Between Global Governance and Global War: Africa Before and After September 11

One may look at the events of September 11, 2001, in New York and Washington as the beginning of a new era – for better or for worse. September 11 becomes the first chapter of a new book. On the other hand, we may view September 11 as a concluding chapter to a narrative which went further back in time. As Agatha Christie’s detective, Hercule Poirot, has told us repeatedly, a murder is the climax of a prior story; an investigation is a postmortem writ large. This paper treats September 11, 2001, as both a climax of a long history preceding it and the beginning of a new narrative. We place September 11 in the context of globalized warfare which has its roots in the early years of the twentieth century. In this paper our focus is not on the historic causes of international terrorism or the origins of an emerging clash of civilizations. Our focus here is on the link between governance and war in the era of globalization and how these processes have affected Africa.