The Importance of Africa to The World System After 9/11 Attacks: War on Terrorism or Integration for Sustainable Development

1.1 Background: The scramble for Africa also known as the ‘race for Africa’ (1800-1900) through expeditions, lead to the occupation, annexation and imperialism of African territory by European token powers of Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain and Portugal. A desire justified to end slavery by the white man from the Dark Continent, was fuelled by Otto Von Bismarck encouragement and the Berlin conference of (1881-1885), dividing Africa on a table in his Berlin residence. According to Lewis, some 150 years ago, “Africa was called the Dark Continent’’³ because so much of it was still unexploited and undiscovered. Expeditions into Africa offered plenty of land for settlement. In addition, after the end of the slave trade in 1807, Europeans were anxious to established new kinds of commerce, in ivory, animal hides and minerals she argued.

With the outbreak of the First and Second World Wars, and the active participation of the Africans alongside their colonial masters, enduring misery and burning the battles and in an attempt to uphold Wilson 14 points , (a fundamental doctrine that summarily called for the creation of an international organisation for the establishment of world peace, the promotion of self autonomy of nation state and democracy, the reject of war and the search of the wellbeing of the population as the cement of international politics) (Miller 1986; Watson 1984). Convinced of proper exploitation and what remain of Africa was a wasteland, the colonial powers began giving independence to their colonies. The scramble was not and is not about Africa than it speaks to the interest of the contenders and contending social forces. Europeans were slow to seize black Africa, ruthless in doing so, harsh when they had done it, but by no means doers only of harm. The scramble was a series of conflicts among European colonial powers for the industrial revolution, market, colonies for prestige, for imperialism in pretext to end slavery and savages

The scramble for Africa oil reserves and its rich mineral soil, with brute as aiming to offset western dependence on the Middle East. More to improve on the disastrous conditions of hunger, poverty, misery, education and other Millennium Development Goals⁴, bridging the gap between the rich and the poor, north and south, according to the UN report 1949 as stated by a panel of expert in 1948, ‘’genuine world prosperity is indivisible’’ and that, ‘’it cannot last in one part of the world if the other parts lives under conditions of poverty and ill health’’⁵ . The new scramble for Africa sparks off the even greater concerns to question the very heart of the problem; Why the regain of importance and the emergence of the security of Africa Gulf of Guinea after 9/11 attacks. What impact may this have on the security realities of the countries of the sub-region?

The new scramble geared by political and economic interests and fuelled by rivalry for hegemony in the international system, stretches some five hundred years with the economic law of value in the accumulation of capital, against the world-system itself of empires and kingdoms where politics and ideology were in command, what Amin called ‘’tributary’’ or Wallerstein ‘’world empires’’ in existence and development, that stretches back at least five thousand years Frank emphasised⁶, where the state since Westphalia 1648 was the principal actor in international relations. Since then other actors have emerged and progressively attaining their prerogative such as representative of nations, cultural organiser of the society, principal dispenser of news, thinker of war. The effect of the first and second world wars, and recently the effect and end of the cold war precipitated the state to submit to a withdrawer as principal actor on the world scene, this let to the lost of monopoly of the state as the only actor on the international scene. The obligation to compose with new international governmental authorities like the IMF, WB, WTO, UN, ILO, FAO, Greenpeace, and other non state actors such as multinationals and trans-national corporations, made the state to conserve an undistorted role as the interlocutor, and the former as the partners notably to maintain international order and to assure defence of their security, to define the principles and norms of international laws, to promote their economic and social development, to manage specific projects and extend their network of communication and cultural heritage. The realists to this effect have a tendency of their diverse statute of international actor as instrument of the state.

This has given rise to the increasing need to underpin the core historical relations of how the politics is international and the economics is local and how the international interplays in the local and vice versa, in understanding the security realities of the social world. It was the terrorist attack of 11^th September 2001 that escalated global insecurity and consequently lead to the American declaration of global war on terrorism, with the renew of attack on Iraq, Saudi Arabia an Arab nation in the Middle East as principal source of the US energy consumption, became questionable. The US in search of alternative source for energy market, the importance and advantage of the quality of oil from the Gulf of Guinea, and the importance of the Gulf of Guinea to the national security priority of the US, all precipitated the regain of importance of the Gulf of Guinea to the world system.

The approach is inline with Susan Strange questioning the separation of the dominant model theorizing neo realism and criticizing politics as the primary area for understanding the social world⁷. Inline with Cox critique of economics as the primary reason for understanding the social world, with the normative remark ‘’theory is always for someone for some purpose’’⁸.

It is necessary at this stage as we get into the field of politics to understand that in IR, state do not make friendship, what prevails is interest. It is worth noting that the reconnection of Africa gulf of guinea to the world system is a social construction with the bias of participation and interconnection of the society state relations for security, power, peace and development. This has incidentally or accidentally open up the Gulf of Guinea and its rich energy resources to economic, diplomatic, military, strategic, market, ideological rivalry and conflicts of the industrial powers and their multinationals but also within and between countries of the GG region with far reaching consequences.