Journal of Political Science Volume 25 Number 1 Article 4 November 1997 Peacekeeping From a Realist Viewpoint: Nigeria and the OAU Operation in CHAD Terry M. Mays Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/jops Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Mays, Terry M. (1997) "Peacekeeping From a Realist Viewpoint: Nigeria and the OAU Operation in CHAD," Journal of Political Science: Vol. 25 : No. 1 , Article 4. Available at: https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/jops/vol25/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Politics at CCU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Political Science by an authorized editor of CCU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. PEACEKEEPING FROM A REALIST VIEWPOINT: NIGERIA AND THE OAU OPERATION IN CHAD Terry M Mays, Citadel A successful multinational peacekeeping operation needs the cooperation of states willing to contribute men and women to field the mission. The Nigerian government, located in the new capital of Abuja, is the most frequent African provider of observers, police, and military contingents for multinational peacekeeping operations around the globe. Between 1964 and 1997, Nigeria contributed personnel to a total of23 multinational peacekeeping missions -12 on the African continent and 11 outside of the continent. The Nigerian peacekeepers have served in missions fielded by the United Nations, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOW AS). All nine Nigerian prime ministers or presidents, military and civilian, have either personally participated in a peacekeeping operation or have held the title of commander in chief of the Nigerian armed forces during an Abuja supported peacekeeping mission. Why would a relatively new and underdeveloped state such as Nigeria participate so heavily in international peacekeeping operations? The realist and idealist views of international relations provide interpretations for Nigerian participation in international peacekeeping. Realists believe that the center of international relations involves states struggling over conflicting national interests. States constantly attempt to increase their power, maintain their power, or demonstrate power (Rourke 151). Thus, peacekeeping would be an attempt to exert state power through the introduction of a multinational military force. Idealists, on the other hand, believe that states do not have to struggle over conflicting interests. International relations should be based on cooperation and moral standards (Rourke 156). Idealists would see peacekeeping as a cooperative effort to halt hostilities in order to allow negotiators to settle a crisis. However, statesmen rarely practice one form exclusively over the other. The realist view offers a better explanation for Nigerian peacekeeping contributions on the continent of Africa while the idealist. 59 TerryM Mays view offers a better explanation for Nigerian military contributions outside of the African continent. It can be argued from a realist point of view that Nigerian contributions to multinational peacekeeping operations on the African continent are extensions of Nigerian foreign policy attempts to increase, maintain, or demonstrate power. What Abuja is not able to accomplish through negotiations or threats, it may be able to perform via the use of international military efforts including peacekeeping. In order to fully understand this point, one must review how Nigerian politicians and academics view their country's African policies. Ambassador Ibrahim A. Gambari, Nigeria's foreign minister under Major-General Buhari, and Margaret Vogt, a senior Research Fellow at the government sponsored Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, advocate the use of a geographical based "concentric circles" framework when examining Nigerian foreign policy on the African continent. The framework, originally devised to understand Nigerian defense policy, has been expanded to include the political and economic dimensions of foreign policy (Ekoko 133). In explaining the utilization of concentric circles, Vogt writes that: Nigeria cannot take on itself the responsibility of guaranteeing African security without first ensuring its own territorial boundaries, of the states contiguous to it, of the West African sub-region, and then one can operate with confidence at the regional [African continent] level (Vogt 94). The framework divides Nigerian foreign policy goals in Africa into three geographical regions - the core, the West African sub-region, and the rest of Africa. The first circle, referred to as the "core" by Vogt and the "innermost circle" by Gambari, includes Nigeria itself and the contiguous states of Benin, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. The second circle refers to the other states in West Africa or the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) sub-region. The final circle represents the African states not included in the other categories (Gambari 230 and Vogt 94-95). Although the concentric circles model is helpful for foreign policy analysis, a modification based on another geographical framework 60 I The Journal of Political Science Peacekeeping advocated by C.M.B. Utete is even more useful. He places the four states bordering Nigeria into the second category (or sub-regional area) rather than in the core area. This modification allows for a review of the foreign policy aims which directly affect the physical territory, people or government of Nigeria to be separated from an examination of interests in other states. For the purposes of this research, the framework begins with the core goals which center on Nigeria itself. Utete's core category refers to the security and preservation of the state's territorial integrity and independence (Utete 47). Thus, the core value refers to foreign policy goals related to the protection and preservation ofNigeria and Nigerians. The second category includes the states in the core country's perceived sub-region of interest, namely West Africa. The third category, continental issues, matches the last grouping under the concentric circles model and includes the African states not listed under sub-regional issues. According to· the model, Nigerian interests intensify the closer a country is situated to its borders. Nigeria, in order to maintain its security and project power, uses multinational peacekeeping as a tool to settle crises that could have an impact on its foreign policy goals. States outside of the African continent tend to play a smaller role in Nigerian power politics than those on the continent. Realist based foreign policy descriptions do not fully explain Nigeria's involvement in every peacekeeping operation since 1960. A review of Nigeria's foreign policy pronouncements and a national conference on peacekeeping reveals an idealist rationale behind its contributions to international peacekeeping operations outside of the African continent. Some Nigerians view their participation in international peacekeeping as the result of treaty obligations. Second, international conflict is damaging to global political and economic relations and all states should be willing to pull their weight in the attempts to check such turmoil. These statements warrant further explanation. First, Nigerians have viewed contributions to multinational peacekeeping as treaty obligations. If a state joins an international organization, it should pull its weight in the work of that body and not be a "free rider". Dr. E. I. Nwogugu, a former Vice Chancellor of the University ofNigeria, commented during a Nigerian national conference on peacekeeping that "Nigeria is obliged to send out a peacekeeping force Volume 25, 1997 \ 61 TerryM Mays in accordance with treaty obligations , especially as, under Article 25 of the UN Charter, all members of the UN agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the Charter" (Nwogugu 17). Many Nigerians also view international conflict as damaging to all states on the globe. In response , international peacekeeping is seen as a tool to stabilize a military crisis while negotiators seek a solution to the outbreak of hostilities. Therefore , it is in the interest of all countries to support the formation and fielding of peacekeeping operations which can provide the conditions conducive for conflict resolution . Nigerian scholar G. 0 . Olusanya stated that "it is in the pursuit of world peace that Nigeria has taken part in important peacekeeping operations [outside of the African continent]" (Olusanya 86). Dr. A. Bolaji Akinyemi, a former Nigerian foreign minister, remarked that: it is not Western Europe alone [in contrast to the Soviet Union and United States which rarely contributed to peacekeeping missions prior to 1989 due to Cold War politics] which has the responsibility of playing this [peacekeeping] role. In a situation where the survival of the world is threatened, states, no matter how far away from the scene of conflict, cannot ignore this threat and cannot profess the luxury of burying their heads in the sand, ostrichwise ....Underdeveloped states may of course claim, quite wrongly in my view, that there is no role for them to play .... For our part at the Institute [Institute of International Affairs in Lagos], we will not be tired of reminding Nigerians that the boundary of the world is not at Idiroko or Sokoto or Maiduguri or Calabar. We will never be tired of reminding