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has been left totally confused as to who is saying the right thing. Reforms concerning political, social, economic, military and environmental issues are undeniably necessary.
However, before such reforms are to take place, any sensible person will have to weigh the costs and benefits of the intended change. Reforms that are aimed at politically disadvantaging a specific group while advantaging the other group are not worth pursuing.
The whole debate on security sector reforms is ignoring so many important questions which a student in Strategic Studies and International Relations would never brush aside.
The purpose of this article is to highlight the importance of the military in any given political system as well as to give a few factual examples on the importance of the military in most countries. We intend to give the reader a clear and objective analysis of what constitutes a strong military force in any country.
The ordinary man in the streets has been a casualty in this endless war as editors and journalists from various media houses have given their own versions of what the situation should be like.
Labels are always dangerous things. In the context of the Zimbabwean security sector reforms debate politicians and civic groups have attached various labels to their opponents in politics and the academic field in order to avoid debating the real issues on the ground. Seldom do people use labels with the precision they deserve. This is certainly the case when it comes to the security sector.
The debate about security sector reforms is very complex and many academics and politicians who engage in it choose their words in a very cunning way as to mislead their readers. The private media in discussing security sector reforms has modified security terms such as it would be appropriate for them to define in advance what a good security sector is and what is not.
Khumbulani Malinga, the MDC Youth Assembly spokesman sees the Zimbabwean National Army as an institution under the leadership of “infamous generals”, whatever that means. His conception of the ZNA is one of a Shona-centric or dominated army which according to him is simply there to oppress the Ndebele people. Malinga should know that society is the human resource base of any army. The ZNA like the Maoist people’s army is highly inclusive as it casts its nets wide when recruiting.
A people’s army does not come from one tribal group. The ZNA’s recruitment covers all the provinces in the country. It is one of the few armies in the world that believes in the Maoist principle of a genuine people’s army which is a true representative of the civilian population. Malinga’s own political party is not as integrated as the ZNA which is truly representative of all Zimbabwe’s tribal groups.
A State cannot sacrifice its core security values in order to please a group of very bitter tribalists whose only hatred of the security sector is based on disturbances which happened in Matabeleland in the early and late eighties.
A country’s security cannot simply be weakened only because a certain misguided section of society thinks otherwise. Zimbabwe, just like America, Russia and China also needs a strong security sector.
You cannot sit on almost 30 percent of the world’s diamonds without a strong security sector. Those who think that the security sector should be reformed along Western utopian democratic lines are merely daydreaming and their place is not on this earth but perhaps in heaven.
The world we live in is a very dangerous place full of predatory states which prey on the weak and vulnerable. The rebel menace in Uganda and the DRC could have been avoided had these countries an efficient American type security sector. America doesn’t have a rebel problem because its security sector is exceptionally reliable, efficient and formidable.
The security sector is the engine that drives world politics and economics. We take our security for granted yet the peace we enjoy everyday is because of the efficiency of this sector. Some of us will never realise the importance of a strong military until the day civil war breaks out. We never realise how important oxygen is until the day we are ship wrecked. The same applies with our security, we only realise its importance the day we are under attack.
Israel will never want to hear of such reforms as it knows the importance of the military. The Israelis know that to embark on such reforms will be very suicidal bearing in mind the heavy military tension in the region. The Iranians too, will tell you to go to hell if you bring out such a topic. The North Koreans will say you are totally insane and maybe an alien from outer space ignorant of earth’s evil ways if you suggest that they carry out such reforms. The Americans, Russians and Chinese will definitely call you an idiot.
Sun Tzu, the great Chinese strategist, tells us that a state is as good as its generals. America, Russia and China are militarily and economically powerful because of their generals. America has military bases almost everywhere in the international system as a way of protecting and safeguarding its own interests.
Fuel (oil) drives world politics and the American generals have seen to it that such a precious resource remains guarded in faraway lands and is also transported safely to America in the high seas. The Americans will never  reform such a formidable force if American hegemony is to be maintained.
At times one is surprised how gullible Zimbabweans have become into accepting everything the printed word says. Prime Minister Tsvangirai is reported in one of his pro-MDC papers to have given a warning to Zimbabwean generals. We wonder who should be warning who here. Isn’t it someone who secretly met the former US Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces for Europe, General Wesley Clark, recently in Austria who should be strongly warned by the generals? 
