-thinking the subject of politics: embodied being in anti- colonial thought ....................................................................................................... 85 I. The critique of imperialism in earlier political thought ................................ 86 II. Anti-colonial activists as critical thinkers ..................................................... 92 III. Re-orientating political critique ................................................................ 95 i. The embodied, situated subject of politics ................................................ 96 4 ii. A multi-dimensional conception of politics ............................................ 103 iii. The ‘new humanism’ as ethical grounding ......................................... 110 IV. Critiquing the liberal peace from an anti-colonial perspective ............... 116 Conclusions ..................................................................................................... 118 Chapter Four: Reconstructing the subjects of analysis: alternative narrative strategies for the liberal peace debate ................................................................. 120 I. Three strategies for reconstructing the subject ............................................ 122 i. Reconstructing historical presence .......................................................... 123 ii. Engaging with political consciousness .................................................... 127 iii. Re-thinking material structures and experience .................................. 131 II. ‘Reading’ Mozambique ............................................................................... 133 i. Sources .................................................................................................... 134 ii. Interpretive methodologies, authenticity and anti-colonial humanism ... 142 Conclusions ..................................................................................................... 150 Chapter Five: Reconstructing historical presence: antecedent forms of rule, struggle and social transformation in Mozambique .......................................... 152 I. Southern East Africa before Berlin ............................................................. 159 II. Mozambique and the New State (Novo Estado), 1928-74 .......................... 168 III. Independence, Socialist Revolution and Frelimo rule 1975-1989 .......... 176 IV. Liberalisation and the one-party state, 1989 to the historical present ..... 182 i. Political authority .................................................................................... 186 ii. Political economy .................................................................................... 188 iii. Public administration .......................................................................... 190 V. Discussion: Implications of reconstructing a historical subject .................. 193 Conclusions ..................................................................................................... 197 Chapter Six: Reconstructing the political subject: double consciousness and the question of good governance ................................................................................ 199 I. Governance and corruption in the liberal peace debate .............................. 201 II. Political consciousness and corruption in Mozambique ............................. 204 i. ‘Isso não acontecia se Samora estivesse vivo’- ‘This would not happen if Samora was alive’ ........................................................................................... 205 ii. ‘Africa, Mozambique without coherence will have no good governance’: ‘Good governance’ as a basis of radical critique? .......................................... 213 III. Double consciousness under the liberal peace ........................................ 220 Conclusions ..................................................................................................... 224