Background reading: "The Dictator's Handbook" by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita; "Coup d'Etat: A Practical Guide" by Edward Luttwak.
Are you literally a Bond villain?
I'm holding out for "Coup d'Etat's For Dummies".
Also, Heebie is totally equipped to tell me I'm right about the stats.
The biggest flaw that I've spotted on first read-through is this:
US FMT is foreign aid - resources provided to a state by an outside actor - in a very specific form: an increase in the military's human capital... Other types of foreign aid allow leaders to divert state resources towards coup-proofing: buying off elites, creating additional paramilitary groups, or providing additional public goods. Because of the US training advantages mentioned above, the human capital provided is large relative to its dollar value, and thus any resources freed up for coup-proofing are likely to be minuscule. Before Mali's coup, FMT amounted to less than 0.5% of total US aid...
So basically, they're saying, other sorts of foreign aid are fungible. If the US gives Mali $10m worth of tanks, that's $10m that the Malian government doesn't have to spend on tanks, and can instead spend on coup-proofing. Thus a balance of power is maintained. But the US is so tremendously good at training soldiers that $10m spent by the US on training Malian officers is equivalent, in terms of increased fighting power, to $100m worth of extra kit. So suddenly the US-trained Malian army is basically $100m better at fighting (and coups) but the Malian government only has $10m freed up in its own budget that it would otherwise have spent on officer training.
There are two fallacies here.
First, it should be irrelevant to Mali how much the training costs to the US. Effectively, from a Malian point of view, the US has given Mali $100m of military aid in the form of training. Even if the increase in fighting power was free - say there was just something about breathing the air of Ft. Irwin that made you magically a better soldier - from the Malian point of view it's $100m worth of fighting power. And the Malian government can cut back in other areas (troop numbers, kit, whatever) to retain the same level of fighting power and save money, just as if the US had given them a load of free tanks.
Second, all those coup-proofing measures also have the effect of making the army much worse at defending the country. (This is why, or one reason why, Arab armies are so appallingly bad at fighting wars; that's not the performance metric they are assessed on, any more than violinists are assessed on their ability to cook lasagna. Arab armies are terrifically good at keeping Arab leaders in power. Look at the longevity data.)
So if you've suddenly got a US-trained army, you can step up the coup-proofing as well. There isn't just a tradeoff in budget terms between "spend on army" vs "spend on coup-proofing". There's another one in force structure terms between "keep risk of invasion low by having a well-trained, well-equipped, unified army" and "keep risk of coup low by having a disjointed army with shit kit and lots of weird Presidential Guard units".
I also don't think they address the issue of whether US military training aid is disproportionately targeted at countries that are for exogenous reasons more coup-prone. I doubt that much goes, for example, to rich, stable democracies; if they want to send their officers to train with the US military, they will pay to do so. And indeed, now I look at it, this study focuses entirely on IMET, which is a program that specifically excludes countries that are capable of paying their own way.
Similarly, countries with a totalitarian structure that makes coups very unlikely - PRC, USSR, North Korea and so on - are unlikely to get much US military training aid and are also much less likely to see coups, because coup planners are more likely to be shot well in advance.
IMET, by its nature, will be targeted at those in the middle; the poorer, less-stable countries whose loyalty is up for grabs, who need aid of all kinds, and who are also most likely to have coups and indeed violent changes of government of all kinds.
The fungibility stuff I took as theory-wank. As indeed is most of the article. If there is an effect, I think the way to find is to go and talk the coup plotters involved.
One of the pieces they link, by a US trainer:
I didn't know about Lamin's [US trained plotter in Gambia] plans, and I don't know his motivations beyond what I can ascertain based on his personality and the descriptions from news reports and witnesses. However, I can't shake the feeling that his education in the United States somehow influenced his actions [...] It is conceit on my part to think that I could have done something to change his path. Even so, I'll be haunted by that possibility for many years.I can see a plausible mechanism where training shows officers a good life they can't get and gives them knowledge and skills they'll never get a chance to use; but you aren't going to demonstrate that by parsing PDFs in Washington.
