War at Arm’s Length: Can Military Assistance Work?

Irregular Warfare Podcast

This episode examines the effectiveness of U.S. military assistance through a discussion of the book 'War at Arm's Length' by Richard Bennet

Key takeaways

• Success in security assistance is driven by two primary variables: interest alignment and institutional capacity.
• A 'weapons-first' approach often fails because partners may lack the fiscal or logistical institutions to maintain advanced equipment.

Main topics

• Security Assistance Effectiveness
• Interest Alignment

Notable quotes

Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.

Conclusion

The takeaway is that U.S. military assistance can be a powerful tool f

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:02) We train the military. They get to graduation day, these two new battalions. They rebel and take their officers hostage. We finally get in touch with the coup leaders. And so we asked them, well, was the training inadequate? No, the training wasn't inadequate. Was the equipment inadequate? No, the equipment was fine. Well, what's the problem? Well, we haven't been paid. All right. But it turned out, turned out it wasn't corruption. they didn't have the capability of paying their personnel. They simply lacked the fiscal institutions to disperse the money. Speaker 4 (0:41) The trick is to not deploy assistance in situations where there's a low alignment to begin with, with the hope that adding a bunch of resources and training will solve that problem. And I think we do that sometimes, right? We believe that there's an easier button to push than putting boots on the ground. We can just provide military assistance. And there's a tendency to do something. And military assistance is often that something. Speaker 3 (1:07) If we are still going to work with 170 countries around the globe, I think we should do a lot more of defense advising and a lot less what we call a weapons-first approach, right? So if we are going to be there, let's be there in a cheaper way that can build those defense relationships over time that may, at the margins, shift our partners a little bit more towards our interests. Speaker 2 (1:34) Welcome to the Irregular Warfare podcast. I'm your host, Alexandra Chinchilla. U.S. military assistance often has a bad reputation, but it isn't necessarily doomed to failure. This episode examines why security assistance succeeds with some partners and falls short with others, and what it takes to turn weapons and training into lasting military capability. I am joined by Lieutenant General Charles Hooper, who served in the U.S. Army for 41 years before retiring and was a former director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. DSCA, of course, is the agency responsible for the sale of all U.S. weapons, military equipment, support services, and training packages to foreign governments. Our other guests are Dr. Richard Bennett, who is a senior research associate at the Center for International and Security Studies in the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, and Dr. Alex Noyes, who is a senior fellow at Brookings, who previously served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy working on security cooperation. Rick and Alex are both co-authors of the book this episode discusses, which is titled We're at arm's length how America can build effective partners through military assistance. The Irregular Warfare Podcast is a joint production of the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project at Princeton University and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. You can find many more resources at www.irregularwarfare.org. Support for the Irregular Warfare Podcast comes from members of the IW community like you. And from Hadean, an AI company focused on synthetic environments for training, planning, and decision support. We hope you enjoy today's conversation. Our first guest is General Charles Hooper. Welcome to the show. Glad Speaker 1 (3:27) to be here. Speaker 2 (3:29) Our next guest is Rick Bennett. Welcome to the show. Thanks Speaker 4 (3:32) so much for having me. Speaker 2 (3:33) And we are also joined by Alex Noyes. Welcome to the show. Thanks Speaker 3 (3:37) so Speaker 2 (3:37) much, Alex. Speaker 3 (3:37) A big fan, longtime listener, first-time caller. Great Speaker 2 (3:40) to have all of you. So today we're talking about Rick and Alex's book about how America can build effective partners through security assistance. The United States has provided some form of security assistance to 179 countries since 2000. Like actually seeing that figure in the book. in the introduction was something that really impressed me. That's a lot of countries. So what is security assistance and why is it such a commonly used tool of U.S. foreign policy? Yeah, Speaker 4 (4:07) we're talking specifically about instances where the U.S. commits material resources or military expertise to a partner force. And that's in order to advance a U.S. national security interest. So you mentioned the 179 number over the last quarter century. That's the eye popper. The actual forms that that takes. They vary quite widely, and that's based off of the perceived needs of the partner, the geopolitical and security context, and also Washington's own priorities. So whether it's arms transfers or military education exchanges, the common thread is this idea of exporting security through assistance. Why we should care about it? When the U.S. is working with and through partners, they often delegate the use of force to that partner. And that comes with big implications for how the partner acts, both in terms of their own interests and in terms of U.S. priorities. And it also matters, I think, because the U.S. is doing a lot of it all the time. And it's an important tool of U.S. grand strategy. So we need to understand those dynamics to better optimize the assistance we're providing and improve the outcomes. I Speaker 1 (5:11) agree with everything that Rick said. But I would also add to that, that in addition to the provision of equipment, training, education, financing. It provides a common basis for action, a common culture, a common approach to problem solving. When you have countries that use our equipment, we train them on our operational practices, our doctrine, all of those other things. It gives them a common basis to work together with them. so that when we do address common security problems, we're addressing it in ways that are consistent with the ways that we do business moving forward. And then finally, I'd add to that, and this is something I'm very passionate about. It forms the basis for human relationships over the life cycle of the security assistants. I'll tell you a quick story. When I was a little young major in China, my next door neighbor was the Egyptian assistant air addressee. And he had just converted from MIGS to the F-16 fighter. I don't think it was a prouder F-16 pilot on the planet than this guy. His kids were the same age as my kids. They played together. His kids love microwave popcorn. I had microwave popcorn in Beijing, so it was a natural fit. So our families got to know each other. We got to know each other. And the basis of that was the fact that he was an F-16 pilot, had studied and trained in the United States. Twenty years later, I'm assigned as a two-star general. be the defense adversary to Egypt. It was after the Arab Spring. We had temporarily cut the Egyptians off from U.S. military equipment. I thought it was going to be a tough meeting when I had a meeting with the chief