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Gibson Nyikadzino
Correspondent
A poor cultivation and socialisation by citizens in many African countries on the role of the military has limitedly confined armed forces to security issues.

This is in contrast with developments in other big “democracies” where the military’s role has gone beyond looking at security issues, but the army being directly linked to the political, economic and social order of their state.

Because state security is a priority at a national level and in the global political order where conflicts are also on the increase, diffusing such military conflicts has always been done through political means.

Negotiations and diplomacy, both political instruments, are activated when the military provides political results.

The deployment of the military by states is a signal of deterrence or to force compliance against a form of an internal aggression or from a hostile nation.

Since the end of the Cold War almost three decades ago, the role of the military has changed because of the changing nature of conflicts that have emerged since then.

Back then, the Western bloc used the military to launch proxy wars to prohibit and restrict the “communist threat that was posed by countries in the Eastern bloc.”

The other goal was to stop the “hammer and sickle” expansion.

Today an increased role on the political nature of the military has emerged and trends in contemporary times have become the same.

US President Joe Biden in late December authorised a US$768,2 billion in defence spending, a five percent increase from his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Through the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) alliance, there has been an increase in defence spending.

More NATO members have accelerated recruitments of military personnel in order to meet their political objectives through boosting defence spending.

Reported tensions between Ukraine and Russia have been necessitated by the NATO threat and its appetite to extend its political influence towards the East.

Russia is not pushing back the NATO military threat alone, but the political threat that is being fronted using military capability.

The application is done militarily to achieve political objectives. The changes that happened after the military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq by the US army in 2001 and 2003 were political.

NATO military activities in Libya in 2011 led to a political objective, the murder of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

In 2002, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair wanted his country to invade Zimbabwe. The objective was political: to install a puppet leadership at the expense of the nationalist revolution.

When the Rhodesian security forces were fighting and defending the Ian Smith white minority regime, their goal, too, was political as they thrived to maintain a status quo in which white supremacy was always dominant.

Military capability exists for a role that is political. Biggest democracies have maintained big armies. The answer is not ideological, but political. The size of a military of a country signals to the political ambitions of a country.

These political ambitions are not done by an apolitical, non-interventionist or ignorant army because with such an army, state collapse is imminent.

Military power is a tool for statecraft. Because of the changing nature of conflict, Zimbabwe experienced internal and external hostility between 1998 and 2008, an epoch which the country’s disciplined forces managed to steer for the country to enjoy its political stability.

Similarly, today Zimbabwe’s military and defence forces are no exception.

The role of this institution should therefore not be limited and confined only to security issues, as the masses should look broadly at the changing nature of the global political order.

A constitutional legality obliges Zimbabwe’s Defence Forces to “protect Zimbabwe, its people, its national security and interests and its territorial integrity and to uphold this Constitution.”

A key aspect that the forces are not expected to turn a blind eye to includes the “recognition of and respect for the liberation struggle.”

The military is also a vanguard of the liberation legacy.

Prudent wisdom notes that the military in Zimbabwe is not only a mere institution of security and the preservation of territorial integrity in the normatively postured modern political sense.

Blair’s 2002 idea excited opposition politicians back then, and today some still find it hard to repent from the neo-colonial treachery that fascinates their aspirations to power.

For political reasons, the opposition has gone further to attack the military and try to lure it in its neo-colonial political debates, a pretext and simplistic strategy that never bore fruit.

During the years of his presidential tenure in Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara clarified the political-military relationship saying “an army that has no political training is a potential criminal.”

It is meaningless for African states to pride themselves in national armies that have no political training.

Essentially, it is important to highlight that those that call for the military in any country to be “apolitical” and not “nationalist” only do so as they beseech former colonisers to interfere in the domestic affairs of a country.

Rarely has the opposition in Zimbabwe taken pride of the country’s men and women in uniform.

Even in the absence of war, the country’s security and military remain an institution of relevance.

Maintenance of peace and the pursuit of the nationalist objective by the military deserve praise.

Military existence in Zimbabwe’s political, security and sovereign discourse is grounded in resistance to colonialism and all forms of neo-colonial experiments and agitations.

It is therefore a necessity to highlight that the military in Zimbabwe is the defender of the country’s nationalist project and its enduring objectives against imperialism and neo-colonially aligned elements in Zimbabwe’s contemporary political developments.

Our independence and stability are products of an arduous struggle against colonialism and imperialism.

In post-colonial Zimbabwe, the democracy that has been enjoyed over the years has also been a product of the military’s investment in political stability, security and keeping guard against neo-colonialism.

As neo-colonialism consistently knocks and dances on the country’s doorstep through various sponsored appendages, it is the record and loyalty the military has had to the motherland that ensures our stability.

The existence of the military in contemporary times and into the future remains political.

Zimbabweans, remember we are one!