New Elements in Militarism: Ethiopia, Ghana, and Burkina
| Author | Eboe Hutchful |
| Published date | 01 December 1986 |
| Date | 01 December 1986 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002070208604100405 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
EBOE
HUTCHFUL
New
elements
in
militarism:
Ethiopia, Ghana,
and Burkina
The
root
of
the
evil
was
political;
the
treatment
could
therefore
only
be
political.
Thomas
Sankara,
Speech
to
the
United
Nations
1984
The
change
in
the
attitude
of
the
military
towards
politics
is
to
my
mind
the
most
important
development
in
the
character
of
militarism
brought
about
by
the
current
crisis
in
Africa.
Dating
at least
from
the
Ethiopian
revolution
in
1974,
and
in
a
sense
from
the
Libyan
coup
in
1969,
but
gathering
speed
since
1979,
a
new
genre
of
military
regime
has
emerged
which
differs
in
important
ways
from
the
typical
'corrective'
r6gime
of
the
196os
and
197os.
It
is
characterized
both
by
the emergence
to
power
of
new
strata
within
the
military
itself
and
by
the
military's
fundamentally
different
relationships
with
the
civilian mass
sec-
tors
and
with
the
political/ideological
realm.
This
'popular,'
'progressive,'
or
'revolutionary'
regime
-
which
typically
denies
that
it
is
a
military
regime
-
has
become
more
and
more
wide-
spread
since
198o.
The
coups
in
Ghana
in
December
1981
and
in
Burkina
in
August
1983,
the
attempted
coups
in
Gambia
in
December
1982
and
in
Kenya
in
August
1982,
as
well
as
other
coups staged
to
pre-empt
more
radical
coups,
such
as
those
in
Nigeria
in
1983
and
in
1985,
all
suggest
important
new
devel-
opments
in
the character
of
militarism
in
Africa.
This statement
requires
some
qualification.
First
of
all,
the
radical
military
regime
is
not
an
entirely
new
phenomenon;
in
the
past
there
have
been
self-proclaimed
revolutionary
r6gimes
in
Congo-
Department
of
Political
Science,
Scarborough
College,
University
of
Toronto.
International
Journal
XLI
autumn
1986
NEW
ELEMENTS
IN
MILITARISM
803
Brazzaville,
Benin,
Somalia,
and
Sudan.'
Secondly,
the
process
of
radicalization
is
not
synchronic.
The
old
corrective
and
trans-
itional
regimes
continue
to
arise
here
and
there
-
the
Buhari
government
in
Nigeria
and
the
Transitional
Military
Council
of
Abdel
Rahman
Swar
el
Dahab
in
Sudan,
for
example.
R&-
gimes
may also
undergo
transmutation
in
response
to
changing
conditions
(such
as
those
of
General
Siyad
Barre
in
Somalia,
Mohammed
al-Nemery
in
Sudan, and
Jerry
Rawlings
in
Ghana).
Nevertheless,
a
number
of
distinctive
new
elements
point
to
the
increased
radicalization
of
the
military,
expressed,
for
example,
in
the
rise
of
regimes
composed
of
junior
officers
and
men
from
the
ranks.
The
situation
in
Nigeria,
where
young
turks
wait
conspicuously
in
the
wings,
is
by
no
means
unique.
This
paper
is
an
attempt
to
identify,
in
a
preliminary
way,
the
new
elements
in
the
political
and
ideological
character
of
militarism
in
Africa.
The
essence
of
the
transformation
lies
in
the
manner
or
sense in
which
politics
has
contributed
to
the
crises
in
various
African
countries
and
in
the
status
of
the
po-
litical
element
in
the
formulation
of
a
solution
to
those
crises.
This
issue
is
fundamental
to
all
military
coups
because
the
im-
mediate
objective
of
any
coup
-
indeed the
act
itself
-
is
the
abrupt
reconstitution
of
political
power
relations
(usually
lim-
ited
to
the
form
of
the
regime
as
a
particular
mode
of
distrib-
uting
political
power
and
arbitrating
social/class
struggles).
Typically,
corrective
military
regimes
view
all
politics
as
ster-
ile
and
disruptive;
this
attitude
leads
to
an
attempt
to
ban
politics
and/or
to
restrict
the
'space'
politics
occupies
in
national
life.
In
the
conception advanced
by
the
progressive
military
regime,
the status
and
meaning
of
politics
is
determined
on
the
basis
of
its
class
character and
content.
Thus,
while
bourgeois
and
petty
bourgeois
politics
is
exclusive
and
bankrupt,
the
politics
of
the
masses
is
creative
and
liberating.
The
solution
therefore
is
not
the
abolition
of
politics,
but
the abolition
of
bourgeois
i See
the
collection
of studies,
'Military
marxist
regimes
in
Africa,'Journal
of
Communist Studies
i
(September-December
1985).
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