President Obama during the 2008 campaigns to the White House promised most Americans that he would bring in many security reforms when elected. However, politics, as it has always been, is all about lies, propaganda, cheating and manipulation of the masses. The “anti-war” Obama of late 2007 and early 2008 “Yes we can . . . change the world into a better place for all mankind” rhetoric has now been transformed into a warmonger.
With America’s military preponderance in his hands he has in typical Thucidician fashion used military violence against anyone who stands in the way of the geo-political interests of the USA. Obama never reformed the US army in 2009 as he retained Robert Gates as Secretary of Defence, the same post he had held under the George W Bush administration.
Malinga should clearly understand this very simple thing. There is no army in this 21st century that has committed worse crimes against civilians like the American army. We are talking of more than a million innocent civilians who have been indiscriminately killed by American bombs in various unsanctioned wars. We cannot also ignore the millions of people who have been displaced, maimed and orphaned by the same unjustified American wars.
No one has dared challenge the Americans to reform their security sector as to make it less formidable and preponderant. Realists have always maintained that laws and morality have played little part in the workings of world politics and that a state’s primary obligation is to itself, not the international community, other states or humanity.
Self-preservation demands that a state be able to protect itself, because it cannot count upon help coming from any other quarter. The purpose of statecraft is national survival in a hostile environment.
To this end, no means is more important than the acquisition of power, and no principle is more important than self-help. Of all people’s evil ways, none are more prevalent, inexorable, or dangerous than their instinctive lust for power and their desire to dominate others. Obama wouldn’t be approving billions of dollars towards military spending.
The young president has realised that a strong security sector is more important than the “yes we can . . .” rhetoric he had shared with the American citizenry. He now knows that the USA needs an aggressive security sector to repel strong rivals like, Russia, China and even the EU. The traditional conception of military security is central to a state’s survival in the international anarchical system and it remains true to this day.
The MDC formations and their donor funded civic groups’ misinformed positions on a reformed Zimbabwean security sector can only happen or be taken seriously by those who haven’t studied Strategic Studies and International Relations. Realists value a strong military regardless of its political affiliations. Even in America there is abundant evidence that the military is not apolitical.
There is no state in the world that has an impartial military as the MDC and civil society groups want us to believe. Huntington clearly points out that the military is conservative and very resistant to unnecessary reforms. To colour the military in civil society and NGO phrases is not only to miss the point but it is to totally fail to understand what the military stands for. The military in any state has always been a partisan, patriotic and coercive arm of the state. The SADF is prepared to defend South African political and economic interests and so is any army the world over. An impartial military can only be a mercenary army.
Empirical evidence is abounding that in the US most political and economic posts are occupied by former security personnel. When such a scenario obtains in Zimbabwe it becomes a scandalous issue as argued by MDC politicians and their coterie of donor funded academics. Former Rhodesia Front soldiers hold very key and important posts in Tsvangirai’s office. To reduce the army into an apolitical or non-partisan entity is to deny reality. Aristotle referred to all men as political animals.
How can one separate the security sector from politics when the whole security sector institution is a part of a bigger political whole which is the state? A state is a political entity as well as the Government and security sector that serves it. The anarchical nature of the international system dictates that states acquire sufficient military capabilities to deter attack by potential enemies and to exercise influence over others.
States should never entrust the task of self-protection to international security organisations or international law, and should resist efforts to regulate international behaviour through global governance or security reforms. A problem on security sector reforms arises when Western countries call for Zimbabwe to reform its security sector in conformity with Western standards.
Not much on security sector reforms is being pressured on other African countries the way it is being done on Zimbabwe. The irony is that the Americans and other Westerners are actually enhancing and improving on their security rather than reforming it. The Western fear of a strong Zimbabwean security sector is a double one: of what a preponderant Zimbabwean military might do to regional politics and what that might mean to their national interests in the region.
It should also be argued that the dilemma for the Western countries is how they can dissuade Zimbabwe through their donor funded civic groups and opposition political parties from enhancing its own security when they also attach great importance to their own. If the West and their Zimbabwean acolytes do not want the same reforms in Europe and America, why, say Zimbabwe, should?

Bowden Mbanje and Darlington Mahuku are lecturers in International Relations, and Peace and Governance with Bindura University of Science Education.