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NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Pathways to Military Effectiveness: Armies and Contemporary African States a DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO

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NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Pathways to Military Effectiveness: Armies and Contemporary African States a DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Pathways to Military Effectiveness: Armies and Contemporary African States A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Field of Political Science By Jahara Matisek EVANSTON, ILLINOIS June 2018 2 Abstract How do weak states build and maintain strong militaries that do not pose a threat? A government that presides over an institutionally weak state might reasonably fear that an effective army would be tempted to engage in coup d’état . Yet several countries in Africa with low overall institutional capacity sustain armies with substantial material and organizational capabilities. Four countries meet these criteria and provide case studies for this research: Senegal, Uganda, Rwanda, and Ethiopia. This study identifies the mainsprings of a sustainable weak state – strong army outcome in a combination of appropriate political strategies on the parts of state leaders that includes a willingness to repurpose informal “customary” social practices and institutions to compensate for weak bureaucratic structures of control. Coalitions of leaders inside and outside the military also collaborate in the deployment of armies to tasks that are not conventionally associated with militaries. Those that are successful in executing strategies enable the creation of ‘military enclaves’ where informal institutions and practices commonly associated with ineffective militaries in fact contribute to military effectiveness of that military. These findings point to a need for a new conceptualization of professionalism based on what type of military has emerged in a given state. Beyond conventional categories of political and apolitical armies, the particular nature of African politics and warfare has led to the existence of personalist armies. Personalized militaries exhibit their own traits – to include their own contextually dependent ideas about professionalism and military effectiveness. I argue that we need a model of institutional military effectiveness to establish the sort of civil-military relations that result in five different types of military outcomes: Ineffective, Resourceful, Parochial, Hollow, and Effective. 3 The capacity of weak states to build effective militaries in Africa indicates an alternative pathway for African state-building in a regional context in which interstate warfare is rare, foreign patrons provide selective security benefits, and leaders face apparent domestic incentives to keep armies weak. My conclusions are drawn from interviews conducted at the Pentagon (Washington, D.C.) and U.S. Africa Command (Stuttgart, Germany), and fieldwork in Senegal, Uganda, Rwanda, and Ethiopia. 4 Acknowledgements Having spent a decade in the U.S. Air Force as a cargo pilot, I came to Northwestern University to write a dissertation about the role of U.S. airpower in changing the organizational behavior of regime forces and rebels in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and the Balkans. My advisor William Reno was enthusiastic to have me write about such a topic. There was one problem: Dr. Reno expected me to conduct serious field research. Unfortunately, my status as an active duty U.S. military member made this highly problematic. Like any other risk-adverse bureaucracy, they had little interest in seeing me visit warzones or failed states to conduct research and interviews. Even visiting such dangerous places “bubble wrapped” as Dr. Reno would jokingly suggest was not enough to convince my superiors in the U.S. Air Force. During this period of uncertainty in determining which places would be tolerable to my chain of command for research my investigations into various African countries introduced me to new ideas of differences in state power and military strength. I tried to decipher how the political science literature determined some states to be institutionally “weak,” and yet my military experience and personal understanding of military capacity and effectiveness led me to believe otherwise. It made me question how a country could be deemed “weak” but still be militarily effective. Such questions drew me to Africa, a continent that had experienced tremendous numbers of internal wars since the end of World War Two, but had very few cases of conventional war between states. In embarking on this counterintuitive adventure about militaries and the state, I was inspired by a hodgepodge of multidisciplinary literature while taking classes on political violence 5 and civil wars taught by Paul Staniland, William Reno, Ana Arjona and the anthropologist Bill Murphy. In these classes, my beliefs and understanding of political violence, rebel groups, and militaries was highly influenced by the writings of Stathis Kalyvas, Jeremy Weinstein, Roger D. Petersen, Herbert Howe, and Mary Kaldor. Regarding state-building literature, Charles Tilly, Otto Hintze, Joel Migdal, and Jeffrey Herbst, made me seriously reconsider the role of militaries in Africa. Moreover, ideas about administrative organization required reference to Herbert Simon, while my conceptions of institutions were heavily influenced by Douglas North. Finally, various intellectual strands within works on civil-military relations made me consider texts by Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, Samuel Huntington, Peter Feaver, and Michael Desch. I even found myself intellectually inspired about African civil-military relations by the old African National Congress (ANC) rebel, Colonel Rocky Williams, who helped liberate South Africa from apartheid. I was fortunate to attend numerous workshops and conferences where I connected with numerous accomplished scholar-practitioners. I had the good fortune of being accepted into the Summer Seminar in History and Statecraft , sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin, Clements Center for National Security. During this week in beautiful Beaver Creek, Colorado, I got the chance to personally interact (and have plenty of drinks) with William Inboden, Paul D. Miller, Steve Slick, Kori Schake, Steve and Tami Biddle, Hal Brands (and his dad H.W. Brands), Frank Gavin, Henry Nau, Colin Kahl, and Peter Feaver. Even a tangential discussion with Ted Bromund led to me learning that Adam Smith had written about civil-military relations in an obscure chapter in The Wealth of Nations . That week made me realize the role of history and 6 political choices by leaders in determining how some states develop a military that is reflective of strategic visions and outlays. My two weeks in “Gorges” Ithaca, New York, attending the Summer Workshop on Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy , sponsored by Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, was a formative moment in my intellectual development. Day in and day out, myself and 23 junior security scholars challenged each other about our assumptions concerning war, strategy, military power and effectiveness, and even the importance of logistics in deciding battle outcomes! The daily mentoring by Dick Betts and Steve Biddle during that intellectually intensive time is something that I will always cherish; even helping me better understand my own military. Even a brief doctoral workshop at School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS) in Montgomery, Alabama, introduced me to a group of military intellectuals, namely Rich Ganske, Mark Jacobsen, and Nathan Finney, that seemed determined to bring reform to the U.S. military through intelligent discourses on strategy and warfare. I was also incredibly lucky to be selected to participate in the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) Dissertation Proposal Development (DPD) Program, which supported a large portion of my research. The feedback from peers and professors during SSRC workshops enabled this manuscript to take its current form. I am especially thankful for the critiques and advice provided by Mary J. Weismantel, Durba Ghosh, and Ronald Kassimir. Moreover, the opportunity to present my dissertation findings about African militaries to a rowdy group of British military personnel, academics, and policy-makers at the 2018 Sandhurst Trends in International Conflict Series Symposium on Fragile States: Challenges and Responses, was an phenomenal experience I will never forget. 7 At Northwestern, I am indebted to the support, resources, and research assistance lent by the Buffett Institute for Global Studies through their Graduate Student Dissertation Research Travel Award, the Panofsky Award from the Program for African Studies (PAS), and the Minar Memorial Summer Award from the Political Science department (especially Sara Monoson, Courtney D. Syskowski, and John Mocek). In addition, my time as the program coordinator for the War & Society Working Group (formerly known as the Security Studies Working Group) gave me the opportunity to get face time with a wide array of visiting scholars, such as Vipin Narang, Rich Nielsen, Jon Caverley, Sarah Croco, Heidi Hardt, Peter Krause, Roland Marchal, Yuri Zhukov, Andreas Wimmer, and Caitlin Talmadge. They all facilitated my intellectual development in one way or another, even if they did not realize it in those fleeting moments making comments about my research. I am also incredibly fortunate that my time at Northwestern was funded by a fellowship sponsored by the Military and Strategic Studies (MSS) department at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and that MSS Professor Mike Fowler provided a technical review of this dissertation. My grad school time in Evanston, Illinois, introduced me to the diverse
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