Putting the Civilian Back in Civil–Military Relations: How Civilian Leaders Condition the Effects of Security Assistance

Abstract

Security assistance is an omnipresent feature of great power foreign policy. The United States, the world’s largest security assistance provider, aims both to build stronger militaries and to ensure that those militaries abide by liberal norms of civil–military relations. Why do some US-built militaries follow those norms, while others act as the political regime’s coercive tools? We argue that US advisors can, under favorable conditions, use social strategies of influence to encourage partner soldiers to adopt liberal civil–military norms. However, effective socialization of partner soldiers does not guarantee liberal civil–military relations because the partner state’s civilian leaders play a decisive role. When civilian leaders implement coup-proofing tactics, they counteract US socialization efforts and produce the illiberal patterns of civil–military relations the United States set out to avoid. We explore the theory in two cases of US army-building—Iraq (2003–2014) and Liberia (2006–2016). Our findings suggest that the United States must choose partners more judiciously or find ways to secure the cooperation of civilian leaders.