In general, third world army officers don't have to go all the way to the US to see a good life they can't get without mounting a coup. They can just look over at the presidential palace.
any more than violinists are assessed on their ability to cook lasagna.
So you're saying they would fail the Bechamel test.
Similarly, countries with a totalitarian structure that makes coups very unlikely - PRC, USSR, North Korea and so on - are unlikely to get much US military training aid
"Through FMS, the United States has supported three key security assistance organizations in the Kingdom. The U.S. Military Training Mission provides training and advisory services and administers the U.S. military cooperation program with the Saudi Ministry of Defense. The Office of Program Management-Saudi Arabian National Guard assists in the modernization of the Ministry of the National Guard. The Office of Program Management-Ministry of Interior supports critical infrastructure protection and public security. Since the 1950s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has also played a vital role in military and civilian construction in Saudi Arabia." - from the US State Dept. website
I think it goes without saying that the US isn't likely to provide much military training to Communist, State Capitalist and Juche states, but there's more than one way to be totalitarian.
Does the report compare whether US-trained officers are better at coups than British trained ones?
9: Sure. But heightened contradictions, etc. The broader thing is OP.1. The US is gradually defunding essentially everything but defense, to the point that foreign policy and foreign aid defaults to the military, and the presumably most widespread component of military assistance is training that doesn't do much of anything and maybe makes things worse.
Saudi is autocratic but not totalitarian. (They've only just finished overcoming an armed revolt in Awamiya. I'd never heard about this until the Saudis put out an announcement saying "we are now in full control of Awamiya again!")
12: No. It says countries receiving training are more likely to see successful coups.
Khalila Haftar spent years living in Virginia after being exiled by Khaddafi, but has recently met with Russians. Is there any way to tell whether he is receiving weapons from either country, and whether he needs them since Libya was so well-stocked?
13. China is not defunding-- there's a Chinese-built railway connecting Addis Adaba and Djibouti, as well as a bunch of Ethiopian factories.
Separately, in the past, a lot of US foreign aid has actually been generous subsidies to US industry. Foreign recipients don't get a choice in what they receive, they get a shipload of tractors or textbooks from some congressman's district, with an inflated price billed to State.
17: Yes, which is part of my concern. AIUI much Chinese aid also has the kind of strings you describe.
a lot of US foreign aid has actually been generous subsidies to US industry.
This is always true of all foreign aid, not excluding Chinese foreign aid. Those railways are not being built for the good of the people of Ethiopia.
In fact AFAIK China is especially notorious for this. Refusing to use local labor for anything, frex.
much Chinese aid also has the kind of strings you describe.
One thing that really impressed me from my time in the Caribbean is the extent to which Chinese foreign aid projects are utter shit. They brought in a camp of Chinese laborers to build Trinidad's version of the Sydney Opera House. Five years later the roof was leaking so much they had to close it for a couple of years, while they brought in a new crew of Chinese laborers to fix the thing.
Infrastructure built with imported materials and labor seems like a better long-term proposition for a country than the import of finished goods, though, dollar for dollar.
Isn't Chinese domestic construction also noted for being utter shit?
On the whole that is. I'm sure they have no trouble building quality when they are willing to pay for it.
As a Londoner right now I'm not sure I'm in a position to criticise other countries' construction practices.
The Chinese built this giant hotel and casino in Nassau. They were about 90% finished when somebody realized what utter shite the building quality was, and everybody started suing everybody. It sat empty for years - may still be for all I know. When they tested the electrical systems by attaching the building to the grid, it caused a blackout across the whole island.
That reminds me. A house in Lincoln blew up yesterday. I should go see why.
Possibly, it's a metaphor for the Republican Party.
The editors of the Lincoln Journal-Star remain very literal about some things.
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I would like to be be happy about reports that Bannon is about to get the boot, but I suspect it's happening because he isn't enough of a warmonger.
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They could have done so much with "A house divided against itself and filled with natural gas from a still unknown source cannot stand and the same with most of the houses next to it."
A house in Lincoln blew up yesterday. I should go see why.
Why did the chicken man cross the street . . .?
