© Copyright 2020 Eric J. Schwab
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© Copyright 2020 Eric J. Schwab Offshoring Militarism: U.S. Military Aid and the Limits of American Foreign Policy Eric J. Schwab A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2020 Reading Committee: James D. Long, Chair Rebecca U. Thorpe Aseem Prakash Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Department of Political Science University of Washington Abstract Offshoring Militarism: U.S. Military Aid and the Limits of American Foreign Policy Eric J. Schwab Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor James D. Long Department of Political Science This dissertation examines the determinants, effects, and implications of contemporary United States foreign policy tools, with a focus on U.S. foreign aid programs which provide military equipment, weapons, and security sector training to foreign countries – generally known as military aid or security assistance. I focus on how and why U.S. policymakers have used these foreign policy tools to pursue various strategic interests and goals around the world – primarily from the end of the Cold War through the late War on Terror – and question the effectiveness of this these programs for achieving such goals. In the first chapter, I study how the U.S. uses military aid as a way to promote U.S. arms exports in the competitive global arms market. I argue that the U.S. utilizes military aid as a way to maintain its market share dominance in arms importing countries, in order to prevent recipients from turning to competitor arms suppliers, such as China and Russia. I find that increased relative funding of military aid and security assistance correlates with recipient countries where the U.S. maintains a greater share of the arms import market. In the second chapter, I study the contemporary policy of using security assistance to prevent internal instability abroad, and examine the relationship between U.S. security assistance programs and changes in recipient states’ internal instability. I describe several mechanisms by which security assistance may fail to improve stability in states with fragile domestic institutions, and how such assistance can potentially stoke conflict or empower abusive regimes and security sectors. I find that increased relative amounts of U.S. security assistance funding does not correlate with improving indicators of state fragility, but instead correlates with slightly worsening state fragility scores. In the final chapter, I examine the fundamental flaws in how U.S. security assistance policies are developed and implemented to achieve the U.S.’s various strategic goals. I argue that security assistance programs often reflect the short-term and shifting political strategies and concerns of U.S. policymakers, rather than the conditions or root causes of problems within the recipient countries. I also argue that these programs are strategically and substantively inadequate for achieving long-term policy goals in recipient countries or for solving complex, institutional problems abroad. I use two critical case studies of security assistance recipients – Pakistan and Colombia – and find that in both cases, security assistance policies lacked a long-term strategy, were inadequate for addressing the goals set forth by U.S. policymakers, and generated counterproductive effects. These chapters contribute to research and policy debates on the limits, effectiveness, and implications of contemporary U.S. foreign policy. Table of Contents Page List of Figures and Tables ii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The Role of U.S. Military Aid in the Global Arms Market 9 Chapter 2: Making Weak States Weaker? Assessing the Relationship Between U.S. Security Assistance and Stage Fragility 41 Chapter 3: The Politics of U.S. Security Assistance: Assessing the Limits of U.S. Foreign Policy in Colombia and Pakistan 96 Conclusion 181 Works Cited 183 i List of Figures and Tables Figure/ Table Page Figure 1.1 – U.S. Share of Global Arms Market, 1992-2014 10 Figure 1.2/ 1.2b – Greatest U.S. Arms Importers that Receive FMF, 2000-2014 22 Figure 1.3 – Ratio of Annual FMF to Arms Sale Deliveries in Major Importers, 2000-2014 23 Table 1.1 – Reliance on U.S. Arms Exports and Per-Capita U.S. Military Aid, 1993-2012 35 Figures 1.4/ 1.5 – Dependency on U.S. Arms Imports and Per Capita Military Equipment/ Train & Equip Aid 36 Figure 2.1 – Total Per Capita U.S. Security Assistance by Country 1991-2002 51 Figure 2.2 – Per Capita .S. Security Assistance to Developing Countries (by Region) 1993-2012 51 Figure 2.3 – Mean State Fragility Index Scores of 130 Countries in Sample, 1995-2012 85 Figure 2.4/ 2.5 – Top 20 Per-Capita Security Assistance/ Train & Equip Program Recipients, 1995-2012 86 Table 2.1 – Influences of U.S. Security Assistance on 5-Year Change in State Fragility Score, 1995-2012 92 Figure 3.1 – U.S. Security & Economic Assistance to Pakistan, 1980-2018 117 Figure 3.2 – U.S. Security & Economic Assistance Colombia, 1980-2018 150 