The three books under review share the theme of security in Africa. Africa's New Peace and Security Architecture and Security Cooperation in Africa are detailed studies of the ways in which the 54 states of Africa are cooperating to bring security to the continent. The Great African War is an account of Africa's greatest failure to bring security to the continent—what is often called Africa's “first world war”—that centered on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The strength of all three books is their deep description. Filip Reyntjens's book on the DRC war makes no pretense to theory, although it is rich in analysis and in explanations of the causes of the war. The edited volume is almost thematically identical with Benedikt Franke's book. Each traces the evolution of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), from its genesis in the Organization of African Unity (OAU) through the Cold War challenges to African security, into the post–Cold War challenges that led to APSA's innovations, such as the Peace and Security Council, the Continental Early Warning System, the Panel of the Wise, and the African Standby Force—collectively called the pillars of APSA.

Franke's book and the edited volume are different in both their theoretical approaches and in their respective tones, however. The former adopts a “constructivist” approach for its reappraisal of security cooperation in Africa. The latter, at least as framed by the editors, uses regime theory to appraise the success of security cooperation in Africa under APSA. The former is relatively more optimistic about security cooperation than are the contributors to the latter.

From his constructivist perch, Franke argues that APSA represents a fundamental change in the nature of security cooperation in Africa. Using regime theory in their conclusion (and very briefly in their introduction), Ulf Engel and João Gomes Porto argue that the fundamental change has yet to come. Constructivism and regime theory are not necessarily opposing forces in international relations theory. However, while the former does build on the latter, it argues that the largely positivist and materialist drivers in neorealism and neoliberalism, evident in most of regime theory, miss the importance of ideas and culture in shaping a state's interest and identity. Regime theory, more typically, takes states' interest as given, although to be fair to Engel and Porto, they do have some constructivism in their theoretical mix, as when they talk about the importance of “intersubjective norms” (pp. 152, 156) and the possible role of “epistemic communities” (p. 158), and as implied in their subtitle: “promoting norms and institutionalizing solutions.” But their volume focuses on “regulatory” norms, while Franke (p. 27) focuses on the “constitutive” norms supporting security cooperation in Africa.

Both volumes use the concept of a “security community” to build much of their narrative around their respective theoretical framings. Without putting too fine a point on it, Franke defines a security community as “a group of states integrated to the point where people have dependable expectations of peaceful change” (p. 29). Fredrik Söderbaum and Björn Hettne's chapter in Engel and Porto also discuss the concept of a “security community” as it relates to African security (p. 15). But the two volumes take a divergent tack. While each sees much progress embedded in the evolution of the OAU to the African Union (AU), Franke goes so far as to say that Africa is a “security community.” Engle and Porto conclude that the evidence presented in their volume “points to a nascent regime” at best. It is difficult to reconcile a nascent regime with a mature security community; a regime is necessary, if not sufficient, for the latter.

Each of the two volumes demonstrates an impressive grasp of the institutional framework of continental and regional security cooperation in Africa, and how the institutionalization of that cooperation articulates with international security, in particular with the United Nations. The remainder of this review will, therefore, look at their respective positions on the promise of a “security community” in Africa, particularly as it pertains to the African Peace and Security Architecture. They are viewed from three perspectives: what the strengths and weaknesses of their internal logic are, how one book challenges the argument of the other, and how the empirical record revealed in Reyntjens's detailed account of the war in the DRC validates the books or does not.

Franke makes a constructivist argument for the importance of collective identities and shared values in Africa's official security discourse. Africa, he states, is a “political idea as well as a geographical fact” (p. 21). His middle empirical chapters strongly support this argument.

