Military Diplomacy and the Enhancement of Foreign Policy Aspirations in Africa: The Case of Kenya- South Africa Relations

The world is today more than ever before fixated on the subject of development, which is taken as a process of change, requiring adjustments in the societies of the developing and developed countries. This calls for profound changes in diplomatic discourse and structure of the relations among different states of the world. Therefore, the objective of this study was to examine military diplomacy in the enhancement of foreign policy aspirations in Africa using the case of Kenya-South Africa relations. This research aims to churn-out new information to add onto the body of knowledge to examine military diplomacy in the enhancement of foreign policy. Military diplomacy can be defined as a set of activities carried out mainly by the representatives of the defence department, as well as other state institutions, aimed at pursuing the foreign policy interests of the state in the field of security and defence policy, and whose actions are based on the use of diplomacy to advance national interests. This study utilized Institutional theory and the Soft Power Model, the Institutional theory traces its origins back to foundational articles that discussed how organizational founding and change were driven less by functional considerations and more by symbolic actions and external influences. The target population were experts’ development, diplomacy and defence in both Kenya and South Africa. They included International Relations (IR) practitioners, government agencies, diplomats, Kenya Defence Forces, National Intelligence Service, academia, media, journalists, envoys, and other experts. The primary data was collected using an open and close ended questionnaire, while secondary data was collected through articles, journal, periodicals and books. This study established that Kenya’s foreign policy aspirations are centralized on strengthening the Kenya-South ties by the institutionalization of policy making, channeling economic and national development and setting up a security sector reform policy committee synergized with an informal interdepartmental strategy. The military plays a great role in defence diplomacy by serving specific national, foreign and security policy objectives, it creates sustainable cooperative relationships, thereby building trust and facilitating conflict prevention, introducing transparency into defence relations. However, the military is not accorded its rightful status. For defence diplomacy and its actors to achieve greater participation in foreign policy, diplomacy needs to be powered by partnership, pragmatism, and principle.