A recent report by The Guardian, explained in an earlier article on Al Mayadeen English, has shown the existence of Neo-Nazi “active groups” in the US military. Meanwhile halfway across the planet, in West Africa, the militaries of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have taken control of their respective governments and are working alongside their people to confront neo-colonial and imperialist forces in the region. And if we travel a bit further to China, we will see that President Xi Jinping has been pushing for a strong anti-corruption campaign, and a more robust political and ideological education in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Here we have examples of three different societies, three different armies, and three different economies. In this analysis, I  shall use Anouar Abdel-Malek’s taxonomy of national states and his discussions of the army in the nation in order to discuss a few elements of social theory which are generally under-discussed in many left-wing circles. Namely the role of the army in the nation, and the questions of class, race, and ideology in the armed forces of a nation.

First, we will discuss and explore the role of the army in the United States. According to Abdel-Malek’s provisional typology, the United States can be considered part of the “European or Western-type” of nation-state. This roughly means multiparty elections, liberal individualist rights, and a capitalist-realist rationality governing social theory and social interplay in that society. The US military currently employs 1.4 million personnel, making it the 3rd largest army in the world by manpower. While the military draft ended in 1973, after the victory of the Vietnamese people over the American war machine, many consider today’s ‘volunteer’ based army to operate via a ‘poverty draft’. Generally speaking, the US military’s aggressive recruitment campaigns target high school and college-aged young men from rural and low-income regions (18 being the youngest age one can join the army). Yet once these young men and women have served imperialist interests overseas, they are forgotten by the puppeteers in Washington. According to the publication, The Military Wallet “over 1 in 10 homeless people in America are veterans”. Unfortunately, there exists a tendency among the American left to get themselves caught in a dual and contradictory moral conundrum. The existence of fascist and neo-Nazi elements in the US military is applied to the military as a whole, and this accelerates the Mobius Strip of the US left’s David and Goliath fetish for subordination. Only recently is the idea of left wing gun clubs or martial arts training catching on. This is a positive trend, with a group like Socialist Rifle Association growing from 2,000 to 10,000 members between 2019 and 2020. From here, we can analyze the role of the army in the nation in China.

As we approach the centenary of the founding of the PLA (1927-2027), it is important to know the historical context in which this army was founded. Originally formed in the midst of a dual assault from the Kuomintang and Japanese imperialists. The predecessor to the PLA was called the ‘Chinese Workers and Peasants’ Red Army’, and was formed in order to fight this internal and external development. Abdel-Malek’s typology, written in 1980, labels China as a ‘renascent nation’. By this he meant:

Having recovered the power of decision in all domains of national life (political, economic, cultural, ideological and social), they work to promote a true national renaissance or reconquest of identity, and are thus able to provide their specific contribution to the civilisation of our time, through social revolutions of various kinds.*

China today stands in the face of imperialist encirclement and the attempts of fifth columnists to wear it down from the inside. In the face of this, President Xi has made anti-corruption and anti-graft campaigns the focus of his tenure. According to an article on South China Morning Post, “the importance of anti-graft efforts indicated his strong attention to the military’s role in the country’s stability”. The anti-corruption campaigns have been strong, with some high-level generals of the PLA being charged with graft and embezzlement. What does this mean in this context? “After the founding of the PRC, the PLA undertook the tasks of national defense, socialist revolution, and construction, and at the same time sought to make the army more revolutionary, modernized, and regularized”. Since the 1980s, as China’s internal development has taken off, we can see that the PLA has accepted soldiers with college and postgraduate education. So, in a sense, the PLA is a well-educated, working-class force dedicated to the construction of socialism and the defense of the fatherland. So how does this force compare to the armies of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger who have been in the news recently?

To begin this exploration of the army in the nation in West Africa, we should begin with the famous quote from Thomas Sankara: “Without patriotic political education, a soldier is only a potential criminal”. This mentality was applied to the Burkinabe military after their independence from colonial France. At the time of independence, and until today, Abdel-Malek’s typology of the states of West Africa has validity; he terms them “new national states with a unitary vocation”. According to Abdel-Malek, “this involves the majority of the countries of black Africa… which have been bled by slavery”. When we fast forward to today, it is important to heed the lesson of Mwalimu Horace Campbell who said that we should not have knee-jerk reactions to military coups, because in each context, the role of the army is not always reactionary as it is in the premier imperialist centers. According to Captain Ibrahim Traoré of Burkina Faso, their movement–in line with Mali and Niger–is one which aims to revive pan-Africanism and to break the bonds of tutelage imposed by the French. Both Mali and Burkina Faso have created revolutionary defense committees. In Burkina Faso they are called VDP (Volontaires Pour La Défense de La Patrie). Traoré led with this message at the Russia-Africa summit:

As far as what concerns Burkina Faso today, for more than eight years we’ve been confronted with the most barbaric, the most violent form of imperialist neo-colonialism. Slavery continues to impose itself on us. Our predecessors taught us one thing: a slave who cannot assume his own revolt does not deserve to be pitied.

This message is being repeated by the military government of Niger, as well as the military government of Mali. Both Mali and Burkina Faso have declared that any intervention by ECOWAS or AFRICOM will be considered a declaration of war against them as well. It is key to note as well that Mali’s government, in their new constitutional reform, have included a clause which says that they are willing to give up elements of their sovereignty in the case of a pan-African federation. So the question now arises, will Niger join the proposed federation between Mali and Burkina Faso?

In this article, Abdel-Malek’s typology of nation-states, and his question of the role of the army in the nation was explored in three different contexts. The Yankee military is an imperialist one, which preys on its most vulnerable citizens. The PLA in China is a well-educated, working-class military which has been part of the country’s development and socialist construction since 1949. Finally, the militaries of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso were examined in order to highlight that revolutions led by the military are not necessarily reactionary, and as a matter of fact, can help bring an end to imperialist plunder. It is my hope that this article can open up a conversation on the left which does not miss the woods for the trees. It is important that we talk about the role of the army in any revolutionary context, so while in some places–namely contemporary West Africa–this is a question of immediate gain and loss governed by realist perspectives, in other places such as the USA, it is key that we understand this particular role of the army  historically, and how we can win over others to our cause. A Luta continua!

*Abdel-Malek, Anouar. Nation and Revolution. Part Two of Social Dialectics. 1981. Macmillan Press. London.