National Security and Foreign Policy: Interventions, Regional Peace and Terrorism

This chapter addresses Kenya’s national security, through the lenses of the foreign policy sources and implications of security, the occasional perception of the need for intervention, Kenya’s role in global, continental, and particularly regional peacekeeping juxtaposed against its security interests, which often collide with its international obligations, and the growing susceptibility to the less discerning terrorism. Beginning with independence, the chapter examines Kenya's slow road to involvement in regional, continental, and global peace-keeping activities, driven by OAU and later AU's position on sovereignty and non-interference in the domestic affairs of other countries. It examines African deliberations and discourses regarding continental security infrastructure and administration. Among other issues was whether to have an African High Command, or some standing military force, particularly after the experiences of the first peacekeeping mission in Chad in the early 1980s. In the context of Kenya’s security, the chapter examines Kenya's foreign policy positions, effect from terrorism and susceptibility to external threats, including the traditional inter-state conflict. These range from Uganda’s own actions towards Kenya, and those of its ‘allies of convenience’ (i.e., the Palestinians, with attempted downing Israeli airliners and the Entebbe hostage crises) retaliation and Kenya being drawn into global security issues. The discussion examines the responses that often make it choose sides, then suffering for the same (e.g., the Norfolk Hotel bombing, Mombasa attacks, the US embassy bombing, among others). It also examines Kenya’s engagement with Somalia, its neighbor, perennial rival, and eternal nemesis. It also highlights the cost the country has paid for its foreign policy especially towards Somalia and more broadly, the Global War on Terrorism that includes Somalia.