Suchergebnisse

Volltext // Exemplar mit der Signatur: München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- Res/Germ.sp. 245#Beibd.4

With the concept of public security generally absent in Africa and a factionalized security sector of both state and non-state actors delivering security exclusively to certain groups affiliated with patrimonial elites, this paper examines the role of commercial providers of security within African security sectors. In factionalized security sectors with limited territorial reach, the state unable or unwilling to provide security as a public good within its boundaries has long lost its monopoly to control violence. It is against this backdrop that this paper asks the question to what extent commercial providers of security in Africa add another dimension to an already complex non-public security sector dominated by de-publicized statutory and non-statutory security providers. Thereby, this paper focuses on the degree to which commercial providers of security are embedded into patrimonial networks catering for exclusive private security interests of certain elites. Focusing on the issue of the private or public nature of commercially provided security in Africa through the prism of normative theory, this paper neither intends to make a moral value judgment about the legitimacy of commercially provided security in Africa nor intends to relativize the private patrimonial nature of commercially provided security as a phenomenon inherent in African civil-security sector relations. This paper rather tries to lay an exploratory foundation for the understanding of the interests driving commercial providers of security in Africa.

With the concept of public security generally absent in Africa and a factionalized security sector of both state and non-state actors delivering security exclusively to certain groups affiliated with patrimonial elites, this paper examines the role of commercial providers of security within African security sectors. In factionalized security sectors with limited territorial reach, the state unable or unwilling to provide security as a public good within its boundaries has long lost its monopoly to control violence. It is against this backdrop that this paper asks the question to what extent commercial providers of security in Africa add another dimension to an already complex non-public security sector dominated by de-publicized statutory and non-statutory security providers. Thereby, this paper focuses on the degree to which commercial providers of security are embedded into patrimonial networks catering for exclusive private security interests of certain elites. Focusing on the issue of the private or public nature of commercially provided security in Africa through the prism of normative theory, this paper neither intends to make a moral value judgment about the legitimacy of commercially provided security in Africa nor intends to relativize the private patrimonial nature of commercially provided security as a phenomenon inherent in African civil-security sector relations. This paper rather tries to lay an exploratory foundation for the understanding of the interests driving commercial providers of security in Africa.

This phenomenon ranges from arming proxies, to the use of armed drones, to cyber propaganda. Krieg and Rickli bring old, related practices such as war by mercenary or proxy under this new overarching concept. Apart from analyzing the underlying sociopolitical drivers that trigger patrons to substitute or supplement military action, this book looks at the intrinsic trade-offs between substitution and control that shapes the relationship between patron and surrogate. This book will be essential reading for anyone studying contemporary conflict.

Airpower, drones and cyber-weapons are employed by states in conjunction with local armed non-state actors in an effort to coercively intervene in the crises of the twenty-first century. While the externalization of the burden of warfare is a return to pre-modern war, it is the change in the underlying socio-political relations between the state and its military agent that is a novel phenomenon in surrogate warfare. This article demonstrates that in a post-Westphalian era characterized by non-state violence, globalized conflicts, a prioritization of risk management in a mediatized environment, the state has to explore new ways to remain relevant as the primary communal security provider. Thereby, the organization of violence has departed from the employment of the state's soldier as the primary bearer of the burden of warfare to a mode of war where technological and human surrogates enable the state to manage the risks of post-modern conflict remotely. In this article, we conceptually explore surrogate warfare as a socio-political phenomenon within the context of globalized, privatized, securitized and mediatized war.