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The Western state-led turn to remote forms of military intervention as recently deployed in the Middle East and across Africa is often explained as resulting from risk aversion (avoidance of ground combat), materiality (‘the force of matter’) or the adoption of a networked operational logic by major military powers, mimicking the ‘hit-and-run’ tactics of their enemies. Although recognizing the mobilizing capacities of these phenomena, we argue that the new military interventionism is prompted by a more fundamental transformation, grounded in the spatial and temporal reconfiguration of war. We see a resort to ‘liquid warfare’ as a form of military interventionism that shuns direct control of territory and populations and its cumbersome order-building and order-maintaining responsibilities, focusing instead on ‘shaping’ the international security environment through remote technology, flexible operations and military-to-military partnerships. We draw upon assemblage as a heuristic device and the case of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) to flesh out the complex and fluid nature of liquid warfare and the ways by which power operates across space. We outline how the forging of a transnational military assemblage in the name of ‘hunting Kony’ allowed for the buildup of an archipelago of military bases and operational capabilities across Africa, which serve as hubs for the monitoring, disrupting and containment of potential risks and dangers.

This paper examines US security policy toward Africa. It describes and analyses US security assistance to Africa and Biden’s security assistance budget request for Africa for Fiscal Year 2024. It also reports testimony of the commander of Africom at the hearings on the budget request held before the US House and US Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2023.

This article explores biopolitical practices that extend beyond national borders and take the whole of humanity as their province. It looks at how attempts to secure and optimize conditions of living in Africa are not merely governmental in scope but also diplomatic in their conceptualization and conduct. It specifically examines the merging of diplomacy, defence and development (or the 3Ds), which purports to optimize life and shape ways of being in areas that cannot be ‘fully governed’ or resist domestication. It assesses the impact of diplomatic pluralization, characterized by the militarization of diplomacy and development, the diplomatization of the military, and new forms of diplomatic outreach, as practised by agencies such as AFRICOM. At stake in this exploration is an ethico-political critique of 3D engagement through which lives, conducts and relationships are negotiated in the postcolony.

The main objective of the American African Command (AFRICOM) is to fight terrorism with the aim of advancing US strategic and security interests in Africa. The second is to beef-up African security and contribute to the continent‘s development. This paper argues that the counter-terrorism measures adopted so far are unsuccessful because the solution to terrorism is not informed by military actions alone. In fact, historical experience of such strategies shows that the phenomenon of terrorism cannot be defeated. This article, therefore, contends that as long as the US relies on military power the goals of AFRICOM (i.e., the war against terror) is likely to be futile without a holistic approach.

This article discusses the Bush administration's African policy legacy and its implications for the Obama administration. Many have argued that the events of 9/11 led the administration to view the African subcontinent differently, and that the US has altered its conception of national interests in the region. The tripling of American foreign aid to the region is noteworthy. AFRICOM's creation also suggests a policy shift. The article is nonetheless sceptical that these changes represent a paradigmatic shift in policy towards Africa, rather than a partial and inconsistent adjustment made possible by a conjunction of quite specific circumstances. Indeed, these circumstances provided an opportunity to redefine US foreign policy towards the region, which the Bush administration largely failed to do. The article argues that the weight of the American diplomatic presence in the region has continued to decline, because of the worsening institutional fragmentation in the foreign policy apparatus, contradictions in policy, and the decline in the State Department's institutional capacity. As the Obama administration defines US policy in the region, it must address most of the same conundrums as its predecessors, but with less leverage than past administrations and constrained by the fiscal effects of the worst recession in sixty years.

The militarisation of US-African relations has attracted considerable attention in recent years. Left largely unexplored, however, is the question of how this process has involved US-based scholars. This essay examines this process with particular attention to the rapid expansion of military and intelligence research on and in Africa, and, in particular, military and intelligence funding of US Africanists' research including at the major African Studies centres. While the classification of much federal research limits conclusions, it is apparent that military and intelligence priorities are coming to significantly shape the present and future of much research and training.

Africa's booming growth dynamics have drawn a renewed interest of its traditional Western trade partners, who felt their preferential relations threatened by the growing Chinese competition for access to the abundant strategic resources. The Chinese approach of combining trade in minerals with investments in large infrastructure projects to access the needed resources has transformed the traditional structure of the geopolitical rivalry on the continent. With the objectives of the geostrategic game shifting from territorial domination to political hegemony, oil and profits, the payoffs to different protagonists have become more complementary than mutually exclusive. As a result, new foreign actors seeking to use their own specific approaches to take advantage of the growing African trade and investment opportunities have emerged. In this article, we analyse the main patterns of global actors'engagement with Africa, as well as shed some light on the way how Turkey has gotten involved in the continent. We hope to make sense of Turkey's growing diplomatic and trade relationships with Africa in the context of the increasing competition for influence between Africa's traditional Western partners and the emerging Asian global players. One of our goals is to ascertain whether Turkey's engagement with Africa is something unique or bears resembles to other actors' engagement. Afrika'nın gelişmekte olan ticaret dinamikleri, kendilerini Çin'in kıta üzerindeki stratejik kaynaklarına erişimi konusundaki rekabeti karşısında tehdit altında hisseden Batılı müttefiklerin ilgisini çekmektedir. Çin'nin ihtiyacı olan kaynaklara erişimi bağlamında benimsediği doğal kaynaklar üzerindeki ticaret ile büyük altyapı projelerini birleştirme yönündeki yaklaşımı kıta üzerindeki geleneksel jeopolitik rekabetin yapısını değiştirmiştir. Jeostratejik oyunun amacının karasal hakimiyet kurmaktan çıkıp siyasi hegemonya tesis etme odaklı olmaya başlamasıyla, petrol, kar ve farklı aktörlerin kazançları birbirlerini dışlayıcı olmak yerine birbirlerini tamamlayıcı olmaya başlamıştır. Bunun sonucunda, Afrika'nın gelişmekte olan ticaret ve yatırım fırsatlarından istifade etmek amacıyla bölgeye yönelik kendi yaklaşımlarını oluşturan yeni dış politka aktörleri ortaya çıkmıştır. Bu makalede küresel aktörlerin bölgeye yönelik politikalarının ana hatlarını ve Türkiye'nin Afrika'ya nasıl müdahil olmaya başladığını analiz ediyoruz. Umudumuz, Türkiye'nin Afrika'yla olan ticari ve diplomatik ilişkilerini, kıta üzerinde rekabet halinde olan geleneksel Batılı müttefikler ile yükselmekte olan Asyalı küresel oyuncular arasındaki mücadele bağlamında anlamlandırmaktır. Amaçlarımızdan bir diğeri Türkiye'nin Afrika açılımının kendine özgü mü olduğunu ya da diğer aktörlerin açalımlarına benzeyip beznemediğini incelemektir.

Protection has risen to prominence over the past decade in fields from humanitarian practice to military operations. Its rise, however, has been characterized by a lack of clarity over what it means in practice. This article attempts to discern the politics of protection by examining a specific case: the international effort to protect civilians from the Lord's Resistance Army. It argues that the initiatives being mounted to protect civilians from the Lord's Resistance Army should be seen as efforts to constitute and experiment with new forms of transnational political authority, specifically unaccountable, militarized administration networks that bring together state, international, and substate actors and institutions.

All this must not enter our considerations this time, because the price far outweighs the benefit. [...] let Jordan take part with an ordinary delegation, and let it send its ambassador in Baghdad or any other side that would go using safer means, rather than to land an airplane within the eyeshot of the missiles and weapons.