Huh, apparently there are multiple results for "chicken man blew up house." For the record, I was thinking of this.
A few months ago we got woke up at 1 a.m. by a house explosion a half-mile away. Turns out the guy was being foreclosed, committed suicide, shot his dog, and blew up his house with gas.
Our reactions upon being startled out of sleep reflected our subconscious nocturnal worries. My wife thought a tree branch had smashed our roof. I wondered what a nuclear explosion downtown would sound like at our house.
If you live close enough to the blast, a nuclear weapon would kill you before you heard a sound. In conclusion, your wife's subconscious is smarter than yours.
which is to say that US training is strongly correlated with the existence of armed forces
Isn't the existence of armed forces strongly correlated with being a state? Fiji only has 3,500 active duty military, yet they have a coup every five or ten years.
Yes. States have militaries, militaries make coups, Americans train (about 3/4 of) militaries. US training is so widespread one would expect to see correlation with coups regardless of causation.
35: not necessarily. It could be a tiny little one. 100t yield, say.
Turns out the guy was being foreclosed, committed suicide, shot his dog, and blew up his house with gas.
If he did them in that order, he's a tragic loss to science.
Isn't the existence of armed forces strongly correlated with being a state?
Almost universally. (Costa Rica.) But I wonder how true it is the other way round; if you counted up all the organised armed forces in the world, what percentage of them would be part of a state?
39: could have done it in a single act. Shoots dog with pistol, dog drops tennis ball out of its mouth, ball rolls down inclined ramp and knocks over first domino in long chain, last domino falls into basket, additional weight of basket sends it down on pulley, steel weight on other end of pulley rises, completes electrical circuit, ignites candle, candle burns through string holding up lead weight which falls, tightening cord around trigger of shotgun which shoots him in the head, recoil of shotgun shatters glass tube connected to gas main, house floods with gas, candle detonates gas, flash of detonation registered by photocell connected to Raspberry Pi computer at bottom of garden, computer automatically sends pre-written email to mortgage lender agreeing not to contest foreclosure proceedings.
SPOILERS for the latest Inspector Ajay mystery, "The Mousetrap Killings".
You need to define "organised armed forces". Half a dozen mentally unstable mid-westerners with a gun collection do not in my view constitute an organised force, whatever they choose to call themselves. There are quite a lot of "Islamic" outfits in Syria which are basically at the same level, or there were, I think most of them have been seen to by one side or the other by now.
Well, a quick search gives this (incomplete) list:
https://genevacall.org/how-we-work/armed-non-state-actors/
Interesting list. 55 ANSAs as against 195/6 recognised states. But, as you say, incomplete. We still need a minimum definition. Also, what about non-recognised states? Presumably places like Somaliland and Abkhazia have some sort of standing army; are they ANSAs or not? Taiwan?
41 is excellent; somebody should make a video (faking the deaths) and upload it to youtube.
This seems only kind of off-topic: a claim that the recent attempted truck bombing in Oklahoma City was a complete FBI setup of a mentally ill young man. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/oklahoma-city-bomb-sting_us_5993c045e4b04b19336162fd
I'm not sure exactly where the line should be, but supplying more than one of method, motive, and opportunity seems well past it.
40: There's this moment in 1996 where Rwanda and Angola invade the Congo to destroy, respectively, the RDR and UNITA bases on its territory, and it soon becomes apparent that there are in fact only non-state actors in the Congo. The large majority of parties to war were non-state, 20/29 per wiki. One of the triggers was UNITA providing aid to FLEC.
"Rwanda" in 1996 having been until recently the RPF, one of several autonomous armies in Uganda; whose leader, and current murderous dictator, is Paul Kagame, graduate of the US Army Staff College.
UNITA of course was originally funded by the US as a cold war counterweight to the MPLA. Did they provide training? Dunno, but wouldn't be surprised.
More SA than US, but yes. Definitely training too.
And, this guy thinks, US policy in the Congo war was so absent in part because State mostly deferred to Defense, which was infatuated with RPF; in which Kagame's personal connections would have played no small part.
Are you literally a Bond villain?
You have no idea how happy that question makes me.