of Egyptian Air Force procurement. Imagine my surprise when I walked in the office and my next door neighbor from Beijing was the major general chief of Egyptian Air Force procurement. And he looked at me and said, well, maybe this meeting won't suck after all. The reason I mention that is even because there was contentious element in the bilateral relationship in those days, but in the military relationship, and in this case specifically, a relationship between the United States military, Department of Defense, and the Egyptian Air Force, it actually wasn't bad because the reason we had that relationship was because he was an F-16 pilot. Speaker 2 (7:19) Well, there you go. So all of these relationships, these things are enabled by security cooperation. The book uses the word effective, effective partners in the title. How do we know what effectiveness looks like? Like, what is the U.S. actually trying to build with security assistance? Speaker 4 (7:37) So first, part of why the topic is exciting is exactly this question and the layers of complexity involved with this question. The U.S. has its own set of interests for why it provides assistance. That can be deterrence, that can be counterterrorism, that can be counter-narcotics. There are myriad reasons why you provide aid to a partner force, but the partner is the one who actually decides how to employ its force and to what end. And so we need to look at both the general effectiveness of the partner force, how well it's accomplishing its own priorities, but also whether those actions advance U.S. interests that underpin the assistance in the first place. And so that dynamic between the partner's interests and The U.S. interests and whether they're aligned creates an added complexity to when we're talking about the effectiveness of a force because, yes, Alex, it is both the effectiveness of the force on the battlefield, but then also whether that is effective in advancing the U.S. interests that were the initial stated reason for the assistance in the first place. I Speaker 1 (8:36) would agree with everything that Rick said. This is an endeavor that has defied objective metrics, which is why it's so difficult to communicate. to decision makers and budgeteers how it's effective or not. It's an inherently human endeavor. So, you know, what does constitute effectiveness in this particular case? And of course, the SCA and the Defense Security Cooperation Agency and the enterprise have spent years trying to find effective, quantifiable metrics to measure success here. Suffice to say, I think that effectiveness can be measured by whether or not ally or partner can reliably perform the missions both countries needed to perform. And that's going to vary depending upon the challenges, the security environment, and other factors. But we have to keep our eye on exactly what the goal of security assistance is, and that will determine whether or not it's effective. Speaker 3 (9:33) You know, this is one of the things that makes measuring the effectiveness of security cooperation and security assistance so difficult is Speaker 4 (9:40) that not only does it mean a lot of things to different people, but our stated Speaker 3 (9:44) goals are all over the place. So in DOD policy, I know because I unfortunately worked on this to revise this DOD directive on security cooperation that there's officially four goals, right? And they can be summed up as access, influence, and effectiveness. But there's also a fourth, which is basically whatever the Secretary of Defense says is good for relationship building or in the interest of the U.S. So point being, it's just so broad. And any smart desk officer can make a case for why we do security cooperation with a particular partner. Now, I was also part of the assessment, monitoring and evaluation unit when I was in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for policy and helped stand up some of those concepts and measures of effectiveness. So I can speak to how difficult it is for evaluators to then come in and say, OK, we succeeded or we failed because there's like six different goals. in policy and in practice. Measuring effectiveness is really difficult. And here we focused explicitly on the military effectiveness of the partner just to make it manageable. Speaker 2 (10:55) It's interesting because it almost seems like failure is easier to assess in the sense that like it gets all the attention with like Iraq and Afghanistan. The logic would be, you know, we needed these militaries to fight and that didn't work out. So obviously it failed. When these sorts of failures happen, What's driving the chain there? What's making that happen? Speaker 3 (11:15) Yeah, sure. So this gets to the core of the book's arguments. Basically, we identify what we see as the two key ingredients to success. And then the opposite of that is failure. So these two ingredients are interest alignment, especially on the security front, and then the institutional capacity of the partner. I mean, this is something that... doesn't get as much attention in the academic literature and frankly, as well within the U.S. government. And we'll talk about that, the institutional capacity piece. But those are the two ingredients that we see for success and then failure. So not to get too political science-y about it, but you have where both of those factors are high, you'll see success being much more likely. And that's where your Ukrainians and your Columbians fall. And then on the other side of the ledger is the low-low. So you have low interest alignment and low institutional capacity of the partner. And that's where you're most likely to see failure. Then you have these mixed high-low and low-high. So there's a lot of failures that we talk about, including Nigeria, Yemen, Pakistan. But that's really the core argument of the book is that where these two factors are present and have relatively high levels, you're going to see much more success. Where they're absent, failure is much more likely. Speaker 4 (12:25) Yeah, I'll just say that. In terms of the institutional capacity of the partner, right, there's sort of two aspects to it that are worth noting. One is the base level of institutional capacity of defense institutions, but there's also the willingness of the partner to make reforms, right? And so you have to have a willing partner. I don't think we have any good examples of the U.S. Externally imposing defense institution reforms on an unwilling partner, it just doesn't stick. So, you know, being able to have that drive from the partner to make institutional reforms or have a partner that already has mature institutions allows the U.S. to be able to provide military assistance. to a partner that has the absorptive capacity to be able to receive that assistance and employ it on the battlefield. And I think that's been a key finding across all of the research that we did. Speaker 1 (13:16) And just to jump on that very quickly before I talk about this issue of failure, we often forget, Rick and Alex, that the rebuilding of Western European militaries after World War II is an absolute success and illustrates your point. These were well-founded institutions, okay? that had the absorptive capacity and the historical institutional structure to absorb what we were giving them and to rebuild their military defenses. And I would cite West Germany as a classic example of that. We were able to denazify, and over the course of what, almost 10 years, 1955, all of a sudden we see a West German military start to emerge, okay, that is reconstituted, whose institutions