An assemblage approach to liquid warfare: AFRICOM and the ‘hunt’ for Joseph Kony

Abstract

The Western state-led turn to remote forms of military intervention as recently deployed in the Middle East and across Africa is often explained as resulting from risk aversion (avoidance of ground combat), materiality (‘the force of matter’) or the adoption of a networked operational logic by major military powers, mimicking the ‘hit-and-run’ tactics of their enemies. Although recognizing the mobilizing capacities of these phenomena, we argue that the new military interventionism is prompted by a more fundamental transformation, grounded in the spatial and temporal reconfiguration of war. We see a resort to ‘liquid warfare’ as a form of military interventionism that shuns direct control of territory and populations and its cumbersome order-building and order-maintaining responsibilities, focusing instead on ‘shaping’ the international security environment through remote technology, flexible operations and military-to-military partnerships. We draw upon assemblage as a heuristic device and the case of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) to flesh out the complex and fluid nature of liquid warfare and the ways by which power operates across space. We outline how the forging of a transnational military assemblage in the name of ‘hunting Kony’ allowed for the buildup of an archipelago of military bases and operational capabilities across Africa, which serve as hubs for the monitoring, disrupting and containment of potential risks and dangers.

Strategic ignorance and the legitimation of remote warfare: The Hawija bombardments

“…Our ability to sift through the debris and contestation was enhanced by holding 15 round tables with legal experts, investigative journalists, political stakeholders and NGOs (Airwars, Amnesty, PAX and Open State Foundation) working on the Hawija case between 2017 and 2020. 7 Mirroring previous conceptualizations of war actors as assemblages (Demmers and Gould, 2018) and following Aradau (2017: 328), we approach our analysis of the discursive debris left by the Hawija strikes as reflections of a process of assembling knowledge and unknowledge. In this process, we leverage the conceptualization on the dialectic between defensive and offensive ignorance outlined above.…”

“…Although these strategies each have long genealogies, they are now combined in a way that facilitates the execution of violence by Western defence ministries without the ‘exposure’ of their own military to opponents under the condition of mutual risk. This spatial reconfiguration of war has been conceptualized in a range of ways from ‘risk-transfer war’ (Shaw, 2005) to ‘democratic warfare’ (Sauer and Schörnig, 2012), and more recently as ‘liquid warfare’ (Demmers and Gould, 2018) and ‘vicarious warfare’ (Waldman, 2021).…”

“…Mirroring previous conceptualizations of war actors as assemblages (Demmers and Gould, 2018) and following Aradau (2017: 328), we approach our analysis of the discursive debris left by the Hawija strikes as reflections of a process of assembling knowledge and unknowledge. In this process, we leverage the conceptualization on the dialectic between defensive and offensive ignorance outlined above.…”

Theorizing Capacity Building

“…Yet, as both Syria and Libya are examples of, international interventions seem not to have dissipated, but rather taken new forms. Wars, observers argue, are increasingly 'shadowy' (Niva 2013), 'remote' (Knowles and Watson 2018) 'surrogate' (Krieg and Rickli 2019) or 'liquid' (Demmers and Gould 2018), indicating that international actors no longer assume sovereignty and control territory, but are increasingly engaged through 'light footprints' interventions and arm and equip programmes; ad hoc and short-term commitments and matching objectives; and a fluid understanding of direction and partnership. This illustrates a larger shift in international engagement that the term capacity building stands for.…”

State-building

“…United Nations peace enforcement operations increasingly worked alongside and resembled American-led counter terrorist missions (Karlsrud 2019). Some suggest that new �08 forms of "liquid warfare" made the control of territory (and thus state-building) abundant and counterproductive (Demmers and Gould 2018). A more minimalist, pragmatic, and decisively less liberal approach also took place in other fields of state-building.…”