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There has been a wave of this in recent years military coups in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Sudan and Guinea. Military rulelong dormant in African politics, is back.
The coup leaders did just that suppressed protests, the media silenced and shed much civilian blood in the name of public safety. They claim to protect their people from both internal and external enemies – some fictional to justify their takeovers and others very real (while military regimes are demonstrably violent extremism worsethey didn’t make it).
The generals fight each other as much as their enemies, leading to dueling coups Burkina Faso and a full-blown civil war in Sudan.
In West Africa, soldiers have shaken up and pushed away the geopolitical order France and the United Stateswhile they protect the Russian Federation (or rather, Russian-financed mercenaries) closer.
Outside observers and quite a few insiders were blindsided by these events. That’s because military rule, with its bland aesthetics and Cold War trappings, seemed like a relic of the past. Explanations for the return were mainly aimed at meddling outsiders, especially Russia. Others highlight the inherent vice of African states – the weaknesses that have existed since the dawn of independence, including poverty and corruption, which left people disenchanted with democracy.
I am one military historianand in recent years I have watched with dismay as the history I was writing about military dictatorships in the 1980s became current events. Military rule has deep roots, as my open access book says Soldier’s Paradise: Militarism in Post-Empire Africa argues. The coups of recent years are a return to one of independent Africa’s most important political traditions: militarism.
Militarism, or rule by soldiers, is a form of government in which military objectives merge into politics, and the values of the armed forces become the values of the state as a whole.
The recent series of coups in West Africa can only be understood in the long term of postcolonial history. The military regimes of the past were brutally innovative. They created new rules, new institutions, and new norms for the way people should interact with each other. They promised to make Africa an orderly and prosperous paradise. They failed, but their promises were popular.
The Military Regimes of Africa
Armies ruled by force, not by consensus, but many people liked their disciplinary enthusiasm. Getting the audience into shape, sometimes literally, had great appeal to people who felt that the world had become too unmanageable. Independence did not always mean freedom, and soldiers’ rigid ideas shaped decolonization in ways we are only beginning to understand.
Long submerged by more hopeful ideological currents, militarism is now returning to the surface of African politics. Mine book describes where militarism came from and why it lasted so long.
Petty and paranoid
Between 1956 and 2001 there were approximately 80 successful coups, 108 failed, and 139 plots across sub-Saharan Africa. Some countries There have been many coups (Sudan has the highest, with 18 known attempts since 1950), while others had none (such as Botswana). But even in places where the military was not in charge, the threat of a military takeover shaped the way civilians governed.
The successful coups produced military regimes that were remarkably durable. Their leaders promised that their regimes would be a “transitional” or “prison regime” and that they would return power to the citizens as quickly as possible.
Few did so, and in some countries military rule lasted for decades. This could mean graveyard-like stability, where a single soldier-king ruled for an entire generation (like Burkina Faso), or constant unrest as one junta gave way to another (like Nigeria). Military governments were petty and paranoid; every officer knew he had a line of rivals behind him waiting for their moment.
In these ‘revolutions’, as the coup plotters called their takeovers, a new ideology emerged. Militarism was a coherent and relatively consistent vision of society, even though not all military regimes were the same. It had its own political values (obedience, discipline), morals (honor, courage, respect for rank) and an economic logic (order, which they promised would bring prosperity).
It had a distinct aesthetic and a vision for what Africa should look and feel like. The internal principles of the military became the rules of politics as a whole. Officers came to believe that the training they used to turn civilians into soldiers could transform their country from the ground up. Some, ironically, came to believe that only strict discipline would bring true freedom.
The military officers who took power attempted to reform their societies along military lines. They had utopian plans and their ideology could not be summarized in the big ideas of their time, such as capitalism and communism. There were military regimes of left, right and center; radical and conservative; nativist and internationalist.
Militarism was an ideology in its own right, not just American liberalism, Soviet socialism, or European neocolonialism dressed in a uniform. Powerful outsiders held some, but not all, of the reins in African politics, and officers prided themselves on following no one’s orders but their own.
Military tyranny
Part of militarism’s appeal was its idiosyncratic independence, and military regimes endeared themselves to the public by cutting ties with unpopular foreigners, just as Niger And Burkina Faso did it with France in 2023.
Soldiers ruled their countries as if they were fighting wars. The struggle was their metaphor for politics. Their goal was to win – and they accepted that people would get hurt along the way.
But what did “winning” look like when the enemy was their own people? They declared war indiscipline, medications And crime. For civilians, all this was difficult to distinguish from tyranny, and military rule felt like a long, brutal occupation.
No military dictatorship has succeeded in achieving the martial utopia its soldiers promised. Other parts of the government opposed the army’s plans, and the African judiciary in particular proved to be formidable opponents. Civil society groups fought them tooth and nail, and the challenges came from abroad, especially from the African diaspora.
Like most revolutions that fail, militarists blamed the public for not sticking to their vision outsiders for sabotaging it. They do this today too.
Current military regimes do not appear to have the same long-term vision as their predecessors, but the longer they remain in power, the more likely they are to make plans. Despite all their promises to return to the barracks, it doesn’t seem like they’ll be going anytime soon.
As we try to anticipate what the continent’s military regimes might do next, it makes sense to look to the past. At the end of the 20th century, military regimes promised to turn Africa into a “soldier’s paradise.” That promise is part of their strategy today.
(Author: Samuel Fury ChildsDalyassociate professor of history, University of Chicago)
(Disclosure Statement: Samuel Fury Childs Daly does not work for, consult with, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment)
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