Franke's argument that Africa—with the creation of the APSA and its attendant pillars—approaches a “security community” is less convincing. First, he has to contend with the fact that Africa is a war-prone continent. It is true that Africa rarely fights interstate wars, but as many as four million people have died in the DRC war alone, Darfur is still on fire, and there are numerous insurgencies across the continent. There are more UN peacekeeping troops in Africa than on any other continent; as of 2006, 75% of all UN peacekeepers were in Africa (see Andy Knight, “Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration and Post Conflict Peacebuilding in Africa: An Overview,” African Security 1 [July 2008]: 24–52). The UN has conducted 19 “complex peace operations” since the end of the Cold War, 10 of which have been in Africa (see Pierre Englebert and Denis M. Tull, “Postconflict Reconstruction in Africa: Flawed Ideas about Failed States” International Security 32 [Spring 2008]: 106–39). During the last decade, more than half of Africa's states have been in warfare (see Karin Dokken, African Security Politics Redefined, 2008).

Franke makes this argument by redefining both the process of obtaining a “security community” and the character of it. He disagrees with Laurie Nathan's position (p. 33), which argues that you cannot have a security community with domestic instability. He states that a “slight redefinition” of a security community (p. 35), which takes out the Western emphasis on, among other things, democracy, is a better fit for Africa. After redefining a security community, Franke then argues that this “allows for an instrumental top-down approach to community building” (p. 38). His is an overtly state-centric approach to community building (p. 5). But it is this very state-centric focus that has tripped up others trying to understand Africa's wars. In fact, his state-centric (focus on elites) or top-down approach (p. 36) seems to conflict with his caution that the Hobbesian conception of the state does not hold for Africa, and that we must move away from the rationalist assumption that states are unitary actors motivated by national interests (p. 18). He also argues that we are not witnessing the decline of the Westphalian nation-state in Africa (p. 5), which supports his ontological focus on the state. But Africa's conflicts are largely a product of state decline. In fact, while between 2002 and 2006 Africa had 42% of the world's fatalities from organized violence, it had 83% of nonstate fatalities (see Ralph Sundberg, “Collective Violence 2002–2007: Global and Regional Trends,” in Lotta Harborn and Ralph Sunberg, eds., States in Armed Conflict 2007, 2008). Reyntjens, in fact, argues that the major reason for the conflict in the DRC is the decay of the state and the instruments of rule (p. 3).

Franke's redefined independent variable and the dependent variables lead to an indeterminate conclusion. The two possible dependent variables are a “tightly-coupled security community,” where sovereignty has been transcended to a degree measurable by supranational institutions, and a “loosely-coupled security community, no threat from your neighbors and a general guarantee of your sovereignty.” Article II, paragraph 3 of the original OAU charter guaranteed the latter; the empirical record of little interstate war in postcolonial Africa offers evidence of its success.

To show progress toward a security community, however, Africa would have to move toward a “tightly-coupled security community.” It has not, because it is precisely the top-down process that has worked to protect state sovereignty from supranational institutions. The top-down approach sounds like the intergovernmentalism that, some have argued, propelled Europe deeper into regionalism. But in the African context it has not worked; it may protect state sovereignty but not the people. This is Engle and Porto's central point. They explain that part of the APSA's weakness is the very legacy of intergovernmental cooperation handed down from the OAU (pp. 144–45).

Engle and Porto warn that we should heed Robert Keohane's caution that we do not “identify regimes on the basis of observed behavior, and then use them to ‘explain’ observed behavior.” Franke does just that and so falls into the endogeneity trap. His observed behavior—Africa's long list of formal efforts at cooperation leading to the APSA and to its institutional superstructure—is both his dependent and independent variable. Furthermore, his implied intergovernmental engine of security cooperation is likely inconsistent with the constructivism he invokes. Rather than constructivism, the employment of ideas central to the “English School” of IR, which has a greater focus on diplomatic relations among states, might support Franke's argument that the APSA represents a fundamental change.

Engle and Porto also see the Peace and Security Council (PSC) Protocol as envisioning a pluralistic security community (p. 144), but one that is still quite far off (p. 152). They judge the success of the APSA on its ability to internalize and institutionalize its norms (as well as its rules and decision-making procedures) of regime building, including respect for fundamental human rights and freedoms, sanctity of human life, respect for democratic principles and good governance, and the core principles of “human security” and the “responsibility to protect” (p. 152).

