- 著者
-
佐藤 章
- 出版者
- 一般財団法人 日本国際政治学会
- 雑誌
- 国際政治 (ISSN:04542215)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.2018, no.194, pp.194_79-194_94, 2018-12-25 (Released:2019-05-16)
- 参考文献数
- 45
In the 1990s, Sub-Saharan Africa encountered many armed conflicts and, consequently, experienced several regime changes resulting from military victories or the elections following the ratification of peace accords. In this series of events, major international actors, such as the United Nations and developed countries, intervened in Africa under the guise of peace building and promoting democracy to further their own interests in pursuing a new world order during the post-Cold War era. In such a situation, many African countries had to simultaneously accomplish numerous difficult tasks related to aspects such as security, recovery, reconciliation, and democracy. As a result, whereas some countries were successful in these tasks, others failed and had to encounter escalating political instability.Approximately 20 years have passed since then; today, one of the most important changes that one can find in Africa is the significant enhancement of the region’s political and military capacity to respond to conflicts. This paper focuses on this capacity notably exercised by several regional organizations in Africa and discusses two observations regarding this development. First, this enhancement is an outcome of fulfilling the transition toward realizing “African Solutions to Africa’s Problems,” an idea that has received international acclaim since the 1990s. Second, the cooperative task sharing that is implemented between African countries and actors outside Africa, such as the United Nations, has enhanced the region’s capacity to respond to conflicts.Further, this paper examines the unintended outcomes of this enhancement in Africa’s capacity to respond to conflicts. In recent years, several African countries have engaged in active military operations against armed Islamist groups, whose activities, on their part, have escalated the violence occurring in the region. It is true that such operations are the result of autonomous efforts by African countries to satisfy their own security interests. However, in the current global context, their activities imply that they are participating in the “war on terror” led by developed countries. In addition, the recent initiatives for conflict resolution in Côte d’Ivoire and the Gambia by a regional organization in West Africa reveal that some African countries are so confident of their military capacity that they have a radical conviction that military intervention by these countries in other African counties is justified if the purpose is to secure or stabilize democracy in the latter. These unintended outcomes of capacity enhancement can be clearly described as both an ambiguity and a paradox of finding “African Solutions to Africa’s Problems.” By highlighting this aspect, this paper portrays the relationship between the new world order, regime changes, and violence in twenty-first-century Africa.