The Problem of Agency

Building Security Forces & Stabilizing Nations: The Problem of Agency Stephen Biddle Abstract: After fifteen years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, many now see “small-footprint” security force assistance (SFA)–training, advising, and equipping allied militaries–as an alternative to large U.S. ground-force commitments to stabilize weak states. SFA, however, confronts challenges of interest misalign- ment between the United States and its typical partners. The resulting agency losses often limit SFA’s real ability to improve partners’ military effectiveness. For SFA, small footprints usually mean small payoffs. Security force assistance (sfa)–training, advising, and equipping allied militaries–is an increasingly common U.S. response to threats emanating from weak states. Many Americans have grown tired of large U.S. land wars in such places after more than ten years of continuous conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq involving as many as 160,000 U.S. troops. Yet the world remains a violent place, and the United States has interests in a number of unstable parts of the world. For many, sfa offers a means to secure such real but limited interests without the massive U.S. ground commitments of the last fifteen years. In fact, “small-footprint” sfa has become a major pillar of U.S. national security policy. Yet its actual military efficacy has been little stud- ied. This essay thus presents a systematic analysis of sfa’s ability to improve allies’ military effectiveness. My central finding is that effective sfa is much STEPHEN BIDDLE is Professor more elusive in practice than often assumed, and less of Political Science and Interna- viable as a substitute for large unilateral troop deploy- tional Affairs at George Washing- ments. For the United States in particular, the achiev- ton University. He is the author of Military Power: Explaining Victory and able upper bound is normally modest, and even this is Defeat in Modern Battle (2004) and possible only if U.S. policy is intrusive and condition- has published widely on national al, which it rarely is. This is because sfa is best under- security and defense policy. stood as a principal-agent problem, and one whose © 2017 by Stephen Biddle doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00464 126 structural conditions promote large agency a lower cost than doing it themselves. But Stephen losses for the sfa provider. That is, the con- in exchange, the act of delegation creates Biddle ditions under which the United States pro- problems. In particular, the principal’s vides sfa commonly involve large interest interests always differ from the agent’s misalignments between the provider (the to some degree: homeowners want tire- principal) and the recipient (the agent), less work at low cost but carpenters want difficult monitoring challenges, and diffi- high wages for lighter work; civilians want cult conditions for enforcement: a combi- interservice cooperation and low defense nation that typically leaves principals with budgets, officers want generous funding limited real leverage and that promotes in- for their own service and its priorities. efficiency in aid provision. To overcome Principals can try to overcome this inter- these challenges requires atypical interest est asymmetry and impose their preferences alignment between the United States and through conditionality (paying only when its sfa partner, a larger U.S. footprint than satisfactory work is complete or cutting many would prefer, intrusive U.S. policies budgets for services that decline to cooper- designed to monitor its ally’s behavior and ate) or other enforcement means. But en- enable strict conditionality in aid provision, forcement requires monitoring to know or ideally all of the above. These conditions whether and how well the agent is per- are not impossible, but the combination has forming, and agents typically know more not been a common feature of U.S. security about their efforts and circumstances than force assistance in the modern era. Nor is it principals do. To overcome this information likely to become so in the future: in princi- asymmetry, principals must spend resourc- ple, U.S. policy-makers can design sfa pro- es to gather data on the agent and its work. grams to be intrusive and conditional, but Yet the more the principal spends on mon- it is much harder to create political interest itoring, the more expensive the project be- alignment, and this is often absent.1 comes and the less well the arrangement satisfies the original purpose of reducing Principal-agent (pa) theory comprises a cost. Payment, moreover, is a promise of body of ideas originally developed by econ- future benefit if the agent “works” (serves omists to explain interactions between par- the principal’s interests), whereas enforce- ties to a contract and subsequently gener- ment is a threat of future sanction if the alized and adapted to a wide range of sit- agent “shirks” (serves the agent’s self-in- uations in