The intersubjective norms that would drive APSA toward a mature regime, to say nothing of a security community, central to a constructivist argument, are wanting. Possibly the most important is “the right to protect” (known as R2P). Thus, under the APSA's new rules, the PSC has the right to intervene without the consent of the state. But this central norm has not been institutionalized in practice (Engel and Porto, p. 147). Franke, in fact, notes that the AU has been much better at condemning coups than fraudulent elections (p. 220). In fact, “sovereign boosting” seems to be the accepted norm in Africa.

There is no strong or even overt argument on how to fulfill the promise of APSA in Engel and Porto, with the possible brief discussion of epistemic communities. The contributors do lean more heavily on material factors, such as the end of the Cold War (change in polarity) and the nature of Africa's conflicts (p. 146), than does Franke. More than one contributor notes the role of regional hegemons (South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, and Libya) for providing peace. Engel and Porto are, nonetheless, relatively clear on the criteria to judge success. They cite Klaus Dieter Wolf and Michael Zürn's argument that “observable behavioral elements” act as a regime's litmus test (p. 154). Or, as they paraphrase Volker Rittberger, “a regime is not simply the product of explicit and agreed upon rules, but requires behavior, practice” (p. 154).

How does the empirical record as recounted in The Great African War speak to the nascent peace and security architecture in Africa? Africa's particular security challenges (Franke, p. 18), as dramatically revealed in its post–Cold War conflicts, are the central catalyst for the APSA. That means intrastate war is the challenge, since interstate war is hardly a threat in Africa. The war in the DRC tells us much.

Reyntjens's time line, 1996–2006, thus offers some value. No doubt, this conflict helped shape the APSA. But the PSC Protocol came into force on December 26, 2003. The Common African Defense and Security Policy (CADSP) was adopted in February 2004. Together they form the backbone of the APSA, and they came in the middle of the DRC conflict that Reyntjens describes.

It is no secret that Rwanda and Uganda first supported the overthrow of Mobutu Sese Seko by Laurent Kabila in 1996, and when Kabila turned on his erstwhile patrons, they helped trigger what is often called the “second civil war” in the summer of 1998. The second war formally ended with the signing of the Global and All-Inclusive Peace Accord on December 2002. But even as the PSC Protocol came on line, the fighting continued. Even though it has been argued that the UN Mission in the Congo, MONUC (later aided by EUFOR), had responsibility for peacekeeping in the DRC, it is difficult to ignore how the conflict in the Kivus and Ituri flew in the face of the APSA. At the end of 2004, after the APSA was created a UN report found that 18 months after the formal end of the war, 31,000 people had died each month due to ongoing conflict (p. 208). While it could be argued that states are not at war, R2P has been a failure. Franke even states on the final page of his book (“About the Book”): “[I]n the midst of the atrocities reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo … how do we make sense of the simultaneous increase in interstate security?” (p. 337). The answer is that a focus on interstate security in Africa obscures more than it reveals.

Possibly more telling for the APSA's failure in the DRC is the direct support that various militias responsible for the deaths in the DRC have received from AU members, Rwanda and Uganda in particular. This is well illustrated by Reyntjens's discussion of the rise and fall of General Laurent Nkunda. He was offered a position in the DRC army, but instead accepted the patronage of Rwanda (p. 211).

Security Cooperation in Africa and the edited volume, Africa's New Peace and Security Architecture, tell a similar story, if they nonetheless come to different conclusions. The story that Reyntjens tells about “Africa's first world war” and the nature of the ongoing conflict describes an Africa still very much struggling to cohere on, and then act on, a new security mandate. Finally, because Africa's wars are rarely between states, the measure of success is the strength of the R2P norm and not whether or not one state goes to war with another in Africa.