EU peacebuilding’s new khaki: Exceptionalist militarism in the trading of good governed for military-capable states

AuthorMarta Iñiguez de Heredia
Published date01 August 2021
Date01 August 2021
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/0263395720947346
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395720947346
Politics
2021, Vol. 41(3) 296 –315
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0263395720947346
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EU peacebuilding’s new khaki:
Exceptionalist militarism in
the trading of good governed
for military-capable states
Marta Iñiguez de Heredia
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
Abstract
This article explores how European Union (EU) peacebuilding is being reconfigured. Whereas
the EU was once a bulwark of liberal peacebuilding, promoting a rule of law–based international
order, it is now downplaying the goal of good governance and placing military capacity as central
for international peace and security. Several works have analysed these changes but have not
theorised militarism, despite war-waging and war-preparation have marked EU peacebuilding’s
direction. The article argues that EU peacebuilding continues to expose elements of liberal
militarism since its origins but is now changing from what Mabee and Vucetic call a nation-statist
to an exceptionalist militarism. This shift implies that peace has ceased to be served by the
intervention of sovereignty with a discourse based on the link between order, good governance,
and human rights and is now premised on the upholding of sovereignty, even if that means the
suspension of rights. The research draws on thematic analysis of EU documents and interviews
undertaken with EU and G5 Sahel officials and managers of EU-funded peacebuilding programmes.
It also briefly analyses the case of the Sahel as an example of how the build-up of states’ military
capacity is strengthening states’ capacity to override human rights and repressing dissent.
Keywords
European Union, liberal peace, militarism, peacebuilding
Received: 14th June 2019; Revised version received: 26th March 2020; Accepted: 20th June 2020
European Union (EU) peacebuilding is being reconfigured. Whereas the EU was once a
bulwark of liberal peacebuilding, promoting peace and development as a way to foster a
rule of law–based international order, good governance is now a desirable but distant
goal, with military capacity positioned centrally for international peace and security. Such
reconfiguration is relevant to understanding new interpretations and practices of EU’s
foreign policy and where liberal peace might be going. References to liberal peacebuild-
ing’s end are becoming commonplace, based on a downturn of liberal goals and a rise of
Corresponding author:
Marta Iñiguez de Heredia, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain.
Email: marta.inniguezdeheredia@uam.es
947346POL0010.1177/0263395720947346PoliticsIñiguez de Heredia
research-article2020
Article
Iñiguez de Heredia 297
peace enforcement (Chandler, 2017; Karlsrud, 2015: 1215; Sloan, 2011). For the EU, the
new focus has implied few references to good governance, an increase in military opera-
tions to train and equip, and a new regulation, called Capacity-Building for Security and
Development (CBSD), that grants non-lethal military capacity through one of the main
EU peacebuilding’s instruments. Whereas peacebuilding was used to address a ‘problem-
atic relationship between [Southern] states and their armed forces’, it is now working to
boost those forces to secure sovereignty and territorial control (Abrahamsen, 2019: 543).
Several works have explored how pragmatism, resilience, local ownership, and capac-
ity-building are transforming EU peacebuilding (Bargués, 2020; Chandler, 2017;
Edmunds and Juncos, 2020; Ejdus and Juncos, 2018; Juncos, 2017). According to this
literature, a pragmatic turn has propelled a move away from large-scale liberal reforms
and a push to place ‘locals’ at the forefront. However, it has not fostered inclusivity and
has continued to assert liberal values and the need for long-term interventions, even
engaging in forms of governmentality. These are important aspects and contradictions of
EU peacebuilding’s transformations. Nonetheless, that building war capacity has become
central to peacebuilding reveals the need to study the role of militarism in defining conti-
nuities and changes.
Militarism has constituted and transformed EU peacebuilding all along. The latest
shift partly evokes a truism among policy-makers – that states need to be secured to
undertake development, democracy, or reform projects – but it is problematic. In the
Sahel, a region that has since 2012 seen a combination of coups, armed rebellions, and
terrorism, the EU has supported the creation of G5, a military force of five Sahelian coun-
tries (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger). This approach has, however,
reproduced the context of war and human rights abuses in the region while not curbing
terrorism or armed groups (Zyck and Muggah, 2013). It thus shows a match of security
and strategic interests between these countries and the EU, and that ‘local’ solutions can
be as problematic as those from the ‘top’. Examining EU peacebuilding’s reconfiguration
requires a sustained critical inquiry about militarism and its consequences.
Militarism is understood here as a discursive and material practice that influences
social relations and decision-making in the preparation and waging of war (Shaw, 2013).
Insofar the EU has engaged those practices and embedded military production and war-
preparation in its own development, its peacebuilding has a different khaki tonality, but
the khaki itself is not new. Following Mabee and Vucetic (2018), EU’s new khaki denotes
a shift from nation-statist militarism of the early liberal peace to a new exceptionalist
militarism – that is, from a militarism based on building state security and defence along-
side social and economic development, to one boosting sovereignty and military capacity
to exercise control and coercion. This exceptionalist turn coexists, simultaneously, with
liberal militarism, maintaining moral justifications for the use of force, even if not as front
banner; with the commitment to war-related production and preparation as a modernising
project (Mabee, 2016); and with civilian and humanitarian goals and practices, premised
on the security–development nexus (Abrahamsen, 2019).
The article makes two interrelated arguments. First, it explores how EU peacebuilding
is changing, arguing that the most defining change is the transposition of the goal of good
governed for that of military-capable states. It then conceptualises the role of militarism
underpinning these changes, arguing that EU peacebuilding has gone from a nation-statist
to an exceptionalist militarism while maintaining a liberal militarist framework in which
the security–development nexus and humanitarian and development actors are central.
The article first analyses the evolution of EU peacebuilding as linked to militarism and

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