Monograph 43: Building Security in Southern Africa. An Update on the Evolving Architecture, By Jakkie Cilliers

While the world has seen the emergence of a single dominant global power in the aftermath of the Cold War, regional dynamics are also exerting their effect on the nature of the new international system.

During the Cold War, regional conflicts were at once internationalised and subsumed within the superpower competition and controlled to avoid escalation into nuclear conflict. In the process, the strategic relevance of regions such as Africa was elevated as part of the global chessboard, pawns in a much larger game. At the end of the twentieth century, the situation is much changed. Africa has lost its strategic relevance. Apart from humanitarian concerns, only selected areas with exploitable natural resources demand the attention of the larger and more powerful countries.

Although the chance of global war may have receded, regional conflicts and tensions have increased. Many of these have assumed both an internal and a regional character in Africa as the weakness of African states were exposed when the scaffolding of first colonialism and then that of the Cold War was removed. As the strong retreated from Africa, the African state contracted inward, in many instances soon reflecting the urban limits of governance and a rural neglect that renders international boundaries meaningless.

With the end of the Cold War, regional politics have emerged as more salient features of the international order. As Lake and Morgan argue,1 regional conflicts are now more likely to stay regional. Although the ability of countries such as the United States to intervene locally has not diminished, the interest and motivation to do so have clearly declined.

Regional politics have not replaced international relations, but the changed context has opened up a more complex relationship between a region such as Southern Africa and the rest of the world. Regions differ and need to be treated differently, but they cannot be separated. While regional security arrangements provide rich pickings for analysis on a comparative basis, this monograph is modest in its purpose and seeks to provide an overview, update and cursory analysis of formal security relationships in Southern Africa. In the process, it traces the evolution from the former Front-Line States (FLS) alliance to the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security, including the Inter-State Defence and Security Committee (ISDSC) and the Southern African Regional Police Chiefs Co-operating Organisation (SARPCCO). The final sections point to the more obvious legal and practical challenges that will have to be overcome in the short term if the region is to progress towards the establishment of a co-operative security community and offer a number of recommendations in this regard.