which one actor (the principal) terest instead); effectiveness in either role delegates authority to another (the agent) turns on the principal’s credibility. Princi- to carry out actions on its behalf. In polit- pals must reassure agents of their prom- ical science, it has been applied to explain ises, but the more reassurance they pro- interactions between elected officials and vide the less credible their threat of sanc- bureaucrats, legislators and committees, tions becomes, and vice versa: a principal civil authorities and the military, domestic whose commitment to support the agent agencies and multinational organizations, is unshakable encourages the agent to take or guerillas and state patrons, among many advantage and shirk with less fear of pen- others.2 alty. Moral hazard on some scale is thus in- At their root, all such delegation deci- evitable in all pa transactions. These prob- sions, and thus all of pa theory, are cost-sav- lems of interest asymmetry, information ing strategies. They enable principals to un- asymmetry, and moral hazard thus impose dertake manufacturing, home repair, reg- an inherent agency loss, or divergence be- ulation, legislation, or national defense at tween the outcome the principal seeks and 146 (4) Fall 2017 127 Building the outcome the principal obtains: dele- In fact, this is a systematic phenomenon. Security gation to an agent can reduce costs, but it If we use un voting patterns as a proxy for Forces & Stabilizing typically produces imperfect performance interest alignment, then there is a statisti- Nations to some degree, and often the greater the cally significant negative correlation be- cost saving, the more imperfect the per- tween U.S.-partner interest alignment and formance.3 U.S. sfa provision: the closer the interest Security force assistance is a classic pa alignment, the less likely the United States problem. In sfa, the United States is the is to provide military aid.6 We see a simi- principal, the ally receiving the aid is the lar relationship if we consider corruption: agent, and the principal’s aim is to meet a a state’s rank on the Transparency Inter- threat to American security more cheaply national list of most corrupt states cor- than by sending a large U.S. ground force relates directly with its rank on the list of to do the job directly. As with any other pa U.S. sfa recipients, with an ability to re- problem, sfa is thus subject to agency loss ject the null hypothesis of no relationship as a consequence of interest asymmetry, in- at the 0.1 level.7 formation asymmetry, and moral hazard; unfortunately, the particular circumstances This relationship is not an accident. The of sfa promote agency losses that are much United States rarely gives sfa to Switzer- larger than many sfa advocates expect. land or Canada because they do not need it; the states that need it are rarely governed Large interest asymmetries, for exam- as effectively as Switzerland or Canada.8 ple, are ubiquitous in U.S. sfa. Of course, And the governance problems that give rise no two states ever have identical interests. to the U.S. interest in sfa often simulta- This is true even for close allies like the Unit- neously promote interest divergence be- ed States and Great Britain: during World tween the United States and its partner. War II, divergent U.S. and British interests Regional instability, terrorist infrastruc- led to tension over the priority placed on ture, and humanitarian crises–the kinds campaigns in Southern Europe and North of real-but-limited threats to U.S. inter- Africa, for example, where British postwar ests that sfa is often meant to address– geopolitical and colonial interests conflict- are strongly associated with weak states ed with America’s.4 U.S. sfa, moreover, is and corrupt, unrepresentative, clientelist rarely provided to allies as close as Britain. regimes. In such states, political order of- The top fifteen recipients of U.S.sfa be- ten requires what Douglass North, John tween 1980 and 2009 have included Paki- Wallis, and Barry Weingast have called a stan, which provides safe haven for Al Qae- “double balance,” wherein the distribu- da’s global headquarters and for Taliban tion of economic spoils matches the dis- militants who have killed thousands of U.S. tribution of power among potentially vio- soldiers in Afghanistan; Sudan, which has lent elites.9 Regimes that allow the internal been accused of widespread ethnic cleans- balance of power to misalign with the bal- ing against its non-Arab minority; four of ance of rents risk violent overthrow, and in the top seven state sources of foreign fight- such systems, the threat of violence from ers for isil; and Afghanistan, which ranks armed elites within the state apparatus of- fourth on Transparency International’s list ten exceeds the real threat from foreign en- of the world’s most corrupt states (placing emies, international terrorists, or antigov- behind only Somalia, a top-twenty-five re- ernment insurgents.

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