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

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.

De la Paz Liberal a la Paz Militar: una nueva manera de hacer y (des)regular el uso de la fuerza

“…En primer lugar, que la búsqueda de la paz ha sido sustituida por la búsqueda de las victorias militares, independientemente de los daños colaterales y la exacerbación de la violencia. Desde la aparición de las misiones de estabilización en 2004, las operaciones de paz han tomado a menudo la forma de operaciones de contrainsurgencia, contra el terrorismo y con objetivos militares inmediatos (Íñiguez de Heredia, 2019Heredia, , 2020Karlsrud, 2017Karlsrud, , 2019Kenkel, 2021;Tull, 2018). En segundo lugar, la búsqueda de la implantación de un estado liberal y del amplio espectro de objetivos políticos, económicos y militares asociados a la agenda de Paz Liberal se ha centrado cada vez más en la defensa de los estados frente a la guerra y su preparación para ella, dejando objetivos políticos de reforma en un segundo plano (Belloni y Moro, 2020;Iñiguez de Heredia, 2020;Karlsrud, 2019).…”