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my committee members from the University of Washington Department of Political Science for their ongoing support of both my completion of this dissertation and my larger project of pursuing a doctorate. James Long has provided vital and consistent mentorship, encouragement, and feedback throughout this process, which made its completion possible. Since the beginning of my graduate studies, Rebecca Thorpe has provided intellectual inspiration and support for my research agenda. Aseem Prakash has provided important guidance, advice, and encouragement on my progress throughout this process. For his assistance and advice with methodological issues, I would also like to thank my colleague, Calvin Garner. Finally, I would like to thank the many faculty, staff, colleagues, and friends from the community within the Department of Political Science and the University of Washington, who have created a supportive and inspiring environment for my academic, professional, intellectual, and personal growth over the years. iii DEDICATION I dedicate this work to my mother, Mary M. Schwab, in living memory, and to my wife, Kara Barnes. iv 1 “The very substance of violent action is ruled by the question of means and ends, whose chief characteristic, if applied to human affairs, has always been that the end is in danger of being overwhelmed by the means, which it both justifies and needs. Since the end of human action, in contrast with the products of fabrication, can never be reliably predicted, the means used to achieve political goals are more often than not of greater relevance to the future world than the intended goals.” - Hannah Arendt, Reflections On Violence, 1969 (emphasis added) “We spent all this money and they still hate us.” - U.S. Congressman Steve Chabot, 2011 (commenting on U.S. assistance to Pakistan at a Congressional hearing) Introduction Since the end of World War II, policymakers of both of the United States’ political parties have relied on the foreign policy tools of purchasing weapons for foreign militaries and training and equipping foreign soldiers as a way to pursue various strategic interests around the world. These programs – often referred to in the press as “military aid” and in research as “security assistance” or “security sector assistance” (SSA) – are one of the primary ways the U.S. exerts its influence over the internal and external security environments of foreign countries (Karlin, 2017).1 In late 2019, U.S. military aid policies became the focus of national political attention, when the House of Representatives used the president’s decisions for this aid as the impetus in their decision to approve articles of impeachment against the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump (H.Res.755, 2019). The House impeachment resolution stemmed from his order to withhold $391 million of military aid appropriated for “providing vital military and security assistance to Ukraine.” The resolution focused on the president’s use of this aid for a self-serving “quid pro quo” in order to 1 Security assistance and military aid are often used interchangeably in contemporary research. In this dissertation, I use the Department of Defense’s historical definition of military aid as focusing specifically on subsidizing large weapons systems for foreign militaries, whereas security assistance can encompass a wide range of activities including training and equipping foreign security sectors. Security assistance can include military aid and refer to all such programs, while military aid historically refers to defense purchase subsidies for foreign militaries (Serafino, 2016). Throughout these chapters, I will use security assistance and security sector assistance (SSA) interchangeably to refer to all programs within this scope, and use military aid primarily in reference to the programs which subsidizes large defense equipment to established foreign militaries. 2 “benefit his reelection, harm the election prospect of a political opponent, and influence the 2020 United States Presidential election to his advantage” (H.Res.755). The Government Accountability Office (GAO) determined this was illegal, stating “Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law” (GAO, 2020). The issues surrounding this incident decision highlight broader questions about the utility of security assistance as a tool for addressing both domestic political interests and foreign policy goals. This dissertation analyzes how U.S. security assistance programs reflect various strategic interests of U.S. policymakers, which strategic interests drive security assistance policies, and whether or not such programs are effective for achieving their stated goals. While the incident of a president withholding military aid for personal gain is an anomaly in the history of foreign aid policy, the U.S. has long provided such aid for a variety of political and security justifications to countries ranging from corrupt repressive autocracies to trusted democratic allies.