The African Union: A model for an International Military Force
Added to "Uniforce: An International Military Force" by Vexen Crabtree (2007):
Tying together the themes laid out above, the economic advantages of pooled military resources and the peace-ensuring nature of a pan-continental force as opposed to nationalist armies, Timothy Murithi summarizes the position of the African Union (AU) on its continued establishment of an African-wide peacekeeping force:
“The AU intends to achieve much more in terms of integrating the African defence forces and reducing the overall costs that individual countries have to spend in financing their own military forces. This would in effect herald the creation of a Pan-African Armed Forces. This idea was championed by Kwame Nkrumah during the era of decolonization in Africa in the early 1960's. [...] The idea has gestated over the intervening forty odd years and now the sentiment is that an integrated continental armed force is necessary to conduct police action and peacekeeping operations across the continent. The obstacle of course is that many African governments, or rather the regimes of dubious legitimacy that control them, still retain egotistical state-centric attitudes. [...] The AU plans to have its own Pan-African Stand-by Rapid-Reaction force composed of 15,000 troops by the year 2010.”
"The African Union: Pan-Africanism, Peacebuilding and Development" by Timothy Murithi (2005)
The infant AU forces are sometimes more symbolic than effective, such as the 300-strong deterrent force in Darfur (Sudan, 2004). But as the aim is to enact AU intervention before situations escalate (Murithi p108), its permanent-natured force has much potential about it; and indeed, it has already acted quickly and effectively in many African conflicts, contributing well to the struggle for African peace.
If only all continents housed such permanent reactionary forces! Their effectiveness has been proven in the cases where the United Nations and/or the African Union have deployed forces; even when such forces fail the fact that they sometimes succeed makes the established of a surer, permanent, Uniforce is given good practical-theoretical warrant.
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