As with any large endeavor, this book would not have been possible without the help and support of many people. First and foremost, I want to thank Marie-Claire Antoine at Rowman & Littlefield for her unending patience. Your kindness and accommodation has been more than I’ve merited. A special thanks to Robert Feldman, for suggesting that a really long paper be better served as a book. I...

In 2012, members of the U.S.-trained Malian military overthrew President Amadou Toumani Touré. Given the American military’s multiyear presence in the country while working with Malian forces, the lack of awareness about local political, historical, and social issues was demonstrative of the greater U.S. mindset...

Prior to the end of the Cold War, Africa, like many places around the world, played host to proxy wars. While the United States and the Soviet Union built up their nuclear weapons stockpiles and kept an uneasy peace in the face of mutually assured destruction (MAD), they facilitated wars in “Third World”...

Political figures have created ties between “instability” and “the nation-state” by claiming the former acts as a doorway through which violent actors gain access to the latter. The securitization of instability in Africa is present in political narratives, the media, and scholarship. Despite the dubious analytical utility of terms like “instability” and...

Every generation needs its villain—its “other”—against which nations or populations fight and, in so doing, define themselves. Such “villains” become securitized. As Simon Dalby argues, the designation of whom or what we are protected from tells us “who we are, what we value and what we are prepared to countenance to protect our self-preferred...

In Western policy, economic development and security are inextricably linked. Poverty, we are told, creates the conditions where individuals are more susceptible to recruitment into violent organizations. To cite a few examples, at a 2002 development summit in Mexico, world leaders called for increased aid to poor countries to help stamp out extreme poverty as a motivator for terrorism (BBC News...

Traditional perspectives on security have led to specious strategic moves and policy decisions by the West in the developing world. Africa certainly rates this distinction. The continent is home to enormous social, historical, political, and cultural complexities, and while some political figures are quick to write off Africa for many of these reasons, it plays an important role in Western...

2.50-2.51

Claire Metelits is professorial lecturer at American University. She has taught at Davidson College and Washington State University. She has also served as an advisor and researcher at U.S. Africa Command in Germany and Djibouti. She is the author of Inside Insurgency (2010) and coeditor of Democratic Contestation on the